As Craig and his wife Sherri were driving around the Nashville area helping with the flood relief, they noticed a lot of furniture, especially chairs, piled up in the trash heaps waiting to be hauled away.
“I kept looking at them and thinking, how can we find beauty in all this brokenness?” Sherri pondered.
It was an image Sherri was unable to shake from her mind, especially as she drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, God woke Sherri with an idea. “CHAIRity.”
Sherri and Craig started asking homeowners if they would mind them rescuing their discarded chairs and using them as part of an auction to raise money for flood victims.
These chairs would be sanded down, primed and then delivered to various visual artists, vocal artists, sports figures and other local celebrities for them to paint, decorate and add their own special touch to create unique works of art. The chairs will then be auctioned off online with the proceeds going to benefit victims of the flood.
“I knew it was going to take a lot of work to get these chairs ready,” said Craig Parrish, who’s ministry Double Impact, organizes both local service projects and international missions. “We needed some serious manpower.”
“We volunteer regularly at the Nashville Rescue Mission,” said Craig. “I knew they had the manpower and thought they might be interested in helping out.”
“When Craig asked if the men in our program would like to help with this project, I immediately saw a parallel,” said Currey Womack, Director of the Men’s Programs at the Mission. “Don’t we all sometimes feel like a chair that is broken, tossed to the curb and no longer has any value? Well, we might feel that way, but that’s not how God sees us. He is ready and waiting with His arms wide open, to pull us out of the rubble, clean us up and restore us to something even better than we were before. Talk about a metaphor for what we try to offer to the men and women who come through our life recovery program.”
While Sherri got busy rounding up local artists and celebrities to make masterpieces out of these chairs, many of the men enrolled in the Mission’s life-recovery program used their free time to sand the chairs, prime them and make their own mark on them writing scripture verses on the bottom.
“News travels fast,” said Sherri. “I’m getting calls from complete strangers asking how they can help with this project. I’m amazed at how God has brought all the right people together to make this happen. I just want everyone who has been affected by the floods to know that there is beauty in the brokenness. If we will just turn to God, He will restore us.”.
If you’d like more information about Double Impact and the “CHAIRity” visit their website.
Stay tuned for more, as we will update you on the progress the chairs make and will let you know about the date for the online auction.