Sold out: Empty shelves testify to thrift shop's popularity

Mennonite Central Committee
Friday, 12 January 2001

It wasn't a soup line or a bread line. It was a clothes line. A long line -- one that poured into the new thrift shop until almost everything was gone.

A mere 45 minutes after the doors opened for the first time in September 1999, volunteers stood dumfounded in the nearly sold-out shop, operated and sponsored by the GKMI Mennonite synod.

Hard times had hit the community, with the outbreak of economic and political turmoil in 1997. But no one had bargained for this big a run on bargain shoes, clothes, toys and gadgets, said Agus Setianto, board chair of the thrift shop.

"The first time it opened for the public, there was a long line out the door," Agus said. "We were going to open the doors at 10 in the morning, but people were almost bursting in the door, so we opened at 9:30.

"One hundred people poured into the room, and in a short time we were out of stuff."

Selling goods at prices people can afford -- for a small fraction of what it would cost in a retail shop or market -- is GKMI's way of ministering to the community, said Andreas Christanday, executive director of the Christopherus Foundation, an interdenominational ministry.

He helped launch the ministry after visiting North American thrift shops in 1998 with an Indonesian cultural team and participants in the International Visitor Exchange Program sponsored by Mennonite Central Committee.

The shop, open Friday mornings at the GKMI headquarters, also challenges church members to serve needy people, he said.

"About 80 percent of people in churches aren't involved in ministry," Andreas said. "They're mostly singing, praying, witnessing, all spiritual things, which are good. The shop also helps us to serve socially."

The synod uses proceeds -- $400 that first day but much less on regular days -- to help fund GKMI ministries. The synod is working on a plan to give 20 percent of shop earnings to help church members and community people with scholarships, medical costs and other needs.

Synod members also donate items and help staff and stock the shop. They mend, sort and organize the merchandise and sell it to local people.

Regular shoppers -- including housewives, students and even Muslim neighbors -- come in weekly, searching the shelves for new treasures, Agus said.

"They often complain that the stuff is the same as last week, the same as two weeks ago," Agus said. "We just can't keep enough in stock."

Because of the shop's popularity, purchases are limited to two per family each shopping day. But people try to beat the system.

"When we first announced this limit, some people had five members of their family come, and each one bought two items," Agus said.

Keeping stocked requires a constant stream of goods, which can appear from faraway or close to home.

One time, when the shop got low on merchandise, it bought items from an import shop in Jakarta that supplies inexpensive goods from Singapore and Japan. Another time, Mennonites from Canada sent a shipment of items.

"There's a habit for some people here, and that's to put the favorite clothes, Bibles and other things of their deceased loved ones into the burial casket with them," Agus said.

"It's a kind of Chinese cultural thing which shows respect. We're just giving them another place to put [those things]."

For more information, or to contact Mennonite Central Committee, see their website at: www.mcc.org