Broetje: ‘Business is ministry’
Christian orchard provides homes for migrant workers and families
By CHRIS DURR, News Writer
Published: April 27, 2005
In 1968, Cheryl Broetje and her husband bought a cherry orchard.
They had had no money to pay for it and no farming experience.
It had been their dream for years to have an apple orchard, and this was the first step in learning how. Fast forward 35 years and the couple now runs a ministry helping people find their calling and have provided homes for many people that are new to the United States.
In yesterday’s chapel, Cheryl Broetje, co-owner of Broetje Orchards and founder of The Center for Sharing, explained how she had been successful and had been able to help many people through God’s providence. Broetje shared stories from her life, detailing how God had given her a heart for foreign migrant workers.
The chapel was the last in the “Academic April Vocation Series.” The series has focused on faith and its place in the business place.
Broetje began by describing how she and her husband had purchased land and at first failed at farming. Their first three harvests were destroyed by bad weather, disease and insects. She said that these hardships only strengthened their resolve to succeed.
“We didn’t quit,” Broetje said. “Our early leaders in our lives acted out their faith and prayed for us—and we achieved the American Dream.”
By the early 1980s, the Broetjes had succeeded. Their apple orchards in Eastern Washington were flourishing, and they employed around 900 full-time workers plus another 900 migrant workers during the harvest season. Then, in 1982, the Broetjes went on a trip that changed their lives.
They visited Mexico to work with the destitute. While there, Broetje met with social workers and helped care for neglected children. It was while working with a blind and disabled young woman that she felt God’s call to work with “people who are overlooked and ignored.”
After Broetje returned to the United States, she began questioning the workers at their orchard how she could help them. She found out that a main problem for the workers was adequate housing. Many of the workers lived in sub-par housing, some infested with vermin.
“It is not the dream of God for any child to be eaten by rats,” said Broetje. “Especially when we live in the richest nation in the world.”
Broetje and her husband had a housing complex built on their property, ensuring that poor, primarily Hispanic migrant workers would have a clean and safe place to live. The complex now includes a gymnasium, church and a primary school for migrant workers’ children. The building project ended up costing five and a half million dollars, but the Broetjes could afford it. Their business had expanded to more than just farming. Broetje Orchards has become one of the largest apple packing and shipping businesses in Washington.
Broetje explained how she now works with the Center for Sharing, a non-profit organization that trains Christian leaders, helps them develop their personal strengths and gifts and prepares them for the workforce. Broetje Orchards has an extremely low turnover rate because of the Center.
“We work with overlooked people groups to help them find their calling,” Broetje said. “The idea is that business is ministry… dominion means service.”
Broetje ended with an exhortation to SPU students to become business leaders and remember to place God first in the workplace. She suggested that the amount of service that students are involved with reflects on the amount of control God has in their life.
“The power is in you, invested by God,” said Broetje. “I pray that you will become world changers.”
