Drew Nagy, Omar Moros Taylor and the Living Water Community Center team have created a “sanctuary for the ecosystem” at Westover Baptist Church in Richmond.
The center was founded in 2019 by Nagy — a senior pastor at Westover — as well as neighbors who “got together to dream about how we could reuse this space, both the facility and the grounds, to serve the community,” Nagy says.
He notes that the sprawling church building and three-acre property resembled more of “mega-church” in its heyday from the 1940s through the ‘60s. Today, while human membership has declined, pollinator attendance is through the roof. There are more than 40 hives of honeybees on the grounds, says sanctuary manager Moros Taylor, plus 15 additional hives in the greater Richmond area through the center’s Host a Hive program.
“Over the past three years we have consistently harvested between 2,600 and 2,700 pounds of honey each year,” says Moros Taylor, who also acts a volunteer coordinator for Living Water. The land is home to more than 1,000 native plants and produces 300 to 500 pounds of vegetables each year, distributed through the center’s on-site food pantry.
Moros Taylor, a graduate of Richmond Community High School and Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, has long been interested in environmental science, global health and sustainable practices. He’s proud of the center’s dedication to growing native plants, including trees which, years from now, will continue to provide shade and address water runoff, offsetting the urban heat island effect.
Beyond the bounty of the land, Living Water also provides nourishment for individuals. As an interfaith, monastic community, the center offers a residency program for folks of all ages and stages of life looking to take a pause from the frenetic world.
As a long-term resident at Living Water, Nagy can oversee operations at both Westover Baptist and the community center; he notes that while his roles are separate, the end goal is the same: to “build something special in this unique place.” The Virginia Beach native and Virginia Tech grad says he decided to go to seminary school because he found the “wisdom contained within our religious and spiritual traditions to be very enriching” and had a passion to learn more.
Nagy says other residents join the community for three to six months and sometimes, if everything aligns, they may want to stay longer, too. “We’re pretty flexible.”
Living Water offers daily classes for both residents and community members ranging from yoga to meditation and martial arts. There are always volunteer opportunities to help keep the place running; Moros Taylor says they host 300-400 volunteers each year. “I would love to see this be a long legacy,” he says. “One hundred years from now to still have the residential programs …I’m really proud of Drew and our community for everything we’ve been able to do here.”
