We have the resources to end hunger in America.
Jeremy Everett delivers the line plainly—no flourish, no sermonizing—just the hard-earned conviction of a man who has stood in too many kitchens with empty shelves and too many living rooms where hunger is a daily guest.
Everett had my attention from the moment he opened our three-day seminar with that line. As part of the Baylor Fellowship for Religion and Social Life, I spent several days learning from Everett—an expert in food insecurity and the founding executive director of the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty.
In the abstract, ending hunger sounds like the kind of pipe dream we assign to utopian idealism, a lofty ideal you might toss out when playing a game of “Three Wishes.” I don’t know many people who treat it like a tangible goal. Jeremy Everett does.
Everett’s own path began as an undergraduate with the dawning awareness of the injustices of the world and his own participation in them. As a third-generation preacher’s kid, he found himself sitting in pews growing more and more confused by the gaps in the church’s storytelling. “We talked a lot about Jesus’ birth and Jesus’s death and resurrection,” he told me, “but we really didn’t spend a whole lot of time talking about what happened in between.” That “in between” were the many years that Jesus moved toward the poor, the outcast, the dispossessed, and the forgotten, speaking to them as bearers of God’s image. “He saw who they were and called that out in them.” For Everett, this was not an optional addendum to the gospel; it was the center: “[Jesus] was trying to make crooked paths straight.”
When I asked Everett about the Church’s role in solving hunger, his response was quick: prophetic witness. The task, as he describes it, is first for the Church to tell the truth—to point at hunger and name it as an injustice and a moral failing. “In a world that produces enough food for everybody to have access to it… we should make sure that everybody has access to it,” he said. “Hunger is a litmus test for the soul and spirit of who we are as people of faith. If hunger is present, then sin is present — and it’s not the sin of the people who are hungry. It’s the sin of us, those of us who are not ensuring that they have enough food.”
“If hunger is present, then sin is present — and it’s not the sin of the people who are hungry. It’s the sin of us, those of us who are not ensuring that they have enough food.”
Jeremy Everett
For Everett, fighting hunger is not an optional act of charity. It’s a theological mandate.
When I asked where this conviction comes from, Everett immediately went to Scripture. He recalled the prophets calling out nations that ignored the poor, and Jesus himself feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and sharing tables with those pushed to the margins. “Jesus talked about the kingdom of God as good news for the poor,” Everett said. “When he tells us in Matthew 25 that when we feed the hungry, we’re feeding him—that’s not metaphor. That’s the standard he’s holding us to.” For Everett, these passages aren’t background color to the gospel story; they are a core theme. Hunger is not merely a social issue, but a spiritual one—and the Church’s failure to confront it is, in his words, “a failure to be the Church.”
“We’re called to people who are experiencing injustice” Everett said, “that’s what it means to be Christian.” Everett pushed back against the idea that prioritizing justice turns faith into a “works-based gospel,” emphasizing that we are saved by grace alone—and that this very grace demands that we act in service and compassion.
For Everett, addressing injustice is the Christian’s “nonnegotiable.”
Having grown up in more conservative circles in the South, I am well acquainted with the arguments against government involvement in addressing hunger. So, I was curious to hear Everett’s perspective—both on these arguments and on the recently passed cuts to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), the federal government’s primary program aimed at reducing food insecurity.
Everett doesn’t hesitate when it comes to addressing the common objections to programs like SNAP.
“It’s one of the most efficient programs we have as a nation—less than a three percent error rate,” he explained. Fraud is rare and usually happens at the state agency level, not with individual recipients. And as for the idea that the church, not the government, should be the one to address hunger? For Everett, the point is not church or government, but church and government, alongside nonprofits, industry, and local communities. Ending hunger, he says, “is too big and too complex for one sector to address by itself.”
When I asked him why, if the resources exist, we have not acted, he paused. “We don’t see others as fully human,” he said quietly. If we saw the homeless man on the street as our own brother, the child in Gaza as our own daughter, “we’d probably be more motivated to do something about it.” So why do we often neglect this reality? Because if it’s true that what we do unto the least of these we do unto Christ then “we are obligated to actually do something.” It is an issue of the will.
As an undergraduate living in Waco myself, the pervasive reality of people experiencing homelessness, poverty, and food insecurity is all too real. Most of my friends feel the same way that I do—heartbroken, with a desire to help, but unsure about how to respond in a meaningful way.
I asked Everett whether giving food or water directly could do more harm than good. He was firm: “I think providing somebody a sandwich or water…that’s never going to be a bad thing. Immediate relief matters. But it’s not enough.” He explained that while handing out meals or groceries can meet urgent needs, it does little to address the systemic conditions that create hunger in the first place. This highlighted an underlying issue: students and others in the community want to help and have a lasting impact on others’ livelihoods, but without guidance, coordination, and a deeper understanding of the issues, even the best intentions, though good, often fall short of true solidarity.
This strategic guidance is what Everett and his team have developed through the Baylor Collaborative. Though they have piloted many groundbreaking programs across Texas and the nation, the most recent is the Hunger Free Community Accelerator which will officially launch September 3rd. The program trains leaders to address hunger in a systemic, sustainable way—from leveraging federal nutrition programs to uniting local organizations.
“It’s for people who say, ‘I want to end hunger in my community,’” Everett said. “We’ve been testing it for 15 years in Texas and now it’s being piloted nationally and even globally with the World Food Programme.” As this training program rolls out, the hope is that even a Baylor student could take the training, gather a group of leaders, and scale the solution to their town or community.
By this point in our interview, my throat felt tight and my eyes blurred—grief. I recognized the feeling: mourning the weight and sheer scope of suffering around me, in my own community, and feeling the sting of how little I had dared to shoulder that pain in the past.
Yet I had only spent three days listening to stories of the struggle against hunger and one hour in conversation with Everett. I asked him how he carries the weight, and he admitted that despair often creeps in. His antidote? Contemplative prayer, a loving faith community, and a redefinition of success.
“We’re not called to be successful,” he said. “We’re called to be faithful.”
For him, that means showing up each day, working alongside others, praying for those on the front lines, and making space to rest and recenter. “There will be times of despair,” he acknowledged, “and sometimes you have to give space to grief. But you get up the next day and you do it again.”
Everett frames hunger not as a problem of scarcity but of solidarity. The resources exist; the question is whether we will be the kind of people willing to use them.
Everett frames hunger not as a problem of scarcity but of solidarity. The resources exist; the question is whether we will be the kind of people willing to use them.
I left our interview deeply moved and convicted, but also encouraged. Through Everett and the many others working alongside him to serve those in need, I realized that part of the fight is just daring to hope in the middle of despair for the ongoing renewal of all things.
As I walked back to my car that day an old gospel song rang in my ears:
“Oh happy day,
When Jesus washed,
Washed my sins away,
He taught me how to watch, fight and pray!
Fight and pray!”
