Executive Director

Seth Thomas Crissman loves helping the church imagine new ways to cultivate, live out, and share faith in Jesus Christ. Born and raised in Western PA, Seth has lived in the Shenandoah Valley since 2006. He spent nearly 10 years working as a special education teacher and as a local pastor. In 2015, he graduated from Eastern Mennonite Seminary (Masters of Divinity), focusing primarily on Biblical interpretation and Hebrew Scripture.

Before founding The Soil and The Seed Project, Seth and his wife Theresa co-founded and co-directed Kids Club, a neighborhood based ministry of Virginia Mennonite Missions that helped a network of churches work together to better give and receive God's Love in their local community (2014-2021).

Seth is a songwriter/musician with the Virginia-based folk group, The Walking Roots Band, and regularly serves as a consultant, worship leader and speaker for churches, retreats, conferences and conventions throughout the US.

Seth is married to Theresa Peachey Crissman. Together they have worked as a writing team and co-laborers for more than a decade. Seth appreciates Theresa’s love for adventure and steadying commitment to following Jesus. They have four young children.

Photo credit: Glenn Riegel

Director of Operations

Greg Yoder is a songwriter, hobby farmer, educator, and outdoor enthusiast based in Penn Laird, VA. His passions and background in camp counseling, teaching, non-profit leadership, event planning, songwriting, and dreaming big have coalesced into his work with The Soil and The Seed Project. Greg loves catching the vision for a great idea and then helping to flesh it out and “put wheels on it.”

Outside of work on the The Soil and The Seed Project, Greg delights in sharing life with his wife, Kristina, and their three children on their small farm at the foot of the mountain. He loves a good book and a shady hammock, or a gathering of close friends over good food or around a campfire.

Lead Writer for Little Liturgies

Melody Zimmerman is an educator, mother, and follower of Jesus. She enjoys discovering beauty, creating balance, and helping things to grow. She loves helping her young children explore the beautiful world God made through play and discovery. Melody loves teaching and finding ways to invest in the lives of children around her. At various points, this has looked like teaching in a public school, teaching piano to little ones, tutoring, and sharing God’s love through Kids Club programs. Melody is passionate about discipling children and empowering others to disciple children in homes and in church communities.

Melody is excited about communicating the good news in ways that are accessible to people of all ages. In the past, Melody taught Sunday school, wrote Kids Club curriculum, and was a contributing writer for MennoMedia’s SHINE curriculum ‘Come to the Table’ VBS. She finds the process of writing transformative and loves to dig into scripture and write something that can be a gift to others.

Having spent almost all of her growing up years in Thailand and India, Melody loves learning languages and engaging cross-culturally. Melody lives in a cross-cultural context with little Christian witness alongside her husband and young children. In that context, and anywhere, Melody wants to be a good friend - walking with others and together turning towards Christ. In caring for others and sharing herself with others, she wants to be a witness to God’s great love.

Visual Artistic Director, Contributing Writer

Harrigan McMahon Bowman is an artist and educator as well as one of two pastors at a small Anabaptist congregation called Early Church in Harrisonburg, VA. She enjoys homeschooling her girls in a Charlotte Mason-style education, reading cookbooks, theology and novels, hiking with friends, and eating foods in different countries in the homes of locals. What else? “Sitting in quiet for an hour (or ten). Riding with my husband in the farm truck. Singing and worshipping with friends. Breaking bread together. Extending the table.”

Harrigan loves stoking the fires of the arts of adoration among God's people. She is convinced that our lives, our stories, our paintings, our meals, our crafts and music and humble works of our hands cry out in adoration of the great Creator who made us as creators in God's own image. She knows we are hungry and thirsty for the beauty of Christ. She has a Doctorate in Art Education from Columbia University, and has worked as an educator in after-school settings, as a college professor, and as a museum educator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City as well as the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia. She has also worked with the arts among those with Alzheimer's in a program called Arts Fusion through the Alzheimer's Association.

Administrator

Lisa has enjoyed using her administrative, marketing, and finance gifts in a variety of settings over her career, including work with affordable housing non-profits, a credit union, national church event project management, and bookkeeping and administration at various churches. She grew up a Hoosier (IN), but has lived in Harrisonburg, VA since 2008. Lisa is involved in her church on staff and as a small group co-leader. She enjoys time with her husband, son, and friends, traveling to see new places, playing games, gardening, basketball, coffee, and camping.

Logistics

Sarah Showalter is in the thick of motherhood, raising 3 young boys alongside her husband, Austin, in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She’s passionate about spending time outside in creation, helping her kids experience the story of God with wonder and curiousity, and sharing life with her neighbors.

Sarah studied social work and biblical studies while in college and has worked in both non-profit and church related positions over the last decade.