On this episode of Faith & Clarity, Dr. Mark Turman and Micah Tomasella sit down with Daron Babcock, Founder & CEO of Bonton Farms in Dallas. Daron shares his remarkable journey from brokenness to purpose, and how God led him to help rebuild a community long overlooked.
Bonton Farms is more than an urban farm; it’s a place where lives are restored, jobs are created, and hope takes root. Daron explains the seven barriers that often hold people back and how this ministry is addressing them in practical, faith-filled ways.
You’ll hear stories of redemption and resilience, and discover how God’s work in one neighborhood can point the way for communities everywhere.
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Topics
- (01:38): Introducing Bonton Farms and Daron Babcock
- (02:56): Daron’s journey: From tragedy to transformation
- (08:30): A new beginning in Bonton
- (10:06): Challenges and barriers in Bonton
- (14:10): The birth of Bonton Farms
- (17:32): Bonton Farms’ mission and impact
- (26:16): Stories of transformation
- (30:55): The value of work at Bonton Farms
- (33:26): Creating opportunities for flourishing
- (35:15): Darius’ journey and miracles
- (44:04): Rules and realities of living in Bonton
- (51:15): The four factors influencing life trajectories
- (54:04): Final thoughts and prayers
Resources
- Ask Us Anything: [email protected]
- How has Denison Forum impacted your faith?
- Denison Forum | North Texas Giving Day
- Bonton Farms
- D Magazine Feature on Bonton Farms
- Dallas TX – Bonton Farms
- Bonton Farms (@bontonfarms) · Dallas, TX
- Harvesting Hope: Bonton Farms in South Dallas opens a new Wellness Center
- Founder of South Dallas farm working to get Bonton Bill passed to help formerly incarcerated people
About Daron Babcock
Disrupter. Social Justice Advocate. Sower of Seeds. Moved by his personal beliefs, Daron Babcock couldn’t sit idly by as he witnessed his brothers and sisters in South Dallas be ravaged by institutional inequities. In 2012, he left a successful corporate career and moved from his home in North Dallas to serve inner-city residents of Bonton with his wife, Theda. Known for crime, violence, and extreme poverty, Bonton needed an intervention at the macrolevel – something Daron knew was not only necessary, but possible.
Daron is referred to as a “social entrepreneur,” having started multiple successful social ventures; Bonton Honey Company, The Market at Bonton Farms, a Coffee House, a Farmers Market, and CityBuild Housing. Of all his ventures, the most notable, though, is Bonton Farms, one of the largest urban farms in the United States nestled in a once-forgotten neighborhood in South Dallas.
Daron is not only the Founder and CEO, but he is also the perpetual visionary and re-inventor of what’s possible. Bonton Farms is so much more than a farm, it is the catalyst that is helping to level the playing field; creating systemic change necessary so the residents of Bonton and others from marginalized neighborhoods all over the country can achieve the “American Dream” that was promised 200 years ago.
“Our goal is not to simply grow food because we’re in a food desert, but to address WHY Bonton is a food desert. We’re not here to fix broken people, but to be the hands and feet to fix broken systems.”
About Micah Tomasella
Micah Tomasella is the Senior Advancement Officer at Denison Ministries and co-hosts Denison Forum’s “Culture Brief” podcast. A graduate of Dallas Baptist University, Micah is married to Emily, and together they are the proud parents of two daughters. With an extensive background in nonprofit work, finance, and real estate, Micah also brings experience from his years in pastoral church ministry.
About Dr. Mark Turman
Mark Turman, DMin, serves as the Executive Director of Denison Forum, where he leads with a passion for equipping believers to navigate today’s complex culture with biblical truth. He is best known as the host of the Faith & Clarity podcast and the lead pastor of the Possum Kingdom Chapel, the in-person congregation of Denison Ministries.
Dr. Turman is the coauthor of Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. He earned his undergraduate degree from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and received his Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He later completed his Doctor of Ministry at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco.
Before joining Denison Forum, Mark served as a pastor for 35 years, including 25 years as the founding pastor of Crosspoint Church in McKinney, Texas.
Mark and his high school sweetheart, Judi, married in 1986. They are proud parents of two adult children and grandparents to three grandchildren.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, the Faith & Clarity podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
Dr. Mark Turman: [00:00:00] Welcome to Faith and Clarity. I’m your host, Dr. Mark Turman, executive director of Denison Forum, and we are eager to come to you again with a conversation that takes you beyond headlines and, and hopefully deeper into hope. From things that are trending to things that are truth, that build up and that help you to think live and serve biblically.
One of the passions that we have as the core mission of Denison Forum is that we want to work with you and equip and encourage and inspire you to bring hope and to work with God to cultivate flourishing, not only for your own life, but for the people around you. It’s not only amazing that God invites us into his family, it’s amazing that God invites us to become coworkers with him until he comes again and makes everything new.
And so we’re gonna have a great conversation today that we think will inspire hope in you, and we hope will bring hope [00:01:00] through you. As we talk about. An incredible story that literally is kinda right here in the neighborhood with Denon Forum. Many of you probably know that we are a Dallas based ministry.
We have a national reach, but, but God birthed this ministry in Dallas and right here in our neighborhood is a ministry that, as I have learned about it in recent days is really the story of people going from what I would call floundering, maybe even failure to an experience of flourishing that has the marks of the Holy Spirit and the word of God just all over it.
And so today my co-host is my friend from Culture Brief, Micah Tomasella who works with us at Denison Forum. And we’re gonna be talking with the executive director of a very unique place called Bonton Farms, which is in the southeast quadrant of Dallas. [00:02:00] And the executive director of Bonton Farms is our friend Daron Babcock.
And if I was describing him to you I he’s an executive director of this ministry. He is an entrepreneur. He described himself to us earlier this week as an average entrepreneur, but which neither Micah or or I believe in any shape, form, or fashion. Yeah. But the thing that we learned Micah, about Daron, is that he is a disruptor and he’s a real deal.
He we’re gonna, we’re real deal. We’re gonna talk to him about what that means. And Micah welcome and Daron Babcock. Welcome to the Faith and Clarity podcast. We’re glad to have you this morning.
Micah Tomasella: Joy and pleasure, Daron.
Dr. Mark Turman: Thanks for Daron. We’re happy to have you, man. All right. Daron, we’re gonna, I know you don’t wanna spend too much time talking about your story, but as I was thinking about this, your story is really kind of a foundation and a seed for this larger redemption story that we’re gonna spend most of our time talking about at Bonton.
But tell us how a guy from Amarillo ends [00:03:00] up pouring his life into one of the most oppressed areas in any major city in the world.
Daron Babcock: Yeah, Mark, I, I grew up in Amarillo, as you said, and had great, a great family around me. You know, I grew up in the church. I’ve always been a rebel at heart, I think my parents would convince the church leaders to open the doors of the church even when it was closed.
We were there all the time, but I just didn’t get it. It wasn’t something that I owned. I did it to participate with my family and then went off to college. And as you alluded to, I’ve been an entrepreneur most of my life. I wanted to start my family in the Pacific Northwest. So we moved up to Oregon, just outside of Portland.
Started our business, which I thought we would do for the rest of our lives. And two years after we got there, my wife was diagnosed with cancer and two years from the date of that diagnosis, she passed away. And what. Being raised in Amarillo, kind of with the old [00:04:00] blue collar mentality. I was just always taught as men were supposed to be strong for everybody else.
And so all of the, all of the tragedies and hardships that happened in my life, I just stuffed them down. I never dealt with them. And when my wife passed away, it tipped me over. I just didn’t have the band. All of that stuff that was, that was held inside of me, boiled over. And I had no faith or high power to, to undergird that I was alone in it and lost.
And I was in deep pain. I wrestled growing up and all through college, and so I’m not unfamiliar with physical pain, but emotional pain was a whole nother thing. Significantly worse and much harder to deal with for me and, and a,
Dr. Mark Turman: and a dad as well. Not, not only having lost your wife and becoming a widower basically around the age of 30.
And also having two small children.
Daron Babcock: And my boys were seven and eight years old at the time. My wife passed away. And, you know, I think for me the, the first expression that I was in trouble is I just [00:05:00] became very isolationist. I locked myself in the house. I didn’t want to engage with anybody, talk to anybody, deal with anything.
And I didn’t really understand that was a problem. I just thought I was kind of going through a normal grieving process. And friends of mine kept trying to get me to go out with them. And one night I did and we wound up getting in a fight. And it’s the first time since all of this started that I didn’t feel that pain inside.
. And so it started this downward spiral of trying to find things to make me feel better ’cause I was so miserable. And one night we got in another fight and I wound up jumping in a car with some people I didn’t know to get away from the police. And they took me back to their apartment.
And they had drugs and alcohol and things every, everywhere, which I was not familiar with. But I did a line of cocaine and it’s the first time that I had an something that didn’t involve hurting somebody else that I could do to escape from my pain. And that led me down a really dark path. When my family found out the trouble that I was in, they came [00:06:00] up and helped me get into a rehab facility.
And it’s there where I became sober and had a support group around me that were trying to help me dig out of this hole I created. And in spite of all that, I couldn’t find a way out. I, I didn’t see there was any way that I could recover from the damage I had done, the shame I was experiencing.
Because not only was I self-destructing, but I was self-destructing in front of my young kids that had already lost their mother. And the guilt that I had from that was just too much to bear. And, so early on one night, I just, I didn’t think the Christian God was real. I didn’t know what was real.
I just knew I was hopeless. And so I fell on my knees and I cried out and said, God, if you’re, if you want me and if you’re real, I quit.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Just a, a beautiful thing. Talk a little bit about that. You talked about when we, when we talked with you earlier about how you were saying that you quit and you didn’t even know what you were quitting from, right? Yeah.
Daron Babcock: Yeah. I just knew [00:07:00] something profound happened inside of me.
Micah Tomasella: You gave up, you surrendered, you laid it all down for the first time, really?
Daron Babcock: Yeah. And I, I don’t know what that means. Like I just knew that something real happened in me and I needed to find out what it was. And so I began this journey of pursuing a faith that I didn’t understand, or a God I didn’t know. And I certainly didn’t know what it meant to quit to a God I didn’t know.
And, so that started this journey. And for me, my faith is life and death. Like I know who I am, abstinent so I, I just started seeking and I remember going to church one day and coming home and opening the Bible and for the first time all of the stories that I heard in vacation Bible school, all of the sermons that I’d heard for the first time when I opened my Bible as a new creation, like it made sense to me.
And it wasn’t anything of how I had understood it before. You know, it wasn’t this God that was trying to gimme a set of rules to restrict and overlord me. It was this God that loved me so much that he was giving me guidelines to live [00:08:00] a life of flourishing. And he invited us into this cosmic battle between good and evil to make his kingdom come.
And it was this most beautiful mission statement I’d I’d ever heard. I’d ever heard. And I want to be a, a part of it. And so I just searching for ways to, to live my faith out in a meaningful way. And it didn’t happen for me for 10 years. And I think in hindsight, looking back, it was really just God was maturing me and preparing me for something that I wasn’t yet prepared for.
And in 2011, a friend of mine invited me to this inner city community in Bonton where they were meeting with a group of men from the neighborhood that were, were returning home from prison and trying not to go back. And so that’s the, the start of how God used his story in my life to lead me to a ministry that we’re about to talk about in Bonton Farms.
Okay.
Dr. Mark Turman: So family comes up and helps intervene. You have the very powerful encounter [00:09:00] in rehab and then relocate to Dallas, right? And start growing in faith. Get connected to a church and get discipled by that church and by its pastor. And then this invitation to Bonton, a place that. Nobody, like nobody ever heard the word Bonton and knew what it meant for the most part.
And so we’re gonna take a little short break right here, let everybody catch their breath, and then Micah’s gonna come back and lead us in a conversation with Daron about what is Bonton and why do we need to know about it. So we’ll be right back and we’ll continue our conversation in just a second.
Micah Tomasella: Alright, so we’re gonna jump back into the conversation. Daron, again, so grateful for your story. So where we are in the story right now is, it’s 2011. God has matured you and grown you, you’ve gone through so much. Now you’re in South Dallas in Bonton. Again, like Mark said, people can live in Dallas and not even really have known what that is.
So just give us some context [00:10:00] from there of your story and how Bonton Farms started and the community and all that. So just jump in.
Daron Babcock: As I, as I mentioned, a friend of mine invited me to Bonton to meet at a house with a group of men from that neighborhood that were all returning home from prison and trying not to go back.
I’ll never forget that day. It’s intimidating. When I first went to Bonton, you couldn’t go into that neighborhood if you weren’t from that neighborhood. You had to have people from that neighborhood meet you at the flood gates. There’s two ways in and two ways out. One’s under the railroad tracks and the other is under the highway, and there’s flood gates underneath there.
And so people would meet you there and escort you in. And so that’s a little intimidating if you’re not familiar with that right to begin with. And then we got to this house and as we approached the front door, there was yelling on the other side of it. So that added to a bit to the anxiety and what the gentleman was saying that was opening the door is, look, I just got released from prison and I have an ankle monitor on, and I’m required to have three job interviews a week as terms of the [00:11:00] condition to my parole.
So I go get these interviews set up and then my parole officer calls him and says, Hey, I need to confirm that you have an interview with John Doe and that it’s on this date and time. And please know he’s on monitor from Texas Department of Corrections, and if your interview goes long, police will be dispatched to your premise.
And that happens before they even meet me. There’s no way I’m gonna get a job. Wow. And the guy immediately after him said, you think that’s bad? I got sent to prison for selling dope. I just got out on parole. They’re requiring me to stay at a halfway house that I have to pay $200 a month to. I can’t get a job yet.
I don’t have an id. It expired while I was in prison. So I’m having to sell dope not to violate my parole so I can pay my halfway house fee. And I’m this guy that this is all foreign to, but it just doesn’t make any sense. Yeah. And so I, being as ignorant as I was about it, I just was. I was drawn to these men that I met because when you meet people, you don’t see them, you don’t know their backstory.
You just see [00:12:00] them as other human beings that you’re having a conversation with. And what I saw were beautiful people that were capable and had ambitions, and were trying very hard to build a life. And yet all these barriers they were facing were in their way. And then as you get to know them, you hear the backstory and you earn the right to know what’s back.
And what I couldn’t reconcile is the, the stories of the lives that they were living compared and contrasted to the quality of the people that I met. There’s something not right here. You know, first of all, isn’t it odd that there Bonton is a small neighborhood about home to about 6,000 people, 1.92 square miles, and there were six men from a neighborhood that had all just returned home from prison within the, within a 30 day time window from this one neighborhood.
. I later learned that we incarcerate almost 40% of our men before their 25th birthday. What’s, what’s wrong here? And so I began immersing myself and learning more from them. And it begged this question after a few months of doing that, it [00:13:00] became the highlight of our week for those of that, for those of us that were going down to minister to these men.
But, but why, why was this so special to us? And I think the self-reflection, what God revealed to me is it made us feel better about ourselves. I can certainly say that about me. But, you know, those men were alone six and three quarters days a week when we weren’t down there. And nothing the truth be told, nothing had changed for them.
And so I started this conversation with God about what does this require of me? What you’ve introduced me to this place, what is required of me? And a few weeks went by and I asked to meet with the guys, and I said, you know, I’m trying to be a friend, but I don’t know how to be a real friend from a distance.
I’ve been praying about this and I believe God is leading me to move down here. And they all just laughed and said, you, you wouldn’t make it a week. That’s a bit really bad idea. You don’t know what you’re talking about. But we kept that conversation going and eventually, after a few weeks, they all said, look, if you’ll follow a few [00:14:00] simple rules, we’ll we’ll invite you down here and we’ll have your back.
And so the journey began of me living an immersive ministerial experience in Bonton. We never intended to start an organization. For me, this was discipleship. This was men that God had put in my life that were asking for help and asking for relationship and asking for direction. And so my intent was just to serve these men, but the barriers they faced were also real.
And they weren’t just the barriers that these six men face. These are barriers that men and women face that grow up in areas of concentrated poverty like Bonton. And it’s not an isolated incident. In Dallas, we have 40 Bonton in Dallas, and we have 825 of them across the country that are home to 40 million Americans.
This is a big deal where we created spaces where people grow up, where none of the conditions for flourishing exist, and then we expect them to somehow overcome all that and build the lives [00:15:00] lives that, that are flourishing and beautiful, and it just doesn’t happen. And so over time, there were enough people that came around that we had to formalize the work we were doing.
We had to formalize the ministry that was happening, and the organization of Bonton Farms emerged from that
Micah Tomasella: emerge. And so you you experienced all of this. You were going down every week getting to know them, asking good questions. Mark, Dr. Mark turn. And I had the pleasure to go out there earlier this week and just sit down with Daron and Darius and hear their stories and walk the property.
And Daron, you know, you had mentioned that you had what, you were living in Frisco in a nice house, and then you, you move into basically what you kind of described as this completely stripped apartment, right? Just like totally different conditions. You just immersed yourself in it and you jumped right in, right?
Daron Babcock: Yes, sir. It’s , when I started to move down there or look to move down there, it’s like I need a place to live, [00:16:00] right? It never occurred to me that I’d never seen a for sale or, or lease sign there. So I started asking questions and nobody had bought or sold a house there in, in over 10 years.
And there’s no houses, there’s no place for me to live. So I’m like there’s a bunch of abandoned land. Maybe I can buy a lot and build a simple house. And I found out who owns the land. It was all the city, which seemed odd to me. I’ve never lived in a neighborhood where the city owned most of the land.
So I go to city hall. They tell me that the land has been bought with bond money that’s designated all for low income and that I didn’t qualify. So I was trying to be obedient, but I ran into a wall where truth be told, I just didn’t have a way to live there. But again, as Providence would have a bill hall, the former CEO of Habitat for Humanity had a house that a family had had to default on, and they moved out in the middle of the night.
So when that happens in our neighborhood, the people on the street see people moving out and they come in and rip all the copper out of the house. [00:17:00] And then once the house is open, it gets turned into what’s known as a trap house where they do dug drugs and prostitution and move stolen goods. So Bill had gone to City Hall to say, Hey, we, we know we have a Habitat house that’s having some problems in the neighborhood.
We’re trying to secure it, but we really can’t secure it unless we had somebody to move into it. And so the people at the city are like there was this crazy guy down here saying he wanted, he wanted to move there, so why don’t you give him a call? Bill called me. And, and that was the, the home I got to move into.
Micah Tomasella: Wow. Incredible. Incredible. Okay, so back to the point of Bonton specifically, what is, what is Bonton now? So tell us the mission of Bonton, what you guys are seeking to do, and then give us some more context specifically on building the nonprofit. How did you start and how how’d you get to where you are?
Daron Babcock: Yeah, it’s interesting because when we, when we said, gosh, we need to form an organization where we have formality to this and, and it’s a real thing and we can [00:18:00] receive investment and support to help us do what we’re doing. I was like, I, I don’t know anything about nonprofits. I’ve been a business guy my whole life, so I need to learn how to run a nonprofit.
And as I started to do that, none of it makes sense to me. And I, I got introduced to an organization called Stand Together Foundation that I have the privilege of working with now. And they basically gave me permission to kind of follow the rules of the nonprofit, but I don’t have to think like that.
And so we have this really audacious belief that if people of Bonton, if the conditions for flourishing existed, we believe the outcomes in Bonton could normalize over time. And just to give you kind of what that looks like in Bonton over half of our community lives below the poverty line. We had not had a high school graduation rate of over 54% in 40 years.
We suffer from more than double the rate of cancer, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, and childhood obesity than the county we’re in. Men will live 12 years less than the average lifespan of [00:19:00] a person in Dallas County. We incarcerate about 40% of our men before their 25th birthday. And you can go on and on second highest teen pregnancy rate in Dallas County, you can go on and on and on.
And so our bet was if we could innovate solutions that would remove the barriers that all of my friends taught me they had, as we were discipling them and walking with them on this journey, every barrier they faced, we started to spot patterns. And it turns out there’s seven things. It’s, there’s thousands of things, but there’s seven major ones that happened with every person every time.
And so our theory of change was if we could innovate ways to build institutions that could remove those barriers, we believed those outcomes in our community would normalize. And so that was the, the premise that Bonton Farm started with. And everybody thought we were crazy. And yet here we are. We founded in 11 years later, we started in 2014 as a formal organization.
So 11 years later, and I’m really pleased to say that our median household income in Bonton has [00:20:00] improved 106%. Our graduation rates improved from 54% to 77%. Teen pregnancies have been cut in half, and you can go on and on and on. Praise God. And so what it proves is that, and we talked about this during your visit what’s the key to unlock this?
And, and I believe it’s hope. And I believe that hope starts with knowing who God says you are. We are God’s children. Our community is filled with the lies of what the world has told them. And as long as I believe those lies, I’m gonna live a life that emulates who I think I am and who the world thinks I am.
And the catalyst for that change to begin happening is none of the stuff that we do. It’s all about showing them what God their creator says they are, and helping them on the journey of becoming believers in that. And through that belief, they have hope. And through that hope, it now unlocks my ability to take advantage of all the other things that we do to, to, to overcome barriers.
And I believe that’s why you see such [00:21:00] demonstrable transformation in Bonton.
Micah Tomasella: Wow. Incredible man. Okay, so Bonton Farms itself, what is it, what is the mission? What does it function like? You know, if someone was just like, Hey, what is, what is Bonton? Just kind of give us that practically.
Daron Babcock: Yeah. We started working with men, as I said, that came home from prison and we soon learned.
That we’re all human beings and it didn’t matter what you were struggling with, the ministry we were doing served everybody. And so we now serve people from all over the city. If you’re struggling, Bonton Farms is a place to come where you can be a part of this. And we have people not only from Bonton that we serve, but people that come from other ministries that say, my people really need some of the things that you do.
And so they get incorporated. But we really work to remove seven barriers. One, we need to develop a economy in Bonton. The only businesses that are there are beer and wine stores, liquor stores, metal recycling plants and strip clubs. We’ve worked really hard across the nonprofit sector to do [00:22:00] what we call workforce programs where we try to prepare people’s work and plug them into existing jobs.
But what I learned is the average dollar stays in a middle income family for six days. In an area concentrated poverty, that dollar only stays for six minutes. Because if we’re going to work somewhere else and get our paycheck and if, then we spend our money back where those goods and services are, where we’re working, dollars don’t circulate.
In our economy, in our, in our neighborhood and economy doesn’t work. And so wealth never builds. So it’s really important that we don’t just help prepare people for jobs and place them in jobs, but they actually build economy. So when you were there, we, we met in the coffee house. We sat on the patio.
Outside the restaurant, we were overlooking the farm. And all of those are what we call social enterprises or businesses that people that come to us that need help, they start by working. It gives us a chance to work within eight hours a day, which discipleship takes time. And how do you get that much time with people that need to work to provide for themselves and their family?
We [00:23:00] disciple through work. And so the farm and the restaurant and the coffee house and the food atory are all vehicles for discipleship. But they create an opportunity to work and for them to provide income. And it started this flywheel of economic progress where. Multiple businesses have started around it because we need facilities maintenance.
So there’s a business that started in our community to do facilities maintenance. Our houses and our businesses need security. So a security company has spawn up. All of a sudden people are working and don’t have time or retired at the end of the day, the MO motor on yards. So we started lawn care businesses.
They start mowing people’s yards, and it started this flywheel of economic progress. One of the big challenges we have in this country, and it’s a big problem in Dallas, but it’s a big problem everywhere, is safe, affordable housing. So in today’s world, you can work full-time, maybe even work two full-time jobs and still not be able to afford a roof over your head.
And so we have to innovate ways to address affordable housing. Most of the jobs are still in other parts of the city, and so [00:24:00] transportation comes a barrier for people that are experiencing poverty. Access to fair credit. I think I shared this story with you, but the first guy that we helped get a job and we failed exponentially more than we succeeded.
So when we helped this first gentleman get a job, we threw a party like a birthday we had, we had cake and everything. It was a big deal to celebrate. And a week and a half later, he shows up at my door crying like a child cries, maybe adults, I think we might call it a panic attack. And all he would say to me is, I can’t go back.
I can’t go back. He kept repeating himself, I can’t go back. I’m like, I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me. What, what’s going on? And I invited him in, helped him catch his breath, and he is they’re trying to repo my car. He was like, you don’t have a car? I drove you to your interview a week and a half ago.
And he is on the application, I didn’t think they were gonna hire me, but on the application they asked me if I had transportation. And if I said no, I knew they wouldn’t give me a chance. So I lied and said yes. And then when they called me for the job, I can’t start off as a liar. So I had to come down and get a car.
But [00:25:00] that hadn’t even been a month ago. How can you, how can you, how can you be in then try to repo your, and he’s oh, I pay weekly. And so he paid $8,400 for a car that had a blue book value of 3,500 was being charged, 30% interest on top of that and weekly payments. So he was in default before he got his first paycheck.
So that’s how we learned about the predatory lending problem. And so that access to fair credit is another one of those, what we call human essentials. Education is incredibly important part of it. And then we are in a food desert. So I, you heard me talk about the data of what things were like when I started in Bonton with all those negative health outcomes, it’s part and parcel of two factors.
We don’t have access to healthcare and we don’t have access to fresh food. So those would be the other two. The mission of Bonton is to say, gosh, if we, if we imbue hope in people through them understanding who God says they are, and they begin to believe that and live as if that were [00:26:00] true. And then if you marry those with these tools that we call create the conditions for human flourishing, that when you put those two together, we believe that durable transformation will happen in our neighborhood.
And that’s what we’re starting to see now.
Micah Tomasella: Incredible. Wow. Okay. So tell us, just to give us even a bit more context, give me the average person who’s coming to Bonton and then give me kind of the steps of what steps they’re taking to where they’re, they’re in the program, they’re with you guys. They’re being rehabilitated.
They’re finding community, they’re finding purpose, they’re finding work, they’re finding support that they’ve never had before. And then eventually you’re able to help them, hopefully get a job and be able to build a life for themselves. So just kind of take us through who is that average person and what does that process specifically look like?
Daron Babcock: I don’t know that there’s an average person other than Sure. Maybe if you think about, you could share a
Micah Tomasella: specific story too, if that would make it easier as well. Yeah.
Daron Babcock: You know, I, I will, I the most incredible story, and I always love when somebody gives me a chance to tell a story. [00:27:00] This is one I want to share because it’s so powerful.
Awesome. But we had four men show up to our farm one day and asked to join the program. They had all been re released from prison recently, and were staying at the same halfway house. One of the men was nonverbal. I’d never served somebody that was nonverbal before. I don’t know how to do that, but we just treated him like he was the rest, like one of us, like the rest of us.
And so every morning we get together and we do a devotion. After the devotion, we say a prayer, and then we give our work orders out for the day, and then we get to work and Eddie would always participate but he didn’t communicate. And then when we went to work, he would just go sit in an Adirondack chair on the patio under a pecan tree.
And every morning we would start off the same way. Greet him. Good morning, Eddie. And the same process would happen over and over again. And finally Eddie, as in the fall, the pecans started falling off the tree and Eddie started picking the up the pecans and shelling them. And as he did, squirrels and birds started coming closer and closer and [00:28:00] closer to Eddie, where before long he was feeding them the cons.
And we thought this was fascinating. We didn’t understand the, the miracle that was happening in that at this point. But one day I walked to the farm just as I always did, and said, good morning, Eddie. And he said, can I talk to you? And it was like, I don’t know if you guys were old enough to remember the old E EF Hutton commercials.
Like when EF Hutton talks, everybody listens. Everything. I am
Micah Tomasella: not, I think Mark is though. Yeah. I am very much old enough. Yep.
Daron Babcock: Sorry to, sorry to aid you and I there, mark. That’s okay.
Micah Tomasella: It’s okay.
Daron Babcock: But like ev it was like the farm frozen time. Everybody stopped. And Eddie’s look, I don’t trust you, but I need to, I’ve never had a human being that I could trust before, but these squirrels and birds are showing me that I need relationships and I, I gotta find a way to get started.
And so as we learned Eddie’s story, Eddie was abandoned at birth raised by a, a grandmother. His brothers were in the dope game, got him hooked on heroin at 13, Eddie wound up doing 27 years in [00:29:00] solitary confinement. Wow. Not 27 years in prison. 27 years in solitary confinement. 23 hours a day in a cell, one hour a day in isolation, a yard by himself.
He was a deeply broken, but beautiful human being. Those two things can, can live together.
Micah Tomasella: Yes.
Daron Babcock: And Eddie told us the story that year 20, he couldn’t take it anymore. And so he started trying to find, of all the ways he’d send people kill themselves inside a prison, which way he was going to try to do that.
And Eddie would tell us that prison has the same smell, 24 7, 365. And they never knew what seasons it were in solitary, except when spring would come, they would start to hear the lawnmowers outside and they had a little bitty slatted window at the top of their cells that they couldn’t open. But when they could, when they could hear the lawnmowers, they would all asked the guards to open their window because they said the smell of cut grass is like perfume.
Hmm. And this year, 20, when he’s trying, contemplating, trying to how he’s gonna take [00:30:00] his alive, they spring came, they opened the window, and a cardinal flew in his room. And every spring that cardinal from year 20 to 27, every spring that cardinal came and revisited Eddie. And then he comes to Bonton Farms.
And what is it that opens the door for Eddie to start communicating with us? The squirrels and the birds. If God is so amazing, it’s just such a beautiful story. And we asked really three questions. Why are you here? What are you willing to do to build the life you want? Are you willing to work?
And where do you want to go? My grandfathers used to tell me, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will lead you there. And so I’m not building my life or the life I desire for you. I’m working with you to build the life in you that God has already prepared for you. And so I don’t know what that is.
You got to tell me what that looks like. And so those are the four questions we ask and then we get to work. We believe work is, is a gift from God to do. That it, that it’s honorable and dig [00:31:00] dignifying and that gives us meaning and purpose. It contributes to giving us meaning and purpose. And so everything at Bonton Farms is earned.
And that helps start to it, foster dignity and self-confidence because we don’t give you anything. Everything you do at that farm is earned from counseling. You have to earn counseling and you earn that through work. If you wind up staying in one of the houses we provide, if you’re unsheltered at the time, you earn that through your work, you earn your paycheck, everything is earned.
And it’s amazing when you work for things, you start to see that dignity and self-confidence and that belief in themselves start to emerge. And that’s just the key to unlocking every step in the journey that’s filled with obstacles and things that try to keep people where they are. But when we do it that way, we see people over come it over and over and over again.
Micah Tomasella: God is so good, Daron. You know, I, I, I keep thinking about, you know, how we’re all naturally products of our environments. And so even when you’re sharing these [00:32:00] life lessons that these grown men and women. Are learning later in life, like the value of hard work or actually having somebody who cares for you, not just conditionally, but unconditionally.
And through that they’re experiencing the love of God when his children are being his hands and feet and actually showing them his love. It, it, it truly is incredible to hear these stories and to be able to have experience with you. Just, you know, experience this with you for just a couple hours and then continue to hear how God is moving and working through this.
Mark, anything.
Dr. Mark Turman: No, I just, the, the stories just continue to astound me and and, and I, I feel like I could just talk to Daron for hours. Yes.
Micah Tomasella: Rather one person after, rather. I would just rather, I’d rather just listen to Daron for hours. I don’t really need to say much.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, yeah. But no, I, there’s so much to talk about, so many beautiful stories and a lot of messy stories too.
If you know, if, if you talk to Daron long [00:33:00] enough, you’ll hear, Hey, we tried to help this person and it, it didn’t work. And lots of stories that will break your heart. Yeah. That remind us, reminds me of a story when Jesus encountered a person that was broken and he asked him, do you want to get better?
And what I am amazed about in so many ways about Bonton, and this kind of set up our, our last part of our conversation here in a minute, which is it’s, it’s not about. Doing the, or putting forth the effort for somebody or handing them something, but it’s about setting a table and giving the conditions that if somebody wants to build a life of beauty and flourishing and thriving, then Bonton creates the opportunity and the atmosphere for where that can happen.
A lot of those things that we’re talking about that, that facilitate flourishing for all of us, many of us were, those were just givens. They were, we take ’em for granted because they were already in place when we came along. [00:34:00] And we don’t even realize how many people around us never even have the opportunity.
They don’t even have hope because the conditions, they’ve never experienced the conditions around us. Key point. Yeah.
Micah Tomasella: This is, this is a neighborhood in Dallas when what Daron is describing is almost like a third world country. And it’s in Dallas City Limits, just like many people live or any major me metropolitan area with lots of businesses and, and, and lots of commerce and a robust economy.
And then here’s this neighborhood, one of many, like Daron pointed out, it’s living in just a completely different reality in world. And we need to be more sensitive to that and more understanding of that, that people come from different places and experience different things and that shapes who we are.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, absolutely. So let’s take another break and catch our breath and get a, a drink of coffee, and then we’ll come back and talk about how Bonton is a model that can be [00:35:00] transferrable into other places. That this is something that God can use and is using in places beyond Bonton. And we’ll pick up that conversation with Darin in just a second.
Alright, we’re back. Continuing our conversation with Darien Babcock about Bonton Farms, a very unique community in the south part of Dallas that is really changing lives at a great scale. Darien, I wanna start with your relationship with one of your friends in the Bonton community that we got to meet and spend some time with.
Great guy named Darius. Then when you first started visiting Bonton with some friends from your church, just to try to see how you could be helpful that ultimately led to you moving there and investing in a much more consistent, deeper way. One of the guys that you met early on was a guy named Darius.
And as what I love about how our conversa conversation started was this was just about [00:36:00] discipleship. This was about trying to share the gospel with people who really needed the gospel and needed the hope of the gospel. And then those that responded, it turned into discipleship and it turned into I just need to spend more time down here so I can try to build these folks up with what I know about Christ.
And, and in that you found them building you up in some ways, but tell us about this guy named Darius who when you met him. Was really kind of anticipating that he was just gonna die on dialysis because he was experiencing end stage kidney failure. Tell us about that relationship and where it’s gone.
Daron Babcock: It, it’s another miracle. So I love to talk about the miracles, but you, you remember earlier on we talked about the fact that I had rules to follow in order for me to move into Bonton. Mm-hmm. And one of those rules was that I wasn’t to approach people, that they would bring people to me that I, I’m, I need to kind of stay in my lane.
And Darius was [00:37:00] one of those guys that was adversarial towards me and didn’t want me there. They told me Darris is a shoot first, ask questions later, kind of guy, just keep your distance. And yet his mom moved in next door to me and his mom kept trying to build this relationship with Darris and I, which actually repelled him even further in the opposite direction.
And in spite of all this, you know, there was no place to eat in Bonton. So one day at lunchtime, I was needing to get in my car to go into Dallas to get a meal. And as I was driving out, Darius was sitting on the stoop of his porch with his head in his hands. And the Holy Spirit just compelled me to, to stop and ask him if he wanted to join me for lunch, even though that was a violation of the rules I had been given.
And so I rolled my window down and just said, Hey, are you hungry? I’m going to lunch. And what I didn’t know is that Darius had recently been diagnosed with late stage renal failure. He had gotten outta prison. All the guys that he used to run the [00:38:00] streets with would come by. Darius was hung, literally hungry.
And he kept asking people that were coming by. Can I, will you gimme five or 10 bucks? I’m hungry. And they’re like, yeah, I got you. I’ll be back through in a minute. And nobody ever came back through. And then this one guy that he was, he didn’t want to be there, happened for some reason, to be compelled to pull over and ask him to join him for lunch.
It was overwhelming to him. And he broke down in tears, tried to hide it, and went inside the house and came back out. And we went to lunch that day. And it was just the start of this beautiful relationship, one of the most authentic and genuine and deep friendships that I’ve ever had in my life. But Darius had his backup against the wall.
He was sick. Truth be told, he was dying. He was unemployed, he was a convicted, had just gotten released from prison. He didn’t have an id. He family was in disarray. Like just about everything that you can imagine was broken in Darius’s life. And you know, I invited him to start joining us for our, for [00:39:00] our morning devotions and prayer time and to work with us.
And one day DARS said that look, I, I love what’s happening here and I wanna participate, but I can’t come on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And in my arrogance and ignorance, I was like if you can’t come three days a week, I guess you don’t really wanna work. And he’s no, it’s, I have dialysis Those days.
I, I was 47 when I moved to Bonton. I had never heard the word dialysis in Bonton. It’s not something that you go a day without it entering into a conversation. So I asked Darius if I could go with him to see what this is about and went. And there, the day we went, there were two empty seats. And what I didn’t understand is I, it’s kind of analogous to my experience when my wife was going through her chemo treatments, you go into this room with a bunch of other people that are hooked up on these machines, they’re all dealing with the same thing.
And in some ways it forms a little community. Mm-hmm. And you know each other, you know what each other’s going through. You’re suffering together. And these deep bonds are [00:40:00] formed. And so that day there were two people that didn’t make it from the last treatment. Hmm. Wow. And so I asked about that and I just asked the doctor like, is this what is the, what does this look like for Darris?
And he is you know, absent a kidney transplant, it’s the same thing. So I, I asked what it looked like to see if I was a match for a kidney. And Darris was blown away by that. I didn’t think much about it, but none of his family or brothers or sisters or anybody had ever offered. So when there was an offer out there, it just deeply moved him.
And I think that willingness, just to see if I was a match for him demonstrated a love to him that he hadn’t that was unfamiliar to him and really forged our relationship deeper. And so we started this journey together. And his, the redemption of Darius and his testimony and what God’s doing in his life is absolutely.
Outstanding. Darius is the reason, one of the primary reasons, because he [00:41:00] faced every single barrier we talked about. Like most people faced a half a dozen of ’em or you know, they would face some of ’em, but they wouldn’t face all of ’em. Darius faced every one of them. And so when we tried to help Darius get a job, he had a really bad experience.
And I know he shared that story with you. And so I promised him that I would walk with him through this journey to make sure that he wound up and got a job. But he too had an expired ID while he was in prison. So we went to the DMV to help get his id, and while we were there, he got arrested, not because he’d done anything wrong when he got outta prison, he had traffic fines from the city of Dallas and county of Dallas, that because he was in prison, he couldn’t respond to their notice appear.
Mm-hmm. And if you don’t respond to a notice appear, you get a fine. And if you don’t pay the fine, you get a warrant. So we had all these warrants from before he even went to prison and they arrested him there in the thing. And that was, to me, was so wrong that he had served his time and come back out.
And this happens to [00:42:00] millions of people across our country every year. And so we had a chance of meeting representative Scott Sanford who came to Bonton and heard the guy’s stories and wound up drafting a bill that eventually became a law that was able to remove that barrier for every man and woman that, that as they get released from incarceration.
And so Darius has not only built his own life, but man, he’s changing billions of people’s lives too. And this last year we were finally able to build a health and wellness center. In that wellness center, it has everything to take care of your mind, your body, your spirit, and your finances under one.
Micah Tomasella: It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. Wow. It’s beautiful building.
Daron Babcock: And so for the first time in the history of our community, we have access to healthcare. And because that’s so dear to Darris, Darris wouldn’t have wound up in that position. His problem was he just had high blood pressure because we don’t have healthcare.
It never got diagnosed until it became chronic and that chronic turned into late stage renal failure. And that’s the story of so many people from [00:43:00] communities like Bonton. And now Darris leads the health and wellness effort in Bonton. And so to see that come full circle and for him to contribute to towards making health access available and connecting people to the thing that saved his life, to save their lives is just one of the most beautiful for full circle redemption stories I know.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, it’s just, it just is incredible to hear on so many levels that, you know, one of the things as Darius shared with us over lunch was that, you know, high blood pressure is the thing that you know, it, it’s killing you slowly while you enjoy yourself with too much fast food and other factors.
And just not knowing that it was happening to his body, ended up doing enormous damage to his kidneys and just, you know, seeing how this has been something that God has been able to use. I wanna talk to you maybe before we’re done about this law that Scott, my friend here in McKinney and others helped to make a reality.
Daron, there’s just this, [00:44:00] there is this curiosity that maybe others listening to us have. I’m really curious about what the other rules were that you had to agree to when you moved into Bonton. Yeah. Could you elaborate on that question? Because I’ve heard two or three of them, but I’m kind of wondering what the whole list looks like.
Micah Tomasella: Yes, yes.
Dr. Mark Turman: Just the rules
Micah Tomasella: of Bonton that we would just all be like, what are you talking about? Yeah. You know, just kind of lay those out for us.
Daron Babcock: There were places that I couldn’t go, places that were controlled by gangs and such, that would just create too much trouble. If somehow I got in trouble in those places that, and my committee wouldn’t be able to come save me, or it would just create wars.
And so there were places I couldn’t go. I was not to approach people. People, they, if people wanted to meet me or if I wanted to meet somebody, they would bring them to me, but I was not to approach people. And then I was forbidden from ever calling the police for any reason. Wow. Because that would undermine trust.
That was very thin in the beginning. Yeah. Maybe [00:45:00] non-existent in the beginning. And if, if I ever were to call the police, that would, that would totally undermine any trust going forward.
Dr. Mark Turman: And so you’ve, you’ve lived in the Bonton community, and again, you said basically two square miles, right? Mm-hmm.
So you could, you could walk anywhere reasonably in this neighborhood of 6,000 homes, 6,000 people. And, and you, you know, it’s a reasonable walk to anywhere distance-wise, but there were, there were places, streets, corners that you just were told you can’t go there. Mm-hmm. And then how challenging was it to swallow the rule?
Hey, the polices are not an option. How much of a challenge was that for you?
Daron Babcock: It sounds like it might be a problem, a white guy moving into a predominantly black neighborhood that’s really struggling where violence and, and stuff is kind of, running rampant. But, but it wasn’t because it was a brotherhood where we looked after each other.
[00:46:00] And so it was not, it’s never been a big deal. I didn’t ever feel the need to call the police because my friends were always there and we handled things together and I think it’s richer for it. Yeah. Sounds, sounds, sounds like it’s not good, but in the end it turned out to be a really good, good rule and I was pleased to follow it.
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. That’s awesome. And and it’s awesome just that, just basically over about a decade, a little more than a decade now how the presence of the gospel and the presence of people trying to figure out, hey, how do we share grace with people, the basic story of Jesus as the formative. Reality of their identity.
And then, like you said, what are the, all the ripple effects of what God’s grace and God’s goodness does in people’s lives once they start understanding how God sees them and how God values them, no matter who they are, no matter how messed up their lives are. And if, if they can start [00:47:00] embracing that, the, the promise of hope, the fuel of hope starts to come into their lives in a way that’s never been there before.
But let’s talk about some of the lessons and maybe the transferable realities. Yeah. That Bonton is illustrating the, the law that you talked about relative to Darius and being arrested at the DMV. You shared with us that that law actually has now had a similar law passed in Colorado. It may be passed in other states, but that’s just really illustrative of.
Something that nobody really even thought through, right? Mm-hmm. That, you know, the, the city of Dallas, Dallas County, these entities all kind of do their own work, but I, I don’t know that it was nefarious or intentional that people were trying to get people coming out of prison to be rearrested. At least at first, that’s just one of those things, when you think about it, there’s, it’s, the solution kind of makes total sense when you get to it, right?
Daron Babcock: Yeah. [00:48:00] Yeah. And there’s a lot of that, you know, I think that, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go back and call out a couple things because what you were talking about, grace and all that, I, I just wanna say that in my experience in Bonton, we are trying to introduce them to a God that they likely don’t know.
And if they know him, it’s, it’s at the surface level and not in an intimate way. And, and in my experience, they first see God through us. So I can talk to them and I can read them scripture and that’s all great. But what I see moving the needle is when they see something extraordinary in us, we have a saying in Bonton that we try to live by every day, is that if we live a life that demands an explanation.
Hmm. And so in Darius’s story, the thing that unlocked that is with all of the negative things he had been saying about me, that I stopped and asked him for lunch. Like, why would you do that? Yeah. When I offered Darius a Kidney, why would you do that? [00:49:00] We shared this story when you guys visited about a guy that stole our car three times, and on the third time, it led to this conversation, blew my mind.
It blew my, it led to this conversation about Why have you not given up on me? Why do you care? I don’t deserve this. It’s through us demonstrating love and grace and mercy in a way that they see God through us. That it unlocks their thirst and desire to get to know God in a deeper way. And I think that’s really important.
And then I think as it relates to Bonton Farm’s mission, and I’m not a theologian, but I’ll tell you the way I see it, and I have to oversimplify it for my benefit, is that Jesus tells us when he, when they’re trying to trick him and ask him what the greatest command is he tells us that it’s to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and like it to love your neighbors yourself.
And if you love your neighbors yourself, we’re going to disciple people. Because if we, if loving somebody doesn’t include discipleship, we’re not leading to the only [00:50:00] thing that truly mass LA that truly matters and lasts forever. Mm-hmm. And then the third thing that I’m drawn to is like, what does that look like when the people that you’re discipling love are facing real hardships and barriers?
That prevent them from living into the fullness of who God created ’em to be. And I turned to Isaiah 58 that talks about, is this not the kind of fasting I chose for you to loosen the cords of the yolk or or to untie the cords of the yolk and loosen the chains of oppression. And I think if you think about Bontom’s farm’s ministry in that way, it’s really those three anchor scriptures that could be surrounded by thousands of others that support those.
Yeah. But to me, those are the things that underpinned it. And then this thi thing we’ve learned about, if you live a life that demands an explanation, you’ll never have to go intentionally share your testimony again. Because people will invite you to tell them, what is it about you? Why are you doing this?
Why did you sell your home? Why did you move to the inner city? Why do you love me? Why didn’t you quit on me after I stole your car three times and it all leads back to [00:51:00] God? ’cause that’s the only reason, the only answer we have.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Or like you said, why did, why did you invite me to go to lunch and why did you offer to take me to dialysis one day?
You know? Yeah. Even, even those kinds of simple things that, like I said, require some kind of an explanation. Mm-hmm. Daron, when we were talking at Bonton a few days ago you talked about four factors that determined the, the trajectory of someone’s life. One of the things that I have gained from getting to know your story and the story of Bonton is that every major me, me, metropolitan area has communities like Bonton.
You said just in the Dallas area, there are 40 of them and hundreds of them spread across the country. And that these pockets of intense poverty and brokenness are really something that everybody in a region needs to be concerned about because. We’ve been trying as as a nation, as [00:52:00] major cities.
We’ve been trying to figure out these problems, but we don’t seem to be making the traction that we, and the progress that you would think we would be making given the amount of investment of money and time that we’re making. But give us real quick, those four factors that kind of influence the overall trajectory of any individual’s life.
Daron Babcock: Yeah. You, you touched on it earlier, you, you said that we are largely products of our environment. And so what are the, what are the environments we’re talking about? Research shows that there’s four things, four primary things that most influence the trajectory of a human’s being life, a human being.
It doesn’t matter if you human being from Bonton or anywhere else in the world. It’s the quality of your faith life, the quality of your home life, the quality of the neighborhood you grow up in, and the quality of educational opportunities you have. Hmm.
Dr. Mark Turman: And you can’t, you can’t usually manufacture from just simply government involvement.
Stuff like plant [00:53:00] housing that type of thing. No food stamps. You can’t manufacture some of these things just out of thin air, right?
Daron Babcock: Yeah. Think about it. It’s not the house that does the work. We talked about it in the beginning. What unlocks the house to become a home? It’s the relationship and the unlocking of the identity of who you are.
You, I can show you people living under roofs in Bonton. In fact, right behind Bonton Farms, we have public housing development, and inside that public housing development, there’s a lot of ugly stuff that happens. So housing’s not the answer. The answer really starts with who are you and what does it mean to be a child of God?
And what does he say about you? And can you believe that over what the world’s told you? Yeah. And then all of a sudden from that, the tools like a home or transportation or a job, all of a sudden they take differently than they would if you just provided a home. So I think the government’s good at providing some of the material stuff, but it’s absent the stuff that really matters to make the material stuff count, if that makes sense.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, and like I said, [00:54:00] just so many thoughts for all of us to think about from this conversation. But as we kinda get ready to wrap up, just Daron, I just want to thank you for all that you’re doing, for all the ways that you’ve been obedient and for the fact that you don’t quit, even though your story started with quitting in a way that you’re continuing to, to learn about and unpack.
But it’s also led to an absolute refusal to quit. I don’t, I don’t know how I would feel about the guy, the same guy stealing my car three different times. I still don’t know how I would, you know, be able to work through that. But it’s an illustration of how God is just enabling you to not quit in the calling that he has for you.
I love that statement that, you know, we just try to live a life that demands an explanation. That we’re going to love people and love people in tangible ways real ways to help them solve their problems. While we’re trying to get a chance to talk to them [00:55:00] when the conversations open up. But Daron, out of your experience as God has brought it to this point what do you want?
Believers to take away from our conversation today and from the, the testimony of Bonton Farms, what do you, how would you hope that this would bring hope and motivation into any believer’s life today?
Daron Babcock: I just think that our world needs Christ followers today to step into this really dark place and to play whatever role God has for you.
So I think it doesn’t necessarily need to look like mine. This is God’s call on my life. That doesn’t mean you should do what, what I’m doing. It means what does God have for you? Because we are told to pray that his kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. And we started by one of the rev revelations I had when I first started reading scripture through new eyes is that we are invited into this cosmic battle between good and evil to usher his [00:56:00] kingdom.
On Earth as it is in heaven, not perfectly until he returns again, but to be obedient in doing that work and the world needs us. And one of the things I hear often is when it comes to the body of Christ is we just don’t see him. And so how do we take that challenge to say, how do I engage in my neighborhood, in my work with my family, whatever it is.
But man, if you’re on the bench, we need you in the game. And so I hope that it inspires you to soul search and to ask, are you doing what God created for you to do as you follow him in your life? And to play whatever role that is because we need you. And the second thing I would say is that I will tell you in my experience, that there was a time where I felt guilty because of I was trying to pour myself out on behalf of the community of Bonton.
And yet I kept getting so much in return. Mm-hmm. And I felt guilty. The more I poured out, the more came back. It’s just the, the law of the kingdom. You can’t [00:57:00] outgive God. And wow. One of the things I hope people hear from this is when we talk about flourishing, I’m not talking about worldly flourishing.
I, my life from a worldly perspective doesn’t look like it flourishes very much anymore. I’ve given up a lot of income. I don’t live in beautiful places. There’s a lot of things that have changed from worldly flourishing in my life, but man, from a spiritual flourishing, I, I can’t even count the number of blessings I have.
And so we’re, we’re anchoring people on flourishing in the kingdom and not necessarily in the world. So I wanted to make sure and clarify that point of it. This is not about prosperity in the way of worldly prosperity. It’s in prosperity, in terms of kingdom prosperity. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And that’s great point there.
That’s so true. You know, I, I, great point you and I live on opposite sides of Dallas these days. And I’m involved in a ministry here on the north side of Dallas, which is illustrating in many ways over and over again that material prosperity does not [00:58:00] lead to true, to true thriving and flourishing.
And you can have all kinds of money and all kinds of, of worldly success, which in many ways nothing wrong with that. That doesn’t necessarily equate to true joy and to true hope. And that can only be found for all of us by understanding who God has created us to be and what he has called us to do and to be about.
Yeah. Daron, thank you for this so much. People can find out more about you. They can find more about Bonton at simply going to bonton farms.org. If you are in the Dallas area and you’re looking for something to eat or a good cup of coffee, you can come and you don’t have to have an escort to get to Bonton Farms and to the coffee shop and to the restaurant.
You can find information about where and how to get to all of those places. We learned an important lesson that the restaurant is not open on Mondays. So you need to check that out. That’s one thing you’ll need to know so you’re not disappointed. Bonton [00:59:00] farms.org and there’s so much more to learn.
Daron, before we go, I wonder if there are one or two things that we could pray for as an audience together of people trying to understand how to follow Christ fully. How could we pray for you and or pray for the work of Bonton today?
Daron Babcock: Yeah, I think there’s two things that always stand out to me is that and we talked about this a little bit when you visited in Bonton, is just, there’s intense spiritual warfare in this and there’s this always this tug of war for this to remain in a ministry that is focused on the kingdom.
And there’s this battle of always trying to compromise on that in some way. And so pray for us that we would stay true to that. And then we have just a lot of people that are struggling trying to find their identity and just pray that God would reveal himself of who he is to them. Because as we said, that’s the key that unlocks everything else.
So those would be my two special prayer requests, please. All right. [01:00:00] Awesome.
Dr. Mark Turman: Micah, would you lead us into prayer as we get ready to close today?
Micah Tomasella: Honored to do Daron, very grateful for you, my brother. Listen, thank you. A lot of people talk it man. Lot of people, too many people out there talk about it.
You’re in the business of doing it, brother, and it makes a big difference and it gives every word you say, more weight, and you don’t give any credit or glory to yourself. You give it to God. All praise be to God. But lots of love and respect for you. Daron. You’re doing a wonderful work. Let’s pray. God is good.
Yes, he is. Jesus, we love you. Thank you for your transformational grace and love, and for showing us the way so that we can love and that we can serve those around us. God, I just pray that you would continue to establish the work of Daron’s hands and his heart, and his mind and his soul, and any temptation to veer from what it is that you have for him and for Bonton.
He would be able to recognize it quickly. Holy Spirit, you’d give him discernment, supernatural discernment and strength in the face of all adversity, no matter what may come [01:01:00] against him. The God of the universe is on his side. Speaking to Him, speaking through Him, working through him. Just give him encouragement and that, and Father, I just pray anybody in Bonton, but really anybody struggling right now who’s listening to this or anybody who’s thinking about that person in their life that is struggling, I just pray that our prayers would shift from God, do this, God do that.
Those are really important things. But let’s pray. God, how would you have me do something about that? Jesus, how can I be your hands and your feet? And Jesus, we pray this together. How can we be your hands and your feet today? Give us eyes to see the broken hearted. Give us ears to hear those that are struggling around us.
’cause where we are right now, today is on purpose. And for purpose. Let’s actually listen to that and lean into that. And like Daron talked about, I think we’ll experience more joy than we ever have, more joy than anything the world can offer if we trust you and actually step out in faith to serve you.
We love you, [01:02:00] Jesus. In your name I pray, amen.
Dr. Mark Turman: Amen. Amen. Thank you Micah. Thank you Daron. And we will be in touch and look forward to further conversations and working together. I wanna thank our audience for listening to us today and if this conversation has been helpful, if it’s inspired your faith and brought you some clarity, we hope that you will rate review us on your podcast platform, share this with others, and again, if you’re in the Dallas area, check out Bonton Farms.
We’ll see you next time on Faith and Clarity.
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