BRENTWOOD, TN — The rummage sale pricing committee at Calvary Ridge Community Church, formed in March 2024 to establish a standardized pricing guide for donated goods, has concluded its third year of monthly meetings without assigning a price to a single item.

The committee, which currently has seven members and has had fourteen over its operational history, convened 31 times across 26 months and produced three working drafts of a tiered pricing framework that no member has fully endorsed. Eleven boxes of donated goods — including a complete Encyclopedia Britannica set, a Nordic Track from an unspecified decade, and what appears to be an original-issue percolator — remain stacked along the east wall of the fellowship hall, tagged only with the word “DONATED.”

“We’re very close,” said committee chair Barbara Nowak, 67, a retired schoolteacher who joined the committee believing it would take one meeting. “Once we resolve the hardcover-versus-paperback differential and agree on a depreciation model for small appliances, I think we’ll be in a strong position to begin actual pricing.”

“The Crockpot question alone has consumed seven meetings. It has a crack in the lid but it does work. That’s a nuanced situation.”

Former committee member Doug Schaeffer, 54, resigned in November after the group tabled a motion to simply price everything at one dollar. He described the experience as “theologically clarifying.”

The rummage sale was originally scheduled for May 2024. A new target date of fall 2026 has been proposed but not formally adopted pending a quorum.

At press time, a woman from the congregation had quietly sold the percolator for three dollars out of her own car, and no one had said anything about it.