Food Pantries

We see an example of being a good Samaritan in the food pantries that some churches put together. Considering the people whose lives are touched each week by the number of good Samaritans through general conversation, prayer, financial support, and food that is distributed, food pantries may offer more connections to the community than typical church services do. Shoreline Church of Monterey, California, revamped their entire food pantry ministry following COVID to ensure that work was being done to help heal the entire person while providing support. This type of transformation helped them become more neighborly: “What we realized was that, before the pandemic hit, our food pantry gave a lot of food and we were kind, but there was not a clear and intentional evangelistic focus to the ministry. If we were going to invest huge amounts of time and energy into a growing outreach ministry, we were going to make sure we were actually having a spiritual impact and doing evangelism. We wanted to do all we could to have spiritual conversations and prayer with anyone who came for food, if they were interested. We also learned that a large majority of those who came to the pantry were not church attenders at Shoreline or any church” (Kevin G. Harney, “How a Food Pantry Became So Much More,” Church Leadership, June 22, 2021, https://www.churchleadership.com/leading-ideas/how-a-food-pantry-become-so-much-more/).