Quite a few years ago, Ascension and St. Mark’s had quite a lot of trouble meeting our financial obligations.  One of our members at that time started the Resale shop as an ongoing fundraiser.  At one time, our little shop brought in as much as 15% of our overall budget.  It was a real blessing to us in those days.  While we also did other things to raise money, the resale shop was a steady and reliable source of income.

As time went on, our little shop became less focused on finances and more focused on the spiritual life of both our congregation as well as the spiritual life of the community that we serve.  It became clear to us that a substantial number of our customers did not have a strong connection to a church community and we made the conscious decision to welcome them into ours.  We also understood that the Anglican Church is an ancient and historical church and while biblically centered we are also steeped in the traditions and theology of the Roman Catholic Church as well as that of the Protestant Reformation.  That makes us a little different from everyone else and we knew that many people would find us to be a little strange in our worship.  But nonetheless we wanted to reach out to our customers and invite them into our fellowship to the extent that they were comfortable joining in.  We began simply by asking them how we could pray for them.  Over the years our customers have filled out thousands of prayer request cards and we have faithfully prayed for their concerns and rejoiced over their thanksgivings for many years now.  We have been blessed to make many friends from among our customers.

Back then, one of our motivations was that maybe some people would want to join our church.  A few have come, but not many.  And that’s ok.  The church’s ministries are not necessarily intended to increase our attendance, and we also came to the understanding that perhaps our ministries should not add to our income either.  God gave us two commandments; the first is to love God with everything that we have, and the second is to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We came to understand that love is defined by giving, not by taking.  So we began a new chapter in the life of the Resale Shop.  We began a conscious effort to lower our prices in general and especially to offer some real bargains on luxury items.  We also began a program to seek out people who had suffered a serious loss such as a house fire, a death, a divorce, or other tragic loss and help them to start over in life at no charge.  We do charge a small amount of money for our goods and our goal is to utilize whatever our profit is to help others, but for those whose life has been touched by tragedy, we try our best to give whatever we’ve got to help them get on in life.

It is important to us that we reach out into our local community and show the people who are all our neighbors that they are loved by God and by us.  Our hope is that we become known in Wise County as the church that gives and that loves.  I suppose, to answer the question “What’s it for?” I would say: What we do in that little building speaks God’s love into this world that can be so dark and so lonely.  When people come to our little shop they bring the cares of their world.  They should be able to leave those cares behind and walk away from our little shop not just with some little trinkets, yes that, but more than that, they should walk away with a little bit of reassurance that they have been in God’s wilderness outpost and met the proprietor.