For All Who Hunger
Hard to follow, not a book I would re-read. The author seems to ramble on at times.

This was not what I expected. It felt disjointed and like a series of reflections on the author's life. More personal memoir than about the church itself.

Near the end of the book, I began to ask myself "what is this actually about?" The story is compelling and yet... what's the thread? The point? The message the author wants the reader to understand? The table, certainly, plays a large role in this book... but ultimately, I'm not sure I can fully answer the question. It left me wanting something more and leaves much to the unknown.

I've always been fascinated by St. Lydia's and the concept of dinner church, modeled after the early Christian churches around dinner tables. I am also interested in church planting for people who have been hurt by church before. I have a lot of respect for Rev. Emily and appreciated hearing about her personal experiences and reflections. The congregation where I currently serve as the pastor is near St. Lydia's and several people attend both churches. Some of the church members recently read this book and gathered virtually to discuss. (3.5 stars rounded up)

There's an attraction to accounts of someone envisioning a new, fresh way to approach church, and Emily Scott shares just that in For All Who Hunger. This book outlines her experience in founding a dinner church in New York City. As Scott writes, "Church is not about transcending human things like warm food and chortling laughter. It is -- or should me -- about pointing to them as sacred. Our most human parts are also the most holy." 

St. Lydia's is a scrappy church with parishioners that haven't found a home elsewhere. Scott doesn't sugarcoat the experience. There are disappointments and heartache and human struggles, and dating as a single pastor is a revelatory experience, but through her transparency, I find myself drawn to the heart of this little congregation. When they envisioned wandering NYC as a walking nativity while Christmas caroling, the reality was filled with relatable human messiness, as the environment and the weather don't cooperate and spirits lag. 

Throughout Scott's time at St. Lydia's, she forges relationships and challenges others to be aware of the realities around them, of the aches faced by people of color in their community, of paying attention, of getting involved and remembering. As I read I found this reminiscent of Nadia Bolz-Weber and Rachel Held Evans, so it was no surprise to learn in the acknowledgements that Scott was friends with both. I was disappointed to learn Scott is no longer at the church she founded, that this was only a season, but it was a read that drew me in.

(I received a digital ARC copy from Convergent Books via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.)

My review of For All Who Hunger by Emily D. M. Scott.

What does this book offer the Church?
For some reason, during my second half of my undergraduate career, I started to fall in love with reading Christian autobiographical works. Now, I don’t mean your typical kinds, where you read about the life of a famous Christian. For example, I’m thinking of Preston Yancey’s Tables in the Wilderness, a book I still hold dear and have read about half a dozen times. Of course, I can’t remember every single one that I’ve ever read, but their overall effect has lingered.

In light of this, I was interested in reading Scott’s For All Who Hunger, which fits into my general “auto-theological-biography” genre when I saw it on Netgalley. I was especially interested in the content of the book, detailing her experience in a church that met around a table and was explicitly designed to help bring her community together and give everyone a space to be heard and a space to be seen.

In the past few years, we’ve seen a huge movement toward dinner churches. I can say here in the Chicagoland area especially these churches have found a wide acceptance, as more and more seem to be popping up around the city. I was really happy to see a book come out of this world and begin to describe the experiences from the inside.

How successfully does this book meet its goals?
Now, I have a sentence that I really want to share, but I feel like I should qualify it before I make it. I don’t think this book was designed as an argument against traditional liturgy or a traditional church service; I don’t think Scott’s aim was to replace the service in favor of creating more dinner churches. But if she was, man, would this be a pretty good emotional argument toward doing it. Scott has the ability to paint a vision through story, emotional appeal, and experience that would be pretty convincing if you were already ready to switch your church from the pews to the kitchen.

I say the previous paragraph with a bit of a tongue in cheek attitude: I have been, in the past, hugely influenced by the dinner church model, and have even strode to implement some of its ideas within my own contexts, so of course it was more persuasive to me. That being said, I can’t review this book as an ecclessiology book, as it wasn’t designed to show the strengths and weaknesses of certain types of models. Really, it was the story of a local church. And I found that story beautiful, as the church comes together to help its local community in light of massive disasters, and even personal disasters.

I can see this book being easily dismissed for a number of reasons, but I hope that this book gets a fair chance at being read and discussed in small groups or by people hungry for community. I hope that people are able to catch a bit of Scott’s vision for the church and community and belonging and see how they can bring that into their own churches.

You can read more about the book via the publisher site; you can purchase the book from your local bookstore, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.

Beautifully written story about a minister and her call to start a church with heart. This little church has Sunday eve services that are centered around sharing a meal. As they get on their feet, the need and desire to interact with their community grows on their hearts with social justice becoming front and center. Besides telling the story of the raising up of this church I feel like we also get a glimpse into the raising up of a young minister as she finds her voice and her passion fulfilled.

Emily Scott didn't really think the path of being a Pastor was for her. After she'd worked at a church and it just felt like the same old same old. After founding St. Lydia's, a storefront church that devoted itself to the community and feeding those around them, Emily found God in a wealth of unique human beings.

I adored the fact that she didn't shy away from her descriptions as dating as a pastor. Most folks probably don't think about the fact that pastors are pretty often turned down while dating because people are worried they will be judged by their new partner. Honestly, I hadn't even thought about it.

Emily Scott is incredibly relatable in this memoir; the reader doesn't feel judged. She is open in sharing her doubts, concerns, and the times she wasn't sure God was going to show up to help.

For All Who Hunger is an excellent book whether you follow the teachings of Christ or another religion.

http://www.lizclutterbuck.com/2020/05/for-all-who-hunger/

By a stroke of luck, I managed to get onto the launch team for the release of For All Who Hunger – the story of how St Lydia’s came to be, by its founder Emily Scott. An advance e-copy of the book landed with me last month, but I’ve discovered that being a church leader in the midst of a global pandemic doesn’t allow much time for reading. So I find myself having finally read it – mostly within a single afternoon/evening – a week after it’s official launch. (Although it looks like readers in the UK can’t buy it till the end of May, so I feel marginally less guilty.)

British church culture currently seems very focused on church planting that results in large churches – particularly following the ‘resource church’ model. [Although who knows what the impact of Covid-19 will be on this? Perhaps we’ll be looking at planting lots more smaller churches….here’s hoping.] It was therefore refreshing to read Emily’s account of the slow grind in getting St Lydia’s off the ground.

“The part no one ever talks about is the humiliation. It’s humiliating to try to start a church in an aggressively secular city. To invite people to come to worship when they’ll likely think you’re unforgivably naïve, unsophisticated, uneducated, and conservative to believe in something so off-trend as God. It required divesting myself of the notion that I would ever, ever be anything resembling cool.”

For All Who Hunger isn’t a blueprint for starting up a church – every church, every leader and every community is different – but with its stories of how St Lydia’s evolved over the years, it provides examples that should inspire others. There’s common-sense relationship building – listening to people to hear what their needs are, rather than just barging in. Collaborating with the right people at the right time. Learning from those who were there first. There’s a powerful account of getting involved with Black Lives Matter and Faith in New York, told with acute awareness of white privilege. The description of the response to Hurricane Sandy hits particularly hard right now, as the world struggles to formulate a response to the pandemic. Who knows how St Lydia’s might have evolved were it not for the insight that that disaster provided?

The story of how the church evolved is told alongside (some of) the story of Emily’s own personal evolution. As a single female church leader myself, I really appreciated Emily’s – often comedic, always realistic – insights into the perils of trying to date as a pastor! It concludes with her moving on from St Lydia’s – an important part of the journey that isn’t often told in this kind of book. St Lydia’s and Emily’s ministry continue, but in different places.

Ultimately, I’m grateful that there’s now a book I can point people towards when I tell them something of my own experience of St Lydia’s. Telling Brits to head over to the Atlantic for a Sunday or Monday night service isn’t particularly feasible, but reading this bridges that gap. It evokes so much of the atmosphere of St Lydia’s that when I finished reading late last night, I looked up from my iPad half expecting to be back in Brooklyn.

“St Lydia’s showed me abundance is a secret hidden inside of scarcity. It lives, tucked inside not-enoughness, waiting to show you that God does not do math. Abundance is discovering God’s provision right in the middle of your fret and worry.”

Emily Scott shares her journey to becoming a Lutheran pastor and starting a community church in NYC. She talks about life as a single woman and pastor, growing in activism regarding racial inequality and the LGBTQ community. An enjoyable and thoughtful read.

For All Who Hunger is a memoir that also tells a story; it tells the story of a church planting effort in New York City and the changes and growth of the woman who brought her church, St. Lydia's to life. The author uses metaphors for birth and incarnation and resurrection to organize the story. I appreciated the honest, conversational tone and thoughtful reflections.
In her peronal life, it was interesting that the author went on a lot of dates, yet was unable to really have a relationship with someone. No one wanted to date a "pastor" who was a woman, maybe not even a pastor, but how to you cope with a pastor who is a woman, and in New York city an agnostic stronghold. She limited herself to not dating someone from the church and I think she should have reconsidered. I think it makes perfect sense that she might find someone who is like minded and already a friend from her congregation.
I also yearn for a different kind of church. Something authentic, personal and more true to the original intent of why believers gather together. I consider communion something sacred yet common. Something to be shared often with other believers, in a participative manner. In my heart, I long to be part of a church like St. Lydia’s. A church that wants people to connect with each other, their community and their world and reflect God’s love, justice and compassion.
I definitely reccoment this book as iIt will challenge your thinking about church, spirituality and gives a bit of an inside view to the struggles of planting a church.

We all hunger for something. A love relationship. Peace & quiet. A food we crave, that we know we should not eat. Friendship….

In this just released memoir, Emily Scott deals with all of these hungers and more. Her life is quite unusual. She is a Christian minister starting a new church. But she is not a normal minister at all. If you are yearning for a different kind of church experience, then this book might tempt you. Emily’s new church is very unconventional.

If you are a Christian who enjoys your church, then this book may offend you.

Emily is a new minister who seems to be figuring out how to be a minister. I liked her concept of a new church that wraps the service around a supper meal, seated around tables. It certainly was different. (Since I have too many food allergies, this type of church would not work for me.)

Emily tries to find a way to use church to bring people together, in a world full of hate, despair and loneliness. It’s a good idea. The problem I had with the book is that Emily encourages going to bars and drinking. And then there is the vacation when she had sex with a stranger, and thought that was ok according to God.

This book was unusual, but not inspirational. If you want to read about a weird church and it’s single female minister who is a bit of a misfit, then read this book.

Scott writes, "I have learned to wrestle with words. Some things are too important not to name." This seems to be the underlying theme of the book and, more importantly, the author's navigation of life, love and spirituality. While parts of this memoir are intimate looks into her own life, Scott seamlessly weaves the joys and heartaches experienced by her parishioners, community members and colleagues into the tapestry of her experiences. Our lives, and our search for meaning, love and belonging are inevitably tied to those with whom we choose to invest our time and our hearts. Scott challenges people of faith to take a stand on issues of justice, to open our eyes to those who are excluded, forgotten or marginalized, but most importantly to extend that same grace to ourselves. The reader is reminded - to love as Christ loved is not always a beautiful experience, but life is more beautiful when we choose to let love guide our steps, our hands and ultimately, our faith.

Emily M. D. Scott, a Lutheran pastor fresh out of Yale Divinity School who planted an unusual church in Brooklyn, has written a memoir of those years, For All Who Hunger: Searching for Communion in a Shattered World. Some of it, I liked. Some, not so much. First, the positive.

Scott's church, St. Lydia's Dinner Church, featured some elements of traditional worship, but centered around a full meal. From the start it was a welcoming place, affirming homosexuals and welcoming people who have been rejected from other churches. I love the sense of community the church built. Anyone who has been to church knows how easily one can slip in and out without ever having a conversation or anyone knowing you were there. But around a dinner table, you can't hide. Scott has since left the church and is on a mission, in part, to present this model to others. Besides the dinner/worship model, Scott was deliberate about forming relationships in her economically and racially diverse neighborhood. I was reminded of the line, If your church disappeared from your neighborhood, would anyone notice? It doesn't sound like her church ever got very large, but they were active in the neighborhood and committed to reaching beyond the church walls to work for positive change. The section regarding the travails the neighborhood experiences after Hurricane Sandy are gripping, as she viscerally calls out for justice and relief for her neighbors. Her work in building community and working for the community is admirable and can provide a model for church planters of all theological stripes.

Speaking of theological stripes, as you might guess from a Yale educated, gay-affirming, female pastor, Scott is out on the liberal end of the evangelical spectrum. Her focus seemed to be less on the Holy Trinity and more on the liberal trinity: race, sexuality, and social justice. In this short book there is not room to develop a whole theology, but the signs are clear on that note. In terms of her personal ethics, she does us a service by revealing with refreshing honesty her rejection of traditional biblical norms. She says she likes to "get drunk and make out at parties and on street corners," and then after a fling with a man she met while she was on vacation, she wrote, "Though two thousand years of church teachings imply that what we've done is wrong, I know in the deepest hollow of my gut, the place from which God so often speaks to me, that it is good." As the song says, "If loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right." Given the choice between our guts and two thousand years of church teaching and a clear biblical message, most Christians would agree that going with the gut is a mistake. . . .

Now, I know there are plenty of social justice, urban ministry, racial reconciliation pastors and leaders who push the traditional church to slough off teachings that have led to injustice and corrupt the gospel, but who are solidly orthodox in their theology and ethics, both social and personal. I have met them, have read their books, have been in their churches. Scott is not one of those people. She revels in her rejection of tradition, embraces the ethics of sexual liberation, and seems to place hope in social justice above hope in Christ. She writes in the long tradition of social gospel preachers and demonstrates the tendency many in that tradition have of moving away from biblical Christianity toward a social, humanistic vision, neglecting the heart of the Gospel, the work of Christ on the cross. In spite of her liberalism, I am encouraged and inspired by her work to draw people into community with each other, and hope that they, in turn, are drawn into fellowship with the living Christ.




Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

In the writing of For All Who Hunger, Emily Scott gathers each of us around a holy table that feeds and nourishes. When we seem surrounded by division, Scott's journey for authentic communion with each other shows the way to finding common ground in uncommon ways. I read the book cover to cover in one sitting. Emily's stories drew me into a place I long to be: community. How we break bread together, how we leave room for one another, how we advocate for one another. For All Who Hunger points to the divine in every day life, and the journey of struggles and joys to experience the divine. This is a must read!

"Neighbors are meeting neighbors they might never have thought to talk to. We’re all around one table, scooping up rice and beans and sipping Capri Suns. The kingdom of heaven, I keep thinking. At least, for just this moment, we’re all around one table." Emily M.D. Scott - For All Who Hunger: Searching for Communion in a Shattered World

I have greatly enjoyed this book - primarily because unlike most spiritual memoirs that I've read in recent years (a few of which have been written by pastors in my and Rev. Scott's denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America [ELCA]) Pastor Emily never ONCE presents herself as anything like a hero - even when telling her own story. She always firmly shows her connection to and dependent on the way the Spirit moves through others to do the work to which she's called (full review here: https://loveasrevolution.blogspot.com/2020/05/why-you-need-to-read-and-pre-order.html). But here I want to branch out a bit more on this theme.

The last time I read something like this it was the still-controversial collection of letters that Mother Theresa of Calcutta had written to her confessor ("Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta"). These letters, full of doubt, disillusion, and lamenting on how she didn't feel the presence of God in her life for DECADES were a marvelous expose of the interior life of someone that our world has decided to call a "saint" - because even with her stature and work she never saw herself as one. I feel much the same about Pastor Emily's story - but not that we see her as a saint, rather that in this book she does a truly SUPERB job spelling out the anxieties, challenges, and frustrations of being a young, Protestant mainline pastor - never-mind a female mainline pastor. And as the majority of seminarians in the ELCA, I can't help but think this book will help them - or ANY seminarian, really - learn how to work with their own sense of doubt and insecurity (as opposed to calling themselves "weak" or "undisciplined" or heaven-forbid "not Christian enough") as they grow in ministry instead of judging themselves because of it.

Not to mention the fact that, as someone who studies mission and evangelism for his PhD work, it gives a WONDERFUL day-to-day of what it means to start a church - all the dependencies, all the hopes and frustrated hopes, and I it makes me rather glad to think that people will be inspired to form new Christian communities because of it.

"For all who Hunger" is aptly subtitled, "Searching for Communion in a Shattered World." With poetic storytelling and gentle truth-telling, pastor and church planter Emily Scott tells the story of the founding of a unique church in New York City. But this book is about so much more than the creation of a new group of people who gather weekly for Sunday service. Instead, Scott moves smoothly between different hungers: her congregants' hunger for connection with one another and with God, her own longing for love and belonging, and the broader community's hunger for racial justice. She doesn't sugarcoat the awkward or discouraging moments, but points to the Holy shining through all the cracks and imperfections, making all things new.

"For All Who Hunger" is a feast of hope, wisdom, and companionship for all who live in what Parker Palmer calls "the tragic gap" between the harsh realities of the world as it is and the goodness and life we imagine to be possible (http://www.couragerenewal.org/723/). This would be great to use in book discussion groups in a parish setting.
#NetGalley, #ForAllWhoHunger

If you are looking for a book about how someone found their faith, then you have found the right book! This is an interesting book, about a woman who is looking to serve as a minister and who she found the right place for her and a group of similar thinking people. I found this well written and very enlightening.

Lydia, Lydia, have you met Lydia? St. Lydia’s Dinner Church? This unique and inclusive ministry was begun in New York City by minister Emily M.D. Scott (ELCA) whose honest reflections on the struggles of planting an unconventional church are shared in her new book For All Who Hunger (to be published May 12 2020). After graduating from Yale Divinity School, Emily felt called to something other than conventional congregational life, and pursued her dream of creating a church built around cooking and sharing a weekly meal with those who felt equally lonely in the big city. This is a great read for anyone dreaming of creating a new ministry or in the thick of trying to get a new group off the ground. Emily shares the emotional rollercoaster of preparing services where no one shows up, the awkwardness of trying to keep the conversation rolling in a gathering of strangers, and the trials of operating a ministry out of storage bins while simultaneously discovering that no one on Tinder is looking to date an ordained minister.

As the author tells us at the beginning of this book, “this is a memoir: a story about memories”. The author shares her journey of “searching for communion in a shattered world”. A young woman, she becomes a Lutheran minister, moves to New York and grows her vision of bringing people together. She’s a church planter. Her seed of an idea- Dinner Church.

Dinner church is my kind church. It’s what our world needs, fellowship, conversation, shared food, and shared stories, open to all. Author Scott is a Lutheran pastor. (If she had been a Baptist pastor, she would have known about covered dish or potluck suppers at church!)

To me, this book is at it’s best when we are with the author as she seeks a place for her church, as she awaits her first church “service”- will anyone come?- and as she tends to her fledgling group. She has a creative flair which brings together her congregation and also enriches the surrounding community. St. Lydia’s is the “right seed planted in the right soil at the right time.”

The memoir veers off into social issues and and politics and this part of the book loses its “memories” and becomes more “preachy”. While this may be important, it did not speak to me as much as the scenes of friends gathering to break bread together. I look forward to more stories from this author.

Thanks to NetGalley and Convergent Books for an advance review copy. This is my honest review.