Age is just a number, and that number can’t stop Norm Jones from helping his community.
The 80-year-old member of the Pickerington Church of the Nazarene has led a group of volunteers called the Pickerington Furniture Ministry to get household items to those in need for about eight years.
“Our mission statement is as simple as this, to get stuff from people that don’t need it anymore to people that really need it,” Jones says.
A member of the church for about 20 years, Jones started the service after he overheard someone say they needed a piece of furniture for their home. He adds he couldn’t remember the item, but that it wasn’t anything lavish and that everyone should have.
“I just thought to myself, there are surely people all over our church that have one of those,” he says.
He put out a plea to the church for the piece of furniture and received an overwhelming response. So the volunteer program began.
Jones works with a group of five or six other volunteers to get all the work done.
The group has formed relationships with addiction treatment centers, operations that help incarcerated people and provide donations of household items to social services.
Jones says the group usually serves members of the Fairfield County area but have worked with people throughout central Ohio.
Typically, church members donate the pieces that the Pickerington Furniture Ministry distributes. However, as Jones’ group has grown and news of it has spread throughout central Ohio, community members who are not affiliated with the church have heard the call and begun to donate as well.
“I can’t even tell you how many times we’ve had people call and say they really need something, and then later that day someone else calls in and asks if anyone needs such-and-such, and it’s the exact thing that first person was looking for,” Jones says.
Jones says PickNaz has a garage and an old barn where they store donated pieces. The barn is set up like a store where visitors can come through and browse for what they need. The barn has become home to a large amount of donations from small appliances such as pancake turners to entire furniture sets.
The setup is helpful because many visitors who contact the Pickerington Furniture Ministry don’t know what they need or where to start, Jones says.
Though it’s a large part of what it does, the group of volunteers doesn’t stop at delivering household items.
Jones says it has something they call a “crockpot ministry.” Some of the women at the church were interested in the group’s mission, but wanted to find a way of helping that didn’t involve moving furniture.
He says these ladies have a basement full of donated crockpots and a list of people willing to make crockpot meals. Thanks to their hard work, hot meals are dropped off along with the furniture delivery.
The entire program runs on donations – patrons simply take what they need and no money is exchanged.
If the items are too big to fit in their vehicle, Jones will put a hold tag on it and deliver it Friday morning, which is when most of the deliveries take place.
“It’s just all a bunch of regular people just doing a little bit,” Jones says.
Jones says the work is the most fulfilling thing of his life. The group of volunteers has dropped off more than 225 crockpot meals and delivered about 7,500 pieces of household items.
“It’s had a great, great effect on my faith,” Jones says. “It’s a gift to be able to do it.”
Maddie Gehring is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
