I received an email from my neice who lives in Kentucky requesting that I become a fan of her recently posted facebook club, "Camp Closet". I clicked on the link and was happy to see that the club was a newly form "community service ministry" that she had started in her church.
This ministry offers used clothing to anyone in the community at no charge and is tied to their church's food pantry ministry.
Read the email below to collect a more detailed look into this great ministry idea:
Reprinted by permission from Kristie of “Camp Closet”
I did start this ministry. Several years ago, I had the idea but wasn’t able to get it all together. Recently, our church opened a food pantry to provide food for hungry people in the community. We started out collecting non-perishable food items from the membership and then became partners with the God’s Pantry and now we buy almost all of our food from them. The reason I mention the food pantry is because its success paved the way for me to finally get the clothing ministry going. The “Camp Closet” is housing in an empty Sunday School room in our Education building. We took out all the furnishings and put clothing rods around three sides of it. The fourth wall is filled with shelves. We currently accept donations of clothes, linens, and shoes only. We specifically tell our members, no underwear or socks! (Who wants to sort through used underwear and socks??) We don’t currently solicit donations from the community because right now, we do not have collection receptacles for that. Also, we are skiddish about drawing bugs and rodents. And, we don’t want to become a dumping ground for people’s junk. (Sometimes the Good Will bins in town look like they may as well be a dumpster) So, our members bring in clothes, usually in garbage bags and leave them outside the door of the Camp Closet (it stays locked to keep kids and folks from rummaging through it). My volunteers and I go out about twice a week and go through the items and hang them up according to gender (men’s, women’s, youth, children). We started out trying to keep them together by sizes as well, but it just became too much work to do that. In the beginning, we were short on hangers so we asked the people who came to get clothes to leave the hangers. Now, we have received so many hangers, we can’t hardly store them all. So, we let the people take the hangers now. It’s a real display of us asking God to supply a need and Him just totally overflowing us with a supply! Church members bring in plastic grocery bags which we use to bag up clothes for our customers.
The one question that I struggled with in the beginning was whether to limit how much clothes a person could get. I got different opinions on that from my closest friends. Some suggested that we use their family size to determine how much clothes a person could get. Some thought it should be a straight number – for example, you can get three outfits a piece. But, I could never come up with a way that I felt comfortable with. I finally realized that God was telling me not to limit Him! Didn’t I believe that He could fill keep that room filled with clothes no matter how much anyone took out of it? So, once I made the decision that there would be no limits, I felt a huge sense of peace come over me and I knew that was the right decision! However, I wanted to discourage folks in our church who really didn’t have a need from coming in and just getting things because they thought a blouse was so cute or whatever. So, we have a book that we ask you to sign so that we can keep up with how many individuals are served. So, that helps to keep people from “shopping” when they don’t really have a need to. But, even if the wealthiest person in our church came in and got clothes and signed the book – we would let them. We believe that God will deal with the hearts of those who take without a true need. And, we recognize that you cannot judge who is needy and who isn’t by the looks of them! So, we open the doors to everyone!
We have been in operation now for about three months. The room is filled wall to wall with clothes. Each distribution day, people come in and leave with bags and bags of clothes, and yet the room is always full! I thought that the donations would have subsided by now, but no. Each time I go out there, there are more clothes waiting to be put up. It is like the manna that God supplied in the wilderness. No matter how many clothes we give out, there are always more waiting to be put up! In fact, we have so many clothes that we had to put the summer things in the attic. We will get them out in a month or so and take down some of the cold weather items.
Our church as already decided to expand the Camp Closet and the Pleasant Pantry. We will soon double our size. Eventually, I would like to have enough room to be able to accept donations of toys and housewares. Eventually, we will probably be open more than just two days a week. When they expand the room and build a new wall, I’m asking that they put in a little “trap door” (about the size of kitchen cabinet door – maybe slightly bigger) so that people can stuff their donations in through it. That will keep the bags from piling up in the hall way.
Oh…we also get calls from people whose homes have been destroyed by fire and such. Used to be that we would send an email out to the membership asking for clothes for the family. Now, we just tell those families to come on it and get what they need! We have regular distribution days and times, but we will open the closet up anytime for people who need it.
We have receipts that we can give to donors if they would like them for their taxes. So far, no one has asked for one.
I like to try and get all my incoming clothes hung up prior to distribution day so that my time can be spent helping people find stuff to fit them, bagging up their things and talking to them and being friendly and inviting them to church and stuff. We have some repeat customers that come in all the time – and that’s okay. But, I love it when we get a first time customer who comes in and you can really see how grateful they are. The teenagers and kids that come in with their parents are such a blessing. You can tell that most of them do not go shopping for clothes much (if at all). When they find something “stylish” that fits them, their faces just light up. We take in a lot of clothes that still have tags on them. I like being a “personal shopper”.
Something else that we learned – if you are unbagging clothes and hanging them up while customers are there, they will stand there all day and watch what comes out of the bags to see if it’s something they want! Our room is really not big enough for more than about five people to mill around it at one time. And…we didn’t want people there all day. So, we set up a work station out in the hall way now and sort through clothes out there during distribution times.
We have had one person that I know of that came to the Pantry and then came to church and got saved. We have had many more that have come to our church services. We have planted many seeds and will many more!
Our church has just really gotten filled with a spirit of giving like it’s never been before. For many years, I’m told, our church focused on activities that were geared to the current membership. We didn’t do a lot that reached out into the community. Now, that has all changed and we are really excited about what God is doing with both the food pantry and the clothing ministry. We have visions of a “city on the hill”. We dream about having a garage where we can do oil changes and minor repairs for free, a barber shop where we can give you a free hair cut, a food cart where we can give you a cup of coffee, a sausage biscuit or a sandwich, and a little gift shop where you can get Christmas and birthday presents for free.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Frankfort-KY/Camp-Closet/325465072060
