FOR ALL WHO HUNGER

From a stunning new religious voice whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal comes a book about the loneliness of modern life and the powerful force church can become when it's about more than being cool.

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 realize they had.

In this book of stories from her unlikely congregation, Scott argues that these small acts of connection hold more power than we realize in a time when the world has become devastatingly 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 no matter who they are or what they've done can hear not only that they are loved, but that they are good. Beautifully written and full of unforgettable stories, FOR ALL WHO HUNGER is a thought provoking empowering read for anyone seeking hope in troubled times.

EMILY M D SCOTT was the Founding Pastor of St Lydia's, a progressive congregation in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, where worship takes place around the dinner table. Scott trained as a liturgist and musician at Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music and was ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America Previously, she served as the Director of Worship at the Riverside Church St Lydia's "Dinner Church" has been featured in The Atlantic The Wall Street Journal and The Huffington Post, among others. After eight years at St Lydia's, Emily is now creating a new church community, Dreams and Visions, in Baltimore.