Vineyard Community Church in Wickliffe, Ohio, seeks volunteers, donations for food pantry

Vineyard Community Church in Wickliffe needs volunteers, donations and a box truck to continue operating its food pantry.

The food pantry has not only continued since the COVID-19 pandemic began but has also expanded. The church made adjustments to keep operations safe, including requiring masks, maintaining social distancing and holding the pantry as a drive-through rather than indoors.

The Ohio National Guard now assists the pantry, which serves up to 300 families each week, according to food pantry co-organizer Denise Dworning. From the start of the pandemic until this month, the pantry had served 10,000 families, compared with the usual 6,200 families annually in past years, according to Vineyard Community Church associate pastor Jim Dworning.

Dworning described the church’s two regular gatherings. “We have two churches here at Vineyard Community Church,” he said. “The people that attend Sunday morning services and those who come to the food pantry on Tuesdays.”

The pantry is open the first four Tuesdays of each month and serves clients from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Recently, it has opened at 2:30 p.m. because of a backup of cars waiting in line at that time, according to church administrative assistant Melinda Benes. “By 2:30 we pray, then begin to allow our parking lot to fill with a sea of vehicles,” Benes said. “We begin the registration process then let them move to the main door where the National Guardsmen load the food into their trunks.”

Benes said the pantry serves anyone who arrives in the parking lot by 6:30 p.m., so distribution sometimes continues until after 7:30 p.m. “We serve anyone who arrives in our parking lot by 6:30 p.m. so sometimes it takes us until after 7:30 to finish distribution,” she said.

The church needs help throughout the day, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., to pack boxes of non-perishable food, take inventory, stock orders received from the Greater Cleveland Food Bank and set up for distribution. Volunteers are assigned to stations throughout the facility, where they load food onto carts, move carts to the front for the National Guard, collect trash and register clients, feeding the hungry as a practical act of charity (Isaiah 58:7).

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