Using the space at Glenwood Lutheran Church

In 2022 [@@when, specifically?@@], Food Not Bombs Toledo moved their Thursday cooking events to Glenwood Lutheran Church. This guide should help members find information about how to access the church and how to securely close it up if they are the last ones to leave the church.

Accessing the church

Glenwood Lutheran Church is located at 2545 Monroe St.

We currently access the church mainly to drop off food or supplies and to engage in the Thursday cooking events, although the church community has entrusted us with a lot of freedom and flexibility in using various spaces in the church. We enter by the eastern administrative doors (in the general center of the building as you face it from Monroe St), and the kitchen is downstairs and to the left.

There is often a staff person available (usually Ellen) to remotely unlock the door if you press the intercom button and identify yourself as a member of Food Not Bombs (FNB). If a FNB member is already in the kitchen, they can also trigger the door to unlock remotely by picking up the phone in the kitchen when they hear the buzzer and pressing the flash button.

If there is no one at the church to let members in, we will need someone with a key to unlock the church and disable the alarm system. See the list below for the current members who have a key and who have received instructions about the alarm system.

When a group of FNB members arrives first for an event (such as a Thursday cooking event), someone needs to go upstairs to the usage tracking whiteboard (which has group names on it) and move the magnet to indicate that Food Not Bombs is present in the church. This whiteboard helps everyone know when the church is empty so that it needs to be secured.

One of the current members who has a key or a contact at the church can inform others about the security system codes for enabling and disabling the alarm, and how to respond if the security alarm triggers.

Securing the church after an event

For Thursday cooking events, the FNB team for the day will need to include someone who has a key to the church and who is willing to lock the church at the end of the event. Cleaning up after events is covered in another section of this manual. When the event, including cleanup, is finished, the closing person will need to go upstairs to the usage tracking whiteboard and move the FNB magnet to indicate that we're no longer using the church. If there are no other groups using the church (which will almost always be the case on Thursdays), then the closing person will need to enable the security system, turn off all remaining lights, and lock the outer church doors.

Members who currently have keys

  • Chris Hanley (church pastor)
  • John Clark
  • Monika Perry
  • Sadaf Niaz

Sharing the kitchen

We currently share the church's commercial-grade kitchen with several groups and organizations. Of these, we mainly balance our use of the kitchen with Opportunity Kitchen. Opportunity Kitchen members have strict needs around the cleanliness of the kitchen; see the sections on cleaning and organizing the kitchen for details. We have an Opportunity Kitchen Liason role for sharing and reconciling feedback with Opportunity Kitchen members; Heidi Buck is currently holding this role as of 2023-03.