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As church leaders, I know we are always looking for cost-effective ways to reach out into our community and draw people in. Mission Centers of Houston is an organization that I have partnered with to accomplish this very thing.  Mission Centers run the Compassion Center located in downtown Houston.  They have a partnership with several businesses, such as Walmart, Hasbro Toys, Frito-Lay, Nike, and Amazon. They receive shipments of overstock, out-of-season, and returned items in bulk.  They offer these items, free of charge, to churches.

I know this sounds too good to be true, that’s at least what I thought.

They only have two stipulations. First, the items must be given away and in no way resold; this means that they can’t even be given to Goodwill. And secondly, you must report back to them about the event, or the way you gave the items away.   

This year, we held an end-of-school summer kickoff event. We called it Bless Sealy. We invited the whole city to come.  I received 25 boxes full of things to give away.  We spread it out on tables in our facility and invited the community to come in and take whatever they wanted.  I held on to a couple of the higher value items, two brand new bikes, some electronics, and a first-up tent for door prize giveaways.  We had Bingo, hot dogs, and some kids’ activities.  We had over 100 people from the community come, and we were able to make connections and serve them. Our Youth Pastor has gone and gotten some higher-end items and given them away at youth events. They even gave us two 40lb. boxes of chicken tenders and a 30lb. of bacon that we utilized for a Missions fundraiser lunch.

There is an application and interview/vetting process you must go through, but this was not complicated at all. My contact at the Compassion Center is a guy named David Cripps. You can find his information at  https://missioncenters.org/TCC under the About tab at the top.  Shoot him a message and start this process, and see how you can partner with them to help reach our communities.

Terry Wright

Pastor of FBC Sealy.