For All who Hunger

Emily Scott founded a church in Brooklyn that meets over dinner. What she ended up finding was an antidote to the loneliness of modern life.

Emily Scott creates churches for people on the margins. As founding pastor of St. Lydia's Brooklyn, where the service takes place at a dinner table instead of a sanctuary, she spent eight years ministering to a scrappy collective of people from different backgrounds, incomes, and political persuasions. Each week, they broke bread, sang old songs, did the dishes, and made awkward conversation with strangers. But in a city where everyone lives on top of each other, yet everyone is lonely as hell, these gatherings filled a longing that most people--even Emily--didn't realise they had.

In this book of stories from her unlikely congregation, Scott argues that these small acts of connection hold more power than we realise in a time when the world has become fragmented and our differences are being weaponized. She recalls her journey as a single, female pastor working in a male-dominated profession; how founding a strange church in Brooklyn with no funding or training led her to a more engaged, awake, and activated life; and the value of church as a place where people can hear not only that they are loved, but that they are good.

'For All Who Hunger' is a thought-provoking, empowering read for anyone seeking hope in troubled times.