How it started

Sowing Seeds Outside the Walls started with a question. In May of 2020, our founder, Antwon Nixon, felt something missing in our community and asked God for direction. What came back was a call to take the church outside — literally. He founded Church Outside the Walls, and every fifth Sunday we'd move worship into a local park, open to whoever wanted to come.

That instinct — giving on purpose, with purpose — grew into Sowing Seeds Outside the Walls. We built a board, filed for nonprofit status, and became an official 501(c)(3). Antwon even hand-drew our logo before we had it professionally digitized and copyrighted through the Library of Congress.

From there, the work took shape. Every fifth Saturday became Community Day — free food, games, bounce houses, water slides, a chance for neighbors to just be together. We started mentoring young boys in the trades, in leadership, in what it means to take care of where you live. Some of those boys helped clean up Chatman Mobley Park; several turned their whole trajectory around and got rewarded for it with a trip to Washington, D.C. — first flights for most of them, meetings with government officials, a visit to the White House.

We didn't stop with the boys. The following year we started to reach other men in the community who'd hit hard times and needed a way back. We chartered a bus and took a group of 25 men, along with several of the First Five boys, to D.C. Some of them had never left Georgia. Several of the men had served anywhere from 15 to 30 years in prison. The overall group ranged from 10 to 70 years of age. They came back having learned something about networking, about fatherhood, about giving back instead of just getting by. They came back inspired!

Along the way, we adopted a local park and rebuilt its basketball court from the ground up - new goals, new backboards, and a fresh coat of paint and donated all equipment to the county for the use and betterment of the community. In 2024, we purchased that park outright from the county as a seed investment opportunity to pour ownership back into the community. We partnered with other nonprofits for toy drives, summer sports camps and school supply giveaways. Since founding Sowing Seeds and establishing the need for the common good, several other organizations have sprouted and blossomed crediting us as being the inspiration to give back.