PORT TAMPA — For more than 15 years, Port Tampa United Methodist Church here has had a small food pantry. For most of that time it was located in a small locked room, contained food that was old or unwanted and helped church members who were facing a personal crisis or time of need.

Today, the food pantry has moved to a more public spot in the church’s fellowship hall, is always full of quality food and is helping nearly 100 people a month from across the Port Tampa area. At least one recipient has joined the church.

Chris Garcia, the church secretary and former pantry administrator, said church members looking for what God wanted from the ministry rather than what they wanted made the difference.

The change happened in 1998 when the church’s staff/parish relations committee decided to create a church secretary position and needed the room in which the food pantry was located for the church office. The pantry was moved into the fellowship hall, which caused some concern among members who thought the more public location would allow people to steal food, according to Garcia.

“Just the opposite happened,” she said. “People with keys to the fellowship hall started putting food in there…and people using the fellowship hall got to witness when people were coming to get food.”

At about that time a group of people from the church decided to change the pantry’s focus. “We decided, ‘This isn’t right. The pantry should be used for outreach,’ ” Garcia said, adding the church gave out 20 baskets of food at Thanksgiving and another 20 at Christmas for each of the next two years.

“We prayed about what God wanted done with the ministry,” Garcia said. “We decided the people of the community are hungry all the time, not just at Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

The church then opened the pantry to the entire community year round. Garcia was responsible for serving those who came for food, in addition to her secretarial duties.

“I saw all these people coming in, and I always prayed for having enough food,” she said. “The idea came to me through prayer…I received direction from God to pray with these people. Their spiritual hunger was much more important than their physical hunger. They need to know they’ve been in a church, and not just in a food bank.”

The spiritual aspect of the pantry became a big draw for people in the community. “When we started praying, it absolutely exploded,” Garcia said. “Now, we have people who come in for prayer and forget the food.”

The prayer ministry also involves anyone who is in the fellowship hall when someone comes in for food. “They’re not there by accident,” Garcia said.

Garcia was soon asked to give up the food pantry to focus on other responsibilities. Penny Ferrantelli now coordinates the pantry and leads a team of five volunteers who give out food and pray with people for a few hours every Thursday morning.

All of the food is donated, Garcia said. Much of it comes from the approximately 70 people who attend the church and give to the church’s Food Pantry Sunday offering the first Sunday of every month.

“It’s amazing how God puts the food in there, because we just see it fly out…,” Garcia said. “We never have too much food or too little food. We always have just enough to do what God wants us to do.”