Mission Yearbook: Guns to Gardens event in Minnesota is a success

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Firearms checking station (Photo by Linda Orsted)

Thanks to a $5,000 PTCA Ministry Imagination Grant, a $2,000 PC(USA) Decade to End Gun Violence grant, and mission support from First Presbyterian Church of Stillwater [Minnesota] (FPC), Guns to Gardens in the St. Croix Valley held a safe firearms recycling event at FPC on Oct. 4, 2025. Thirty-eight firearms were destroyed/recycled. Since this was the first event in our area, the planning team had no idea how many (if any) guns would be brought by their owners to be destroyed and removed from the marketplace. There was a lot of buzz at FPC immediately before and after the event in worship and in the community. It was exciting!

FPC’s pastor, the Rev. Cader Howard, had this insight: “When we first considered holding a Guns to Gardens event, there was some fear in our congregation about inviting people to bring guns onto our property. Careful listening, open dialogue, and an explanation of the detailed procedures, training, and best practices helped us work through our fear and become excited that we could offer this event.”

Stories from donors included someone who had ALS who was afraid he would use the gun on himself. Another donor’s gun had been used in a traumatic way by a family member. Several donors had inherited the guns and did not want them in their homes and did not want them returned to the marketplace.

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Chopsaw Station (Photo by Linda Orsted)

Lots of planning went into this event, beginning in January 2024 when one of the team leaders enrolled in a Guns to Gardens Action Circle training sponsored by the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. In May, a group of three FPC members met to talk about hosting a Guns to Gardens event in Stillwater. Subsequently, three other FPC members took the Action Circle training. Finally, in April 2025 a planning team was formed and members reached out to area churches and other likely community organizations to assess community support. Team members spoke with FPC’s Mission Ministry Team. Guns to Gardens was adopted as an official mission project and recommended to the session for support. The session approved holding the event at the church once there was assurance that there would be non-intrusive police presence and adequate insurance coverage.  

Two team members attended the James Atwood Institute for Congregational Courage in September, and the supplemental RAWtools training to become firearms safety officers for the event. The team also received referrals from RAWtools for blacksmith artists in the Twin Cities who would likely be volunteers. (One person had participated in a huge Guns to Gardens event at Bronco Stadium in Denver.) We had amazing help from them in planning and on the day of the event! They are excited about volunteering again in 2026. (RAWtools is the coordinating organization for Guns to Gardens.)

We felt the Holy Spirit’s presence in the planning, training and hosting the event. We will continue this important peacemaking mission in the future and share our expertise and equipment with other organizations interested in hosting a Guns to Gardens event. This year’s event will be held on Oct. 3, 2026, in the FPC parking lot.

Community partners included St. Michael’s Catholic Church, St. Croix United Church, American Legion Post No. 491 and the Woodbury/Stillwater Moms Demand Action. We look forward to working with these community partners again and will invite others to join the project in 2026.

Pastor Cader summed up the event this way: “In a state like Minnesota with a strong hunting culture, it was refreshing to see gun owners working alongside non-gun owners at this event to safely reduce the number of guns in our community. Working together respectfully across political, cultural and religious differences, we can find common-sense solutions that keep our neighbors safer. I am hopeful that Guns to Gardens will expand to multiple sites and events in Minnesota as we teach other congregations and organizations what we have learned.”

Linda Orsted, Guns to Gardens in the St. Croix Valley Planning Team 

Prayer by the Rev. Cader Howard

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff:

Christine Diaz, Housekeeper, Stony Point Center, Presbyterian Life & Witness
Greta Garbo, Accounting Clerk, Accounts Payable Office, Administrative Services Group

Let us pray:

God of Peace, we pray for everyone who has been affected by gun violence in their families, schools and communities. Give us the courage to take positive steps in our communities to reduce gun violence and offer healing to those affected by it. Help us transform our fear into courage so that we can take action. May we not be afraid to beat swords into plowshares and guns into garden tools. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Congregations, communities host Presbyterian Peace Fellowship-inspired Guns to Gardens events

Gun violence prevention is the pressing goal around the country

February 3, 2023

The Rev. Gusti Newquist, pastor of Shepherdstown Presbyterian Church in West Virginia, leads a prayer vigil for a “Blessing of the Saw” before the truck-mounted dismantling of guns. (Photo courtesy of Leslie Williams and Dave Smith)

Winter is no match for Americans who are weary of gun violence and who are determined to do something about it. From Dec. 3–10, from a frigid church parking lot in Cambridge, Wisconsin to a rainy day in Decatur, Georgia, church members and others fired up their chop saws to join the Guns to Gardens movement. Their goal? Transforming unwanted guns into garden tools.

From education to legislative advocacy to projects like Guns to Gardens, churches in particular are taking a lead to save lives.

“It was so good to feel that we could do something,” said Presbyterian Soni Castleberry, one of the leaders of the Guns to Gardens Safe Surrender event at Douglass Boulevard Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Louisville on Dec. 4. “In our city, there has been a murder almost every day in the last month. Guns to Gardens is something we can do to make a difference.” The Louisville event united many congregations: Baptists, AME, UCC, Presbyterian, the Presbytery of Mid-Kentucky —  and a Jewish blacksmith who will turn the dismantled gun parts into garden tools and jewelry.

Guns to Gardens is a growing national movement, now reaching to 30 states. In the face of more than 47,000 gun deaths last year, Guns to Gardens is a form of voluntary direct action that American citizens are taking to help prevent gun violence and to encourage elected officials and others to do even more.

Volunteers from Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in Decatur, Georgia, work the Guns to Gardens event. (Photo by Kathy Hancock)

Safe Surrender events were held in early December in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Shepherdstown, West Virginia; Sandy, Utah; Cambridge, Wisconsin; Decatur, Georgia; New Haven, Connecticut; Worcester, Massachusetts; and Louisville. Additionally, the Tulsa (Oklahoma) Metropolitan Ministry held its first Guns to Gardens event on Nov. 12 and the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in Euclid, Ohio offered an art show of works created by blacksmiths with gun parts from the first nationwide Guns to Gardens day on June 11.

Altogether at the recent events, 542 unwanted firearms were collected to be dismantled and transformed, as the New Haven event organizers described it, “from taking life to making life.” A significant number of the guns were assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons. The December events are part of a nationwide memorial for the Sandy Hook school shooting which occurred in Newtown, Connecticut, 10 years ago this month, killing 20 second graders and six school staff.

With well over 400 million firearms in private hands in the United States, many of these weapons are no longer wanted. However, they still pose a risk of being stolen or used in a moment of crisis or an unintentional shooting. Guns to Gardens provides a safe, anonymous way for individuals to responsibly dispose of unwanted guns without returning them to the gun market where they could do harm.

Gratitude for this service is often the primary response of gun owners. As Mary Smarr, one of the leaders of the Dec. 3 event at Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in Decatur, Georgia, put it, “It was a good day. People were just so relieved to get rid of these guns.”

“Our nation is traumatized by gun violence,” says the Rev. Deanna Hollas, the PPF’s Coordinator of the Gun Violence Prevention Ministry. “The church has a calling to help heal the nation. That is what Guns to Gardens is all about — transforming guns into tools for life and also transforming ourselves, seeking healing and hope.” Hollas is encouraged by the action of the 225th General Assembly (2022) when it voted to become the first denomination to support the Guns to Gardens movement.

The next nationwide Guns to Gardens Safe Surrender Day will be in mid-June, though many congregations and communities will hold events during the season of Lent and throughout the year. To learn more about gun violence prevention, go here.

Founded in 1944, the Presbyterian Peace fellowship is an independent nationwide community of Presbyterians who follow the example of the nonviolent Christ to find alternatives to violence, war and exploitation. For more information, go here or here or here.

Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, Special to Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Sue Rheem, Mission Specialist for International Advocacy, Presbyterian Rep. to the UN, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Katie Rhodes, HR Generalist, Administrative Services Group, A Corp

Let us pray

God, thank you for your steadfast love through the years. As we continue our journey into the future in which you await us, may we always remember that we are preparing for lives as servant-leaders, going into a world hungry for hope and assurances of salvation, which are found in Jesus, whose story we are called to share. Amen.