Spring Cleaning

One common problem in churches around the country would have to be storage, or in our case lack there of.  Churches do a great job of accumulating stuff.  There are always people that look through their house and think "I have no use for this anymore, but I'm sure the church could use it!"  This is not a bad mindset to have.  If only people had that same attitude about their money.  But that is for another time.

The visual ministry at Word of Peace has done a great job at having a wide variety of useful items that were acquired at little to no cost.  But over the past 3 years we have looked at our storage room and said the same thing: "We need to go through this and clean."  

This past week we finally did just that.  It felt so good.  

Some things we learned that could be helpful to other churches. 

Enough Storage is a Rare Commodity.

To put it lightly, we were starting to be a fire hazard.  The decorations, worship elements and seasonal items were beginning to encroach on the fuse boxes and that's a big No-No!  We have shelves but they were overflowing.  We also have two offsite storage units that we have been too lazy to get bring stuff to.  If you have little to no space on site I highly recommend looking into off site storage lockers for your seasonal items.  For Word of Peace we keep our Christmas decorations, Vacation Bible School supplies, kids choir play sets and once a year festival games in the lockers.  This is a huge weight off the small storage rooms we have here on site.



Organization, Organization, Organization!

Investing in shelving, strong clear plastic tubs and labeling can save the day.  One of the hardest things we dealt with this year was a departure of 3 of our long time visual ministry team members and they new where and what everything was.  Rather than calling them every time we needed to find something we decided to go through everything relabel everything.  The end result was fantastic and anyone can walk into our room and know where something is.  

Inventory  

I like to work in a way that is very similar to one of my favorite TV show growing up: MacGyver.  He would take the materials around him and get out of a jam and save the world.  Now, I am not saving the world, but saving money and using what you have rather than buying new every time is key in a church.  The problem was I had no idea what materials we had to use.  This may take some time but:

1.  Go through everything
2.  Label and group together like seasons or materials
3.  Create a spreadsheet with all of the supplies and keep it updated



This way you can reference the work you have done and pick and choose from the supplies you already own to create something new.  

Involve Others

As a staff member it is good that I know and hold the inventory of the Visual Ministry supplies, but our church is packed with volunteers and other ministries that could use the supplies we have.  Share your knowledge with others and invite them to respectfully use them.  You as a church are in the business of ministry and helping each other out.  Other churches are also in the same boat.  We welcome people and churches that want to use what we have.  Anything to spread the good news of Jesus Christ.

In the end it feels so good to step back and look at a room that was packed and feel like we have "extra" room now.  Just remember to keep tabs on the clutter, it will sneak up on you.  

Here are some more pictures of what we did.  

 Exploding into the sanctuary!

Our awesome Volunteers

During 

After!