Even if you’re not a member of our church, if you’ve been around the Fitchburg building at the end of April in years past, you know when it’s Rummage Sale time! Each year, so many of you generously donate clothing, shoes, toys, furniture, sporting goods, and other household items to be sold at our annual sale. The Rummage Sale offers amazing opportunities to us each year to serve by giving our treasures and time, and to enjoy some fun and fellowship, too! In this article I want to highlight one special opportunity this year, and one way the Sale reaches beyond the church building’s walls.

As you probably know, Lois Korth and Connie Thompson have been faithfully planning and executing the Rummage Sale for many years. The 2017 sale will be Lois and Connie’s last year leading the sale, and so the rest of us have the opportunity to ask ourselves a question: is God calling me to apprentice with Lois and Connie during this year’s sale and take over its leadership in 2018? To help you answer this question, I present a few Rummage Sale facts:

• Lois and Connie have made the sale a well-oiled rummage machine, with processes organized and recorded on paper for sale leaders and volunteers.
• Coordinating the sale affords built-in time for conversations and early shopping!
• The time commitment for this service opportunity is contained to the week prior to the sale and the weekend of the sale.

If you’ve served during the Rummage Sale in recent years, or even if you haven’t yet but think this one-week-per-year lifeServe opportunity is right for you, would you please talk to Lois, Connie, or me? We’d love to chat about any questions you have.

Each year, some of the proceeds from the sale go toward church ministries (such as Higher Ground mission trips and Preschool scholarships) and facilities improvements (like new tables for the fellowship hall). And each year we also prioritize giving back some of the sale’s proceeds to our community. In the months since the 2016 Rummage Sale, we’ve been able to help 10 clients of Domestic Abuse Intervention Services (DAIS) with crisis funding that has allowed them to secure safe housing after surviving domestic violence. After one of the DAIS social workers heard about our church’s willingness to help her client with relocation funding, she said, “Thank you so much, my client is in tears!” The Rummage Sale allows us to help those in our community who are hurting in a significant way, and I hope you’ll consider serving at the Sale again (or for the first time) this year!