Those of you who attended the 2010 Church of God General Assembly in Orlando remember that it was, for some departments of the church, the last time of existence, as as result of the sweeping reorganisation first promulgated the previous January.  One of those was Laity Ministries, where I was the Ministries Coordinator.

Our department resourced churches for almost forty years, and had a considerable inventory, a good deal of which we had to dispose of.  But how to do it?  The solution came from an interesting source, the Church Mouse resale shop in Palm Beach.

My mother helped to start the Church Mouse in 1970 in a process which I describe in A State of Being.  The store has gone on to become something of an institution on the island.  After the end of “the season,” as Palm Beachers say, the Church Mouse closes for the summer, but not before they have a closing sale.  This year that sale is taking place starting tomorrow and is a progressive discount as follows:

  • Monday, Tuesday: 50 percent
  • Wednesday, Thursday: 75 percent
  • Friday, Saturday: 90 percent

Laity Ministries’ close-out sale followed just about the same pattern.  Needless to say, many Church of God pastors and laity were in shock, but they were blessed by our pricing and we were blessed by not having to take most of what went on this discount back to Cleveland.  And I don’t know of any other department which did it this way.