S. Roy Kaufman

S. Roy Kaufman is a retired Mennonite pastor who served four rural congregations in Iowa, Illinois, Saskatchewan and South Dakota for 38 years. His book grows out of his experience serving these declining rural congregations and seeking to communicate to these people some sense of what God might have to say about their situation. Kaufman now lives in his home community, Freeman, South Dakota, where he was called in 1999 to serve the congregation in which he grew up. Recently widowed (October, 2012) Kaufman has three adult daughters and two grand-daughters. He writes a monthly column, Rural Reconnaissance, for the local weekly newspaper, the Freeman Courier, and is a founding member of Rural Revival, a local non-profit concerned with developing a local food system and with land tenure issues. Kaufman gardens and preserves much of his own food, bakes his own bread, and seeks to buy most of his food from local farmers.