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- A Panama City church is expanding its food pantry hours to help locals during the government shutdown.
- First Baptist Church of Panama City will now open its food pantry every Monday until the shutdown ends.
- The pantry served over 300 households on Monday, and there are no requirements to receive food.
PANAMA CITY — A local church has stepped up to help make sure locals don’t go hungry during the government shutdown.
According to Rick McClung, executive pastor for First Baptist Church of Panama City, the facility’s food pantry will now be open every Monday until a the shutdown ends. It typically is only open the second and fourth Mondays of every month.
“We’re just going to stay open until it’s all cleared up,” McClung said. “We’re doing something God wants us to do, (and) that’s all we’re really after. … It’s encouraging for our people to be a blessing to our community.”
He noted the pantry has been a part of the church for more than two decades. On Nov. 3, it served more than 300 households and gave out more than 1,700 meals.
There are no requirements for who can get food from the pantry. All anyone who is interested needs to do is show up at the church on Mondays.
“When Jesus said, ‘When I was hungry, you fed me,’ we’ve taken that pretty serious,” McClung said. “We just feel that’s part of the will of God for our church. It’s important for us to be a part of helping the community with the food pantry.”
First Baptist Church of PC gets the food from Feeding the Gulf Coast, a nonprofit organization that distributes food to food pantries in the area. It has a partnership with the United States Department of Agriculture where the USDA matches the amount of food the church orders from Feeding the Gulf Coast.
Because of this, church officials said the best way for locals to help them with their food pantry mission is not to donate food items, but instead donate money, which can then be use to buy more food from Feeding the Gulf Coast.
Monetary donations can be made by visiting firstbaptistpc.com Once on the home page, click on the “give” tab at the top right. Then, select “give here.” A new window will then pop up where donors can choose for their contributions to go directly to the food pantry.
According to reports from USA TODAY, the Trump Administration announced on Nov. 3 that it will use reserve funds to send out partial payments to the millions of Americans receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.
Even with this news, McClung said the church will continue to open its food pantry weekly the shutdown is over, and SNAP recipients are back to receiving 100% of their benefits.
“There use to be a time when we would limit the frequency of visits, (but)we no longer do that,” McClung said “They can come on a weekly basis — anybody and everybody. We just get the number of people in the family and distribute the food according to the number of people in the family.”
