The holy of holies at Grace Church - Part 1

Sorry for the three-week hiatus, but now back to the blog... One of several physical indications of Christ's death on the cross was the curtain to the temple being torn in two (Luke 23:45), opening access to the Holy of Holies. Though all believers were given direct access to the Holy of Holies as a result, ironically, churches have been creating their own holy of holies ever since. I know of at least two that we have at Grace Church.

One of the holy of holies at Grace Church is the church kitchen.

Because the Grace Church kitchens are used to prepre food for the daycare and school programs, they are ruled by the criteria established by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture published in the Pennsylvania Code. This subjects us to regular inspections by the Department of Agriculture, you know the restaurant inspection reports you can read each week in the Sunday paper. This is one of the key reasons we've employed strict policies with the Grace Church kitchens. The Grace Church kitchens are considered commercial kitchens, no different than a restaurant. We have standards we have to maintain, standards that may not concern other churches, so we've put policies and procedures in place to help us maintain those standards. Our multi-use facility presents additional challenges to the kitchens that we've tried to navigate.

The Grace Church building was designed specifically for use by a lot of people with multiple uses. We succeed daily in fulfilling that goal, but it presents challenges too. Equipment and utensils are regularly moved if not misplaced and it's often a challenge to identify who last used a particular room. In the kichen setting, with the aforementioned standards, these challenges are magnified. If you read the Pennsylvania Code, you will find that there is specific criteria about kitchen equipment and utensils. What can and cannot be used, how it must be cleaned, how it should be stored. You can't just use any cooking utensil you can find or you bring from home (when you think about someone else preparing a meal for you, do you really want them to?). To help us hold each group/person accountable, we've been hard-nosed about who uses the kitchen so we can trace back if there are any issues.

Hopefully this gives you a broader understanding as to why the Grace Church kitchens are a holy of holies. It's frustrating to have to follow a complex room reservation procedure and not being able to access resources that would make life easier. The systems we have in place are designed to balance our responsibility to the Commonwealth with our need to prepare food for our different ministries.