Thoughts about stuff

From a college friend of mine, now pastoring a church in Kentucky. He gets it.

Truth be told, I am fairly low maintenance and simplistic. I like my electronic gadgets (cell phone, laptop, Zune...), but nothing over the top. No flat screen TVs. No ESPN. No iWhatevers.

I enjoy an air mattress when I camp, but no RV. No boat. No 4-wheeler (a misdemeanor in Kentucky!). I can travel reasonably light. No problem re-using jeans, shirts, and yes...even those.

However, homelessness took things to a HNL ('hole 'nother level...for the non-Ed Young Jr. fans in the crowd). I mean, living out of a plastic Kroger sack. Nothing to my name but what I was wearing and that little bag of...well, more nothing. Though I quickly discovered that when you are homeless...the list of essentials quickly dissipates. Partly based on lack of need and partly based on the fact that the definition of “need” changes when you actually have to carry it with you all the time. (How much would you need that 56” plasma if you were toting it with you all the time?)

So here comes some flat out crazy information. The self-storage business in America is now grossing in excess of 20 billion dollars. One out of every ten households utilizes a self-storage unit. Yes, that means that one out of every ten households in America has more stuff than they can even fit in every nook and cranny of every closet and garage of their home, which is already in grand excess beyond the average home size across the globe. One recent estimate indicates there are approximately 23 million…23 million!!!...self-storage units in the good ol’ U.S. of A. 23 million units of “stuff” that people needed so badly that they have locked it away in an off-site facility to rarely, if ever, utilize.

As I sat on the street corner with my trustee Kroger bag beside me, I got to wondering, “What if we had a giant yard sale?” I am talking gigantic! And we sold everything in these units. Then took the proceeds, and turned these units into low (or “No”) cost housing for the poor and the needy, would that impact the homeless crisis in our nation?

Then my mind truly raced into no-man’s land. It is possible, maybe even probable, that there are people in need of something that someone else has just rotting away in a storage facility. Or…and you might want to sit down for this one because the thought actually made me a little nauseous…take a modern day mega-church of 10,000 people. Is it possible that there is someone sitting in that church who has something in storage desperately needed by someone three rows up and two seats over? Could the Body of Christ actually be forking untold millions into that 20+ billion dollar industry to store things that other people in the same Body desperately need?

It seems that many church concepts from the book of Acts have floated by the wayside. Can you imagine a pastor and board member actually going to a parishioner’s house today, knocking on the door, and saying, “Hey…according to our records, you aren’t tithing 10% of all your income.” Let alone the whole dragging them out of the door dead part!

But what about the concept of everyone having everything in common? Is it just too old school? Too radical? Something to think about as you open that monthly invoice for that storage facility full of…what exactly was in there?