The well-being of those who are financially secure depends on the well-being of those who are not, those who fall into the working poor, or Asset-Limited, Income-Constrained, Employed (ALICE). We are interdependent both materially and spiritually and are diminished by the extent to which we do not flourish together. In Building the Good Life for All, L. Shannon Jung explores four strategies for mutual flourishing: charity, self-help, cultural value formation, and government action. Rather than theorizing on the causes of people's poverty, the chapters demonstrate how these transformational strategies work and how others can participate in them. Discussion questions with each chapter help groups process what they are learning and how they can apply these strategies personally and in their community. Designed to be read and discussed in seven sessions, this book encourages the social ministry of churches and the community development of neighborhoods. Churches and community groups will find themselves revitalized through this study and through enacting its strategies to help their neighbors.

About the Contributor(s): Growing up in a rural community, and serving four rural congregations in Iowa, Illinois, Saskatchewan, and South Dakota over nearly four decades as a pastor of Mennonite Church USA and Canada, S. Roy Kaufman personally witnessed the dismantling and disintegration of rural communities and churches. This book is a distillation of forty years of living, preaching, and teaching with these rural congregations. Kaufman lives in his home community, Freeman, South Dakota.

God's Spirit is breathing new vitality into rural congregations! Hear what 26 effective rural congregations have to say about God's activity in and through them. In these stories, you can explore the best practices for vital ministry, and identify action steps for your own setting.

In a world where there is so much food, why are so many people hungry? Amidst so much plenty, why aren't people happier? L. Shannon Jung insists that the two questions-one having to do with physical hunger, the other with spiritual want-are related. Hunger and Happiness exposes the atrocities of a global food system whereby the affluent "feed" at the expense of others, but then goes on to explore how complicity in the hunger of others contributes to the "spiritual malnourishment" of those who otherwise are well fed. Chapters address particular aspects of a global food policy that insures cheap food for some at great expense to many others. Jung considers the psychological and theological implications of such policy and after assessing the moral ramifications of cheap food, offers possibilities for alleviating physical hunger in the world and spiritual malaise in our lives.

Our everyday personal, familial, and communal practices of eating, says Jung, have the potential for making us more attentive to our life purposes, more attuned to our communal identities, and even more mindful of the presence of God. Juxtaposing practices with values, Jung explores how food and eating function culturally today. He explores the larger dimensions of personal and group eating, the great resonance that feasting and food and fasting have within the Christian tradition, and how all this figures very practically in Christian lifestyle. His work culminates in a chapter on the Lord's Supper as a model for eating and the Eucharist as an occasion for sharing with the worldwide family of God.

Food for Life draws on L. Shannon Jung's gifts as theologian, ethicist, pastor, and eater extraordinaire. In this deeply thoughtful but very lively book, he encourages us to see our humdrum habits of eating and drinking as a spiritual practice that can renew and transform us and our world. In a fascinating sequence that takes us from the personal to the global, Jung establishes the religious meaning of eating and shows how it dictates a healthy order of eating. He exposes Christians' complicity in the face of widespread eating disorders we experience personally, culturally, and globally, and he argues that these disorders can be reversed through faith, Christian practices, attention to habitual activities like cooking and gardening, the church's ministry, and transforming our cultural policies about food.