Union City Methodist starts up food pantry

A member of the Union City Methodist Church helps set up the new food pantry that the church makes available to those in need.

Union City United Methodist Church began serving those in need of food April 1 out of their new food pantry.
Levi Duggan started as the pastor for the church last year, in January of 2020.
He said Monday that the first thing he did was see what needs the community had, and try to address them.
It took a while for the pantry to become a reality because the Duggans had to get training to be able to work with the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma.
“I just kind of looked around and asked myself ‘What are the needs in the community? How can we be the hands and feet of Christ?’ We immediately recognized that the Regional Food Bank didn’t have a formal partner in that zip code, so I just reached out to them. I asked them what we needed to do to work with them. My wife Marty and I went through their training and orientation, and I applied for a Methodist grant called the Petree Grant. Margaret E. Petree was from El Reno. She started the grant years and years ago. She also built the OCU music school years and years ago.”
Levi took the $6,000 grant that was awarded to the church, and used it to create a space for the church’s food bank. Levi wanted to get the pantry going early in 2020. The pandemic may have inadvertently created some inconveniences.
“We just started going live about April 1st, serving families,” Duggan said. “That’s kind of the nuts and bolts of how it got started. We wanted to do it early in 2020. I don’t think that the pandemic got in the way too much. I think it was just a process of partnership. You have to apply, you have to go through a series of training, and all of those things took longer, probably because of covid-19. The processing of the application, the scheduled training was online instead of in person and the sessions weren’t often. So, that kind of drug it out a little longer.”
Levi was born in Kansas, but grew up in Edmond. He and his wife moved to Union City six years ago, and we kind of moved to get to a quieter space. I was working for a foster care for the United Methodist Church and they asked me to service as a pastor in Union City and that’s kind of how we ended up in this ministry.”
To utilize the food bank at the church, a form must be filled out. The form can be found at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfrR3MjTxCiPv8fczLnHZ8SPLcJ42K0Mik7XuDBeps9d_CXfA/viewform
For more information about Union City United Methodist Church, go online to unioncityumc.com.