My Experience as Youth Pastor

It has been a long while since I posted, I have so much to talk about but it is so crazy making the transition to the school year. I keep adding more and more to my plate and then personal things are coming up so it just eats the time I have for posting. If I can get back into a rhythm I'll probably have a couple months worth of blog fodder easy.

Anyways, I want to talk about something I briefly mentioned on twitter yesterday. A free yard sale. Now some kind and well meaning people (Candy Steele) told my I was a moron for trying to do something like that, and she also insinuated that I need a bath in oxyclean. I'm a little offended, but she has participated in the new Iron Woman triathlon involving a 26 mile bike ride (I think it was planned for only a couple miles but she gets lost easily) a weary drudge up the driveway and a colapsing soak in the shower. She might want some oxyclean herself.

The free yard sale was an idea we had at the beginning of the summer. I got tired of waiting for someone else to do it so I volunteered the Youth outreach team to make it happen. The first weekend in October we will have, hopefully, a lot of stuff in our parkinglot and building to give away. Of course it isn't as easy as just giving it away. One of my biggest concerns with the idea is that a person might bring a big truck and laod up everything they can and take it to the flea market. I don't have an express problem with that if they need the money but I want to be able to help more than one person with a big truck.

My solution is to issue vouchers to people and put prices on the items we are giving away. I am distributing invitations and response forms to local charities to give out over the month of September and the last week of September we will be handing out the vouchers to people who have turned in the response cards. I'm not asking how much money or anythig like that, I just want a name and how many are in their household. People could abuse the system by having each person in the house fill out a card but that's on them. I also ask what we can pray with them about. The vouchers will be based on how many people are in the house and they could lie about that, but once again I'm not trying to police them just trying to make it somewhat fair and organized.

October 2nd we will be opening with a voucher only "sale" and on the 3rd we will have voucher only for most of the morning. In the late morning and afternoon we will allow people to buy with cash and all money made will be split between the local men's and women's shelters. This is about the church trying to help others.

Anyways, I would really appreciate prayer that we get people to support us and people to show up. Sometimes when you start something new like this people get nervous about coming out thinking there is some kind of catch.