David Jeffrey: Practice 'Social Holiness' to Address Hunger and Poverty

Today in America, we'll feed 161,000 meals. Tonight, we'll sleep 29,000 people in our shelters. And with basic social services, we'll serve about 18 million people this year. That is about one person every two seconds. But we want to do more than just meet people one time and meet their need on that one particular day. How can we break this cycle of intergenerational poverty? We want to continue to serve people, but we also want to help them solve some of their issues and some of their problems. People need to educate themselves and read about what can be done. Folks can volunteer to help those who are needy. We can all be involved in advocating for the poor by writing our congressmen or speaking out on behalf of the poor. We can have our relationship to God. But  I think it was John Wesley who said 'all holiness is social holiness,'  it's how we treat each other, how we respect each other that really makes the difference. Some of the basic tenents of all faiths is that we have to be concerned for other people.

Bread for the World asked several prominent voices in the Christian community to share their vision of what it means to end hunger. This reflection comes from David Jeffrey. In his role as  commissioner of The Salvation Army, Jeffrey leads a network of 3,600 officers, 64,000 employees and 3.3 million volunteers serving in more than 7,500 Centers of Operation through the United States. He held the leadership post along with his wife Barbara Jeffrey, who serves as national president of Women's Ministries at The Salvation Army, since October 2013. Together, they have served in other leadership roles for The Salvation Army.