In 2015, Lyn Clark was working in an elementary school as a nurse, and she noticed that some of the children would take an extra muffin or two from the food line and put them in their backpack or pockets.
“Do you really like the muffins that much?” she asked one of the boys.
“Not really,” he said. “It’s just that now we will have something to eat when we go home for the weekend.”
“That did it for me,” Clark said. “It took me less than a month to formulate this pantry. I started it with about 30 families in the school. It was in one room from three to five at night. It grew exponentially from there.”
Clark, who is the director of Family Fresh Food Pantry, which received a Feeding Our Neighbors grant from the General Board of Global Ministries. Family Fresh Food Pantry is housed and supported by Neidig UMC in Oberlin, Pennsylvania, is one of many compassionate and determined people who believe no one should go hungry. But 2025 was a hard year to keep pantries stocked and open.
Offering Funds Grants for Feeding Programs
In October of last year, the government shut down ceased funding that affected the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which would not distribute benefits in November.
As a result, food pantries across the country began to see an increase in need. At the same time, pantries that depended on USDA funding or food stocking programs had already seen a drop in food availability and increase in cost because of actions taken by the new Department of Government Efficiency in April and May, which slashed staff and billions of dollars from the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
General Board of Global Ministries quickly designated a portion of United Methodist Voluntary Service funds to offer 150 grants of up to $2,000 to help church pantries stretch their dollars and provide additional food to meet the demand. Funds for these grants are from offerings received by churches on Human Relations Day. Within days, the “Feeding Our Neighbors” grant program had received more than 300 applications.
A Perfect Storm
Doug Madden, council director and pantry director of First UMC in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, received a grant for the church’s Our Daily Bread pantry, which had been receiving USDA supplies through Second Harvest.
“It was a perfect storm,” Madden said. He narrated the journey from COVID shutdown to Hurricane Ida in 2021, which increased emergency food availability, to high inflation in 2022, to a problem with the main pantry distributor in New Orleans in 2024, and then the government shutdown in 2025.
“The USDA changed their program dramatically and the food bank gave less and less food. What we were doing became even more important, so we just continually increased the amount of food we were putting in the boxes every month. The 120-member congregation donates nonperishable items or they give money.”
Five years ago, First UMC’s Daily Bread served 25-30 families a year. “Last month, we moved up to the second largest pantry in the parish,” Madden said. “We have 127 families and about 100 that show up for any given food distribution.” In addition to the grant from Global Ministries, Madden said they also received a grant from the Louisiana UMC Conference Foundation.
“We just spend on faith,” Madden said. “We know how much we have and we spend it all on food.”
Your Donations Help
Your gifts on Human Relations Day Sunday offering helps support neighborhood ministries through Community Developers, community advocacy through United Methodist Voluntary Services and work with at-risk teens through the Youth Offender Rehabilitation Program. Please give generously.
excerpt form a story by Christie R. House, consultant writer and editor for Global Ministries and UMCOR.
This story shows the impact of Human Relations Day—one of six United Methodist Special Sundays with offerings—to build stronger communities through compassion and justice. Your gifts support neighborhood ministries, community developers, and programs that empower those who are struggling to overcome injustice and poverty. Together, we extend Christ’s love by lifting others and transforming lives through hope and opportunity.
When you give generously on Human Relations Day, you help build communities of belonging where all people can thrive in God’s love.
