Farmer shows us what home-grown fellowship can produce

This is a book about feeding the body and the soul. It’s about nurturing a garden and each other.

In “The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs: Respecting and Caring for All God’s Creation,” Joel Salatin, a third-generation family farmer in rural Virginia, gives us ideas on stewardship from a Christian and conservation standpoint. He makes a strong case for choices like growing your own produce, raising your own chickens and utilizing local farmer’s markets as opposed to buying mega-farm products shipped from who-knows-where and treated with who-knows-what.

I especially like the questions he asks about things churches can do instead of relying on processed foods. What if our fellowship meals consisted of produce, meat and baked goods that members have grown, raised and prepared themselves? What if we stock our food pantries with healthy, local products from members?

What if, instead of growing grass and paying to have it mowed, we plant gardens that involve the community — offering evangelism, relationships and service opportunities?

Salatin makes a great case for going back in time to when food was not a quick detour on the way to something else, but a process that involved all members of a family and was celebrated. The lessons abound, both for individual families and for the church.

In a world growing more and more out of touch with where food comes from — and with so much unhealthy eating going on while others literally starve — this is a timely book with some great ideas we would do well to consider and implement.

Cory Shipman and his family worship with the Memorial Road Church of Christ in Oklahoma City. They raise chickens and share eggs and the produce they grow with their community. They enjoy game meat from Cory’s hunting and locally grown beef from a church family.

What are you reading? Contact [email protected].

Filed under: Reviews Uncategorized