Sunday, November 11, 2012

Probably a mistake

We have many school age children in our church.  I don't know about your schools in your locality, but around these parts - they have fund raisers.  And they have fund raisers upon fund raisers.  Plus their extra things have fund raisers.  You know - the junk that the kids are rallied to sell to win prizes that in actuality come from Oriental Trading or the Dollar Store.  The ones they have to sell $1000 in merchandise to get a pencil eraser.  Yeah.  Well we have them.  ALL the kids have them.

So why am I saying that this situation is a probably mistake.  Well - simple.  One of our new members who is still being courted thinks she is the only one whose kid sells crap I guess.  She had her daughter bring her fund raiser TO CHURCH this morning.

The probably mistake here is Sister Pastor actually being one of those who bought from this child.  That opens Pandora's box in my eyes.  Ok - all the kids line up with their various wrapping papers, junky jewelry, tamales (that's a new one this year), candy, and on and on.  We will get Sister Pastor to buy your junk.

When I was teaching (yeah, here we go), I learned early on not to participate in the Girl Scout cookies and so on.  You would be surprised how they came out of the woodwork.  The real eye-opener was when my students would hit me up with the school fund raiser junk!  I could see my having to buy from 150 kids.

SO I have ranted about this now and gotten it off my chest.  And, so like the talking heads on the TV who have to explain news conferences and the like, I will summarize.  I believe Sister Pastor and the others who bought this crap really opened themselves up for something that they will regret - especially since Sister Pastor has school aged children, and this woman was really gutsy to do this.  There is a place for selling fund raisers.  Church is not one of those places.

amen.

4 comments:

JuJu said...

Yeah,I think she's definitely going to learn the hard way.

Jeanette said...

People bring that fundraiser crap to my workplace all the time. I never buy anything. When my kids were little, we only sold to family and only bought from family. Made thinks a lot easier!

Judy said...

I agree!! Maybe Sister Pastor is buying so that when her kids sell the junk, she can go to the ones she bought from and they will have to reciprocate?

Marti said...

Oooh, you just reminded me why I am glad I live where I do. Only one family of school age children on my street and they have never come to my house selling.

I've never seen it at church, thank heavens.

I used to tell my kids they could participate in one fund raiser a semester, whether it was at the school or Girl Scouts or Awanas. I didn't want my neighbors to cringe when they saw my girls coming up to their door.

I know all organizations need to raise money, but REALLY, there needs to be a better way.