On Food Insecurity

"Food Insecurity" is one of the phrases I picked up while working for UMCOR [United Methodist Committee on Relief]. In most countries outside of the U.S. where the church was present, vulnerable people lived on the edge of having enough to eat. The next big storm might force them to eat the seeds they were keeping for the next planting. The army might come through and force them to turn over their livestock and crops. The adults responsible for putting food on the table might get malaria, or AIDS, or die in childbirth and the children would not have the resources to fend for themselves.

In the U.S., people don't have enough food that is safe, affordable, healthful, culturally acceptable and that meets dietary needs. At the root is poverty - caused by un- or under-employment, physical or mental illness or disability, addictions, the arrest or deportation of the bread earner, or old age. The context may be different in Marin [California county] and Haiti, but the result of food insecurity is the same. Children in food insecure homes do less well in school. Their health status is worse, and the likelihood increases that they will have difficulties with cognition, motor skills, behavior, learning and socio-emotional development. Food insecure families go without medicine or utilities or school expenses in order to eat. Families experience added stress, which can lead to increased violence and depression.

[The Rev. Kristin Sachen, Mount Tamalpais UMC, Mill Valley, California, Ridgelines (church newsletter), October 2008.]

The Poor at Our Dinner Table

Shane Claiborne of The Simple Way in inner-city Philadelphia has no grand church-growth theory in his vision. His vision is one of mission that he says most Christians fall short of. "We're never going to have a church that cares for poor folks until we have poor folks at our dinner table," he says. In his 2006 book The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, he describes faithful Christians as ones "who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about." It is a micro vision different from the general church's macro approach to problems - sweeping new programs such as ones adopted at General Conference. Claiborne grew up in a UMC in east Tennessee, but went to Iraq before the 2003 U.S. invasion to witness in a dangerous situation to the non-violence message of Jesus. He also went to Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa - who expressed belief not through words or programs but through a sacrificial pattern of life.

[The Rev. Andrew Thompson, United Methodist Reporter, February 13, 2009.]