2021: A Year in Review
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

NC Council of Churches

Strength in Unity, Peace through Justice

  • Voices
  • About
    • Overview
    • Staff
    • Members
    • Covenant Partners
    • Issue Statements
    • Governing Board
    • Careers
  • Programs
    • NC Interfaith Power & Light
      • NCIPL Overview
      • Faith in Action NCIPL
      • NCIPL Articles
      • NCIPL Resources
      • Upcoming Events for NCIPL
      • Contact NCIPL
    • Partners in Health & Wholeness
      • PHW Staff
      • Mini-Grants
      • PHW Collaborative Pledge
      • The Overdose Crisis: The Faith Community Responds
      • Mental Health Advocacy
      • BIPOC Mental Health Grant
      • Growing Communities of Inclusion: A Faithful Response to HIV
      • Healthy Aging
      • Citizen Science
      • PHW Articles
      • FAQs
  • Priorities
    • Racial Justice
    • The Overdose Crisis: The Faith Community Responds
    • Gun Violence Prevention
    • Criminal Justice
    • Immigrant Rights
    • Public Education
    • Farmworkers
    • Legislative Advocacy
    • Christian Unity
    • Peace
  • Events
  • Resources
    • COVID-19 Resources
    • Publications & Reports
    • Raleigh Report
    • Lectionary
    • Sermons
  • Donate
  • Council Store
  • Show Search

Search NC Council of Churches

Hide Search

PHW Launches Book Club

Joy Williams, Former PHW Regional Coordinator · February 14, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Thank you for joining the Partners in Health and Wholeness Book Club. Through it, we hope to engage people of faith in discussions over why our health matters.  Our first choice of reading will come from the free “Eating Well” NC Council of Churches Food Curriculum.  We will be posting updates through the PHW Facebook page, but our PHW blog page will have the discussion posts in full.

These discussions are meant to be engaging according to the time that you have. We encourage honest, respectful, and non-condemning dialogue. We want to create a safe environment for people to explore what could be negative perceptions about food, or overwhelmingly positive ones. Our goal is to highlight the complexities of food, and why people of faith should care. Please remember that we come from different heritages where one culture may value a particular food and another may not. We want you to be honest, but please be careful with how you frame your commentary. For example, instead of saying, “Spam is gross” consider writing, “Spam is not a food choice of mine.”

Feel free to check back in to read, comment, and offer your perspective throughout the next weeks of exploring this curriculum. You can expect a new post to go up every Thursday. Thanks and enjoy!

Excerpted from the curriculum:

Everyone eats.

Our relationship with food is as simple – and as complex – as that.  Every living thing is dependent on nutrition, which makes food an incredibly valuable resource. And how we get it, who gets enough of it, and the choices we make around it become critical social justice issues.

For people of faith, food has incredible symbolic meanings.  It is the stuff of miracles, of punishment, a symbol of welcome and the generosity of the Creator.  For Christians, reenacting the Last Supper is one of our most sacred rituals of our faith.

And so, we have developed “Eating Well: For Ourselves, For Our Neighbors, For Our Planet” from a faith perspective, recognizing both the spiritual nature of the shared meal together as well as the broader implications of what is placed on our tables.  As sisters and brothers in Christ, we are called to be good neighbors to each other, good stewards of creation, and good caretakers of the body God has given us.  Our relationship with food touches our relationship with just about everyone and everything else.

Let’s explore it together.

Please read the introduction of the “Eating Well” NC Council of Churches Curriculum.  To request a loaned copy of “Nourish” for your congregation please email Allison Reeves Jolley: allison@ncipl.org.

Discussion Prompts (feel free to create your own prompts or to respond to one or more of these):

1)      Can you describe your earliest memory of food?

2)      When you think about food, what do you think about? Whether its negative or positive, please share.

–Joy Williams, PHW Regional Consultant

Partners in Health and Wholeness is an initiative of the North Carolina Council of Churches. PHW aims to connect health as a faith issue. Please visit our website to sign your personal pledge to be healthier, and to find out about grant opportunities for churches in NC. Continue to stay connected with PHW by liking us on Facebook.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Community Gardens, Farmworkers, Food, Health, Peace, Rural Life

About Joy Williams, Former PHW Regional Coordinator

I am passionate about health and faith. Children, families, and elders have my deepest love and concern, and I've cultivated a heart for dance, plants, cooking, water, chilling with great friends, and talking about the matters of the heart. I love the Lord and seek to bring myself and others closer to The King Most High.
Learn more about PHW and our efforts to improve the health of God’s people: healthandwholeness.org

Reader Interactions

More Like This

Partners in Health and Wholeness Mini-Grant Cycle Now Open
Politics of Eating
Join Us for the PHW Faith and Health Summit

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Anonymous comments or comments that target individuals will not be posted (please include your first and last name). All comments must be on topic and respectful. Comments will not be posted until they have been reviewed by a moderator. Comments do not reflect the positions of the NC Council of Churches.

Footer

Contact

NC Council of Churches
27 Horne St.
Raleigh, NC 27607
(919) 828-6501
info@ncchurches.org

Facebook

Partners in Health and Wholeness

Featured

PHW Launches Book Club

Latest Tweets

Our @healthandfaith initiative is accepting mini-grant applications! If your faith community would like to implement a program or initiative to support your congregation’s health ministry and its mission, we encourage you to apply! More info at the link: ncchurches.org/progr… pic.twitter.com/EWJz…

About 31 minutes ago

RT @RasuShrestha We grieve and are mortified by the staggering number of mass shootings and other acts of violence with guns in our country. We need action, not just thoughts & prayers. Sign the petition now if you agree: ✅change.org/p/interfa… #GunControlNow pic.twitter.com/hx2O…

About 2 hours ago

Are you passionate about the health and wellbeing of North Carolina communities? Then apply for a job with our Partners in Health and Wholeness as the Engagement and Program Administrator! ncchurches.org/2022/… pic.twitter.com/0Q7Y…

Yesterday

The U.S. Supreme Court, as if rushing to settle old grievances, in recent weeks has thrashed about in a virtual frenzy of “originalism” – never mind the consequences for America’s civic well-being. ncchurches.org/2022/…

About 2 days ago

Faith Leaders! Last chance to apply this training! Learn to incorporate suicide prevention programming into your congregation’s activities. Apply at the link! ncivpb.iad1.qualtric… pic.twitter.com/vFmT…

About 2 days ago

Follow @ncchurches

Latest Tweets

Greetings! Be sure to stop by our table at the Western NC Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church at Lake Junaluska this weekend! We hope to see you there! pic.twitter.com/30bk…

About 3 weeks ago

Hello twitter family! Be sure to stop by our table at the NC Conference of the United Methodist Church in Greenville, NC starting today! We hope to see you there! pic.twitter.com/l6X3…

About 3 weeks ago

Our mini grant cycle is now open!!! pic.twitter.com/eyRp…

About a month ago

RT @faithleadership Faith coalitions are addressing the opioid crisis by providing resources, connections and a destigmatizing vision. lght.ly/45iam80 Featuring: @okconfchurches | @ODMHSASINFO | @healthandfaith | @ncchurches | @DukeTMCI | @shannon_fleck

About a month ago

Join us for Sacred Conversations: Older Adults - Fraud & Scams on Friday, June 24th from 11 AM to 12 PM and learn to recognize common scams targeted towards older adults and how to protect yourself and those in your faith communities. ncchurches.ourpowerb…

About 2 months ago

Follow @healthandfaith

Latest Tweets

RT @mocleanair A new study found hundreds of toxins in natural gas from residential sites, including toluene and benzene in 94-95% of samples. Read more, call ALL your elected leaders for just clean energy: ow.ly/ICTi50JKSug @GCVoters @scennetwork1 @uscan @enviRN @docsforclimate @CEHN

Last week

RT @GeorgiaIPL The Supreme Court’s ruling limits the EPA’s ability to set the strong standards needed to cut carbon pollution and tackle the climate crisis. We can’t afford to stop fighting climate change. pic.twitter.com/XTC7…

Last week

RT @scennetwork1 Join us for Season 2 of @CJYpodcast! We spoke to Catherine Coleman Flowers, one of the founding mothers of Environmental Justice from the South, about the lessons learned from her activism with the civil rights movement to the modern EJ movement. #SouthernVoices #CJY #Podcast pic.twitter.com/TzEr…

Last week

RT @scennetwork1 We thank everyone who joined us for our first in-person convening since the pandemic started! We had a fantastic time and had over 30 organizations from the Southeast represented!🎉 pic.twitter.com/1KYc…

Last week

RT @scennetwork1 We made the news last week! NC Faith Leaders Call on the U.S. to Pay 'Fair Share' for Climate-Related Loss! Read the full article here: publicnewsservice.or… pic.twitter.com/nltj…

Last week

Follow @ncipl

Latest Tweets

Copyright © 2022 NC Council of Churches · All Rights Reserved · Website by Tomatillo Design · Hosted by WP Engine