Crave: A Christian Longing for Food and Community

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With the popularity of the DIY movement, Pinterest, and homestyle cooking, Christians continue to embrace a call to hospitality that has brought the church around a shared table since its earliest days. In Crave, award-winning authors, essayists, and home cooks share how their faith roots their relationship with food and community. They tell stories of cooking, serving, and dining together for the glory of God and the gospel.
There’s an adage that tells us a family that eats together stays together, and numbers back it up: families that sit down for dinnertime reportedly end up healthier, happier, and closer. As Sunday dinners and weekly small-group potlucks show us, food not only connects us to our families, but also to our communities.
Food becomes both a practical and personal way to relate to each other as Christians. We hang out over food and find joy in the increasingly uncommon act of preparing food to serve others. The ritual of eating together actually has become a distinctive in a world where most meals are consumed quickly and alone.

The endless archive of recipes online have fueled a nostalgic generation with inspiration and incentive to make and share. Made-from-scratch recipes, like the ones included at the end of each chapter of this book, demonstrate our invested time and care for each other, building on the Christian practice of hospitality. Shared meals let us live out community like the early Christians in Acts, who “broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people” .