Random Acts of Kindness

Yesterday Christie and I awoke at the crack of dawn (or at least it seemed like that to me) and made it to church (Emmanuel Community United Methodist Church, Menomonee Falls) a couple of minutes before 7 am for our annual rummage sale (Christie brought extra caffeine). Now, you might be asking yourself 'what fool would go to a rummage sale that early?' My answer: ALOT of people. When we got there the line stretched from the back door all the way to the side door; I'm guessing over 100 people were queued up anxiously awaiting the doors to open. I had scoped out the merchandise on Thursday evening at choir so I had an idea of which room to hit first. See, this is the most organized sale one could think of. Each type of rummage is sorted, tested, priced and displayed in its specific room; i.e., books, kitchen, holiday, toys, clothes. The books were even sorted by type (mystery, history, travel, childrens) and then alphabetized within each category. The clothes were sorted by size and then once again by color! The clothes were sold by bag -- as much as you could shove into a bag for $6.00 (excluding baby clothes). Christie made a haul with books for her classroom and non-gender specific baby clothes (you know what a planner Christie is). I filled my GREEN canvas bag to the brim with all kinds of needless necessities and spent a whole $12.00 which included a coupon for bringing in some non-perishable food items for the food pantry. Carrie and her family went later and spent two hours there. The totals weren't completely tallied up by this morning but it was thought that we passed last year's total which was $11,000 -- yes, that's right folks -- eleven thousand dollars! Proceeds from a rummage sale!! The church uses this for outreach services. It's felt that the rummage sale itself is a type of outreach; it brings people into our church from all over the community and we gently show them what types of services that we have to offer. I'm not sure if they've kept track of the number of people who have joined our church by getting to know it by this type of outreach -- wouldn't that be an interesting statistic?

Last week two people from our congregation offered to pump gas at the local Witlin's gas station AND give the customer a $5.00 bill as a random act of kindness. How many people do you think would have gone to that particular station on a rainy Sunday afternoon between the hours of 12 and 1? Three? Seven? Twelve? Actually they pumped gas for SEVENTY customers! Wow!!!

So, rather than bringing people into church by guilt (as churches that I belonged to in the past were known to do), Emmanuel brings them in by through the back door. I think that's quite creative. Know what? It works!