Rev. Heber Brown: How the Black Church Can Solve Food Insecurities

Igniting Hope for Health Equity

Episode 20 The 2022 Igniting Hope Podcast featured speaker Reverend Dr. Heber Brown, III is empowering the black community to take control of their food security.
In this episode, you will learn:
1. How did African Americans gain control of the food supply chain in the past, and how can this knowledge be used to create a more equitable food system in the present?
2. What is the connection between the African American church and food security?
3. How can a focus on the spiritual aspects of food justice help to create a more sustainable and equitable food system?
Reverend Dr. Heber Brown, III is a pastor and founder of the Black Church Food Security Network. He travels around the country advocating for food security within the African American community. He visited Buffalo, New York and was disturbed by the lack of access to healthy food for many within the city. He attributes this to a lack of control and agency within the community when it comes to food. He believes that the African American community must begin to look to the black church as a key source of empowerment when it comes to food. The black church has a
In this episode, Pastor George and Rev. Brown tackle the following issues
How do we break the cycle/How do we care for ourselves
 Face the reality that we do not have control of our own food environment…we cannot feed
ourselves
 Ask where do we have control? One of those places is the Black church. We can begin to control
our food environment in the place where we already have some control agency and resource.
 How did we get here…we did not ask for an abundance of liquor stores, fast food in our
community…we didn’t put them there…we don’t own anything
How we can shift the current trajectory
 Create spaces for deep study and analysis to see how we got here
 Determine the ways that we are complicit to sustaining the current arrangement
 Explore to see examples of better and different to reimagine spaces
Adapting a new mindset
 Understand that there is a connection to disease and what we put in our bodies
 Stop lamenting about what’s above our head and focus on the things that are at the top!
 Tap into more than just the social political aspect of food insecurity…tap into a source a stream
and power greater than to break the ties of bondage
 Allow God to release in us what he has already to deposited in you
Resources:
Where Have All the Prophets Gone: Reclaiming Prophetic Preaching in America by
Marvin McMickle
The Practice of Prophetic Imagination: Preaching an Emancipating Word by Walter Brueggemann
Exodus 4:2 Then the LORD said to him, “What is that in your hand?” “A staff,” he replied.
Women with the issue of blood
Mark 5:34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, healed of your disease.”

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