PASADENA, Calif. — Mennonite Church USA’s Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference will open a new thrift store, Full Circle Thrift, in the next few months in the Pasadena area.

The store name and logo were chosen through an online survey. The name recognizes how the store will recycle used articles and invest profits back into kingdom work.

The three-leaf logo is intended to acknowledge its identity as a Mennonite project, by subtly incorporating the MC USA dove-and-branch logo.

Full Circle Thrift will provide the financial foundation for a center for conference congregations that PSMC hopes to establish. Tentatively called the Anabaptist Resource Center, it is envisioned as a place that would supply resources from MC USA, Everence, Mennonite Central Committee and PSMC, as well as deliver immigration services, offer financial planning for churches and pastors, hold Anabaptist classes and more.

Full Circle Thrift also plans to create jobs for the community, recycle high-quality used clothing and other items and promote the Anabaptist values of peace, justice and environmental care.

A location committee is seeking a site of around 5,000 square feet. Eighty percent of the funds needed to open the store have been raised, with less than $18,000 left to go.

Churches around the conference have been collecting items to provide the store with a good start-up inventory and finding ways to get them to the collection site at Mountain View Mennonite in Upland.

First Mennonite Church of San Francisco sent donations south in a rental truck that made stops in the Central Valley to collect other churches’ goods.

Pacific Southwest Conference mission minister David Gray is leading the project and invites prayer as planning continues.

Monetary donations are welcome at PSMC, Full Circle Thrift, PO Box 39038, Phoenix, AZ 85069; or online at pacificsouthwest.org/donate.

Reprinted from Panorama, the publication of Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference.