Food Pantry Co-Founder Guided by Faith, Feeding Others

More than 25 years ago, the Rev. Geoff Drutchas established the Fish & Loaves Food Pantry on Northline Road. It is now one of the largest food pantries in southeast Michigan, distributing more than 3 million pounds of food in 2024.

Drutchas also helped to create ChristNet. The network operates a daytime shelter and maintains a network of churches in the Downriver area that assist with providing a nighttime emergency rotating shelter program. Drutchas founded ChristNet in 1992, along with several other churches.

Drutchas said theologian Reinhold Niebuhr inspired his work. Niebuhr served as pastor of Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit and spoke out against the Ku Klux Klan's attempts to obtain power in Detroit's government during the 1920s.

"He always emphasized the fact that we have a responsibility as people of faith to meet our times. We're not going to fix it all, but our strivings matter," Drutchas said in an interview with The Detroit News. "That allows us then to also grow ourselves and our understanding of what it means to be a child of God."

Sue Vokal, the vice president of the Fish & Loaves board, complements Drutchas' passion for helping others in need.

"He just wants to be able to reach out and help all those who need help," she said.

As he reflects on his ministry to the communities he serves, Drutchas, who lives in West Bloomfield Township, said he's glad that he didn't listen to his father, who didn't want him to enter the ministry. His dad feared the increasing secularism and declining community interest in churches.

Drutchas left law school and eventually attended Harvard Divinity School.

"My father was not wrong to be concerned. But I'm glad I didn't follow his advice," Drutchas explained. "There's that line, good advice you just can't take, right? And it was good advice I just couldn't take."

Drutchas retired more than two years ago from his career as the pastor of the St. Paul United Church of Christ, where he's served since 1988.