Most of you know that I work part time at church in a volunteer staff position. I’m a Ministry Assistant at CAN, which basically means that I’m around a lot and that I get to jump in and help with whatever projects are most needed or catch my interest. But when I’m not working at church, I work for a nonprofit volunteer center whose mission is to bring people together to strengthen communities through meaningful volunteer action. Our work boils down to connecting people who want to volunteer with the needs of local nonprofit organizations. I’ve been working there for over five years, almost exactly the same length of time I’ve been at CAN.
It’s a neat job. I get to visit all kinds of nonprofit organizations and learn about the work they do. Some organizations everyone has heard about–Salvation Army, Minneapolis Parks and Rec, Catholic Charities, Habitat for Humanity–and other organizations are so small that when I visit or hear about them, it’s for the first time. A Rotta Love, for example, is an organization that helps Rottweilers. Or there’s Peace House, a place in Minneapolis where anyone can come in off the street for a hot meal and some space to relax. I also get to meet a lot of people who genuinely want to make a difference in the Twin Cities–families, retirees, youth, corporate groups, church groups, college students–people from a wide variety of backgrounds.
I am regularly amazed by people’s desire to help others. And there are many, many nonprofit agencies I respect for the work they do in our Twin Cities community. Yet, of all the organizations I’ve visited or heard about, my dream job is still to work at Church of All Nations. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one of them is that I don’t think any social service agency can match the impact of a group of diverse people caring for each other in an intimate and healthy community. Every day at my work for the volunteer center, I see requests from agencies for volunteers to visit older adults, mentor children, provide childcare, help write resumes, offer job coaching, provide parenting advice, give people rides, provide food for families in need and on and on. I think it’s great that organizations and volunteers are trying to meet these needs, however I can’t help but think how much better a solution it would be to have pockets of small, vibrant communities across the city where these needs are naturally met within, instead of met piecemeal by strangers.
This is why I love our church. Everything I mentioned on that list of requests from nonprofits are things members of this church do for each other on a regular basis, without thinking twice. These things happen so naturally because we are a family, meaning helping one another is part of the natural rhythm of our life together. We are a congregation, a family, diverse in ages, cultures, incomes, expertise, emotional stability, maturity and background which results in a constant and diverse flow of needs but also diverse gifts and resources to meet those needs. I love the constant back and forth of giving and receiving in our church: everyone has something to offer and everyone needs something, making no one person better than another. I know that if more small communities like ours were to emerge, I’d see fewer pleas for volunteers come through my office at work. It’s for this reason I choose to put so much time and attention into building up our congregation, rather than spending a lot of time volunteering for some of the many opportunities I hear about through my work. If we weren’t tending to each other’s needs here, we would be sending one another to wait in line at agencies for help. Because of that, as long as I am a part of this church and see need within it, it is here I will spend the bulk of my time and resources. And as long as our church continues to grow in faithfulness and hospitality to all of God’s people, this is where I will serve with the most loyalty and passion.
This isn’t to say that I think a commitment to a local body should blind us to the needs of the larger community in which we live, or even to the needs of other small communities. Not only do members in a community need to help other members, but communities need to help other communities. Where would we be if the group from Jeremiah’s home church hadn’t come to sheetrock our south wall? Or if we hadn’t received grants as a new church development? Or if wonderful friends of our congregation didn’t come to preach and encourage us? A strong network of communities helping each other is vitally important, and every community should thoughtfully consider how to contribute to meeting needs beyond its own. But we can’t forget that our starting point is here. It’s in creating a community that loves, advocates and cares for each other, that affectionately brings new members into its fold, and that has so much love within it that it must then share that love with the world.
I was really moved two Sundays ago when we all filled out our stewardship pledge forms. I love Stewardship Sunday. I love showing God my gratitude for all the things he has done for me through this church, and I love thinking about some specific ways that I will serve the church in the coming year. In a community that has given me so much, giving back to it is a joy and a privilege, and I sensed it was with much happiness and humility that most of us brought our gifts before God and the church two Sundays ago, rather than from duty, guilt or obligation.
Stewardship Sunday also reminded me how much I enjoy being a Christian. Being a Christian means you get to grow in love. I am a very selfish, self-absorbed and self-protecting person. There are many ways I’m currently incapable of being genuinely loving and generous, but I praise God because those limitations are fewer today than they were a year ago. I earnestly pray to God that my heart will be even more open to those around me next year than it is this year, but I praise God and this church for their grace to only expect us to serve out of what is in our hearts to do with joy. This year when I filled out my form, I found even more love, excitement, and energy to serve than ever before, something I pray I’ll be able to say every year.
It is amazing to watch the body of Christ at work in our church. I love that our diversity of gifts means that I personally don’t have to chair the building committee, meet with legislators and other community leaders to do advocacy work, or coordinate our Sunday meals. I am very, very grateful to the people in our church who do these things because they are important, necessary, and we all benefit from them. My own interests lie in different areas: this summer it was the garden. I had the best time working with so many of you, watching things grow and nurturing the plants that would eventually produce our Sunday meals. A lot of wonderful support for the garden was offered in all kinds of ways, but some of you told me that while you liked the things the garden produces, you didn’t care for the dirtiness of the process. Your gratitude for our work made that okay because in the body there are many gifts and somehow our natural preferences for giving tend to be varied enough that everything that needs to get done, somehow gets done. Certainly we all pitch in from time to time to do jobs we don’t love because they need doing and require a lot of participation–church clean-up days or washing dishes after fellowship are probably good examples of this–but I think it’s really neat that the majority of ways we give and serve are able to come out of the areas that bring us life.
We’re not heavy on formal programming or outreach around here. We’re more interested in being a community where people truly know one another and are deeply ministered to through their relationships with each other. Out of the healing and love we experience through our relationships with God and one another, we hope the joy, passion, and initiative to reach out to those around us will be inspired. Countless acts of service are done by members of this church for one another. These acts of love are as diverse as we are, some noticed, others not, and all extremely valuable.
I am constantly in awe of the Just Do It cell group whose work around the church we would miss terribly if it were gone, but is done so quietly we often don’t realize that someone had to do it. The ladies of this cell group clean corners of this church many of us would fear to venture near, they put on bake sales and book sales, they keep the Sharing Room incomprehensibly organized, Bev bakes for fellowship nearly every Sunday, Josette made the beautiful Christmas banners hanging from the church. We are so lucky to have these ladies who “Just Do It!” Mickel’, Hikari and I sometimes joke about being Just Do It members in training because we admire and value their work so much and aspire to be like them.
The new discipleship cohort made up of five young women also does a ton of work around here–often dirty work– and they seem to do it with pleasure! They are on the roof, or digging trenches, cooking meals or cleaning. Other members faithfully serve in the nursery, help others job hunt, teach yoga, mow the church lawn, help others move, and show people how to keep a personal budget. Many professionals in our congregation offer their expertise in all kinds of ways to our church as a whole and to individual members. Our new moms and young parents, who are so strapped for time, eagerly help out even newer parents than themselves through words of encouragement, advice, and passing on of clothes and baby items their own children no longer need. And the generosity of resources in this congregation! Did you know that recently a member of our congregation anonymously donated a new freezer to our church so that we can better store food leftover from fellowship? And our fellowship lunches – everyone in this church gets a meal every Sunday! I know that has helped many of our budgets. We house each other, people have donated cars for members without, we have bought each other clothes and given people furniture. The pots in my kitchen came from a family who no longer needed them and I am able to pay affordable rent because I live in a house owned by a former CAN intern. The generosity taking place in this congregation goes on and on, and somehow, the more we give, the richer we all feel.
If you ever happen to have energy to serve but lack ideas, please find me. Ideas and possibilities are endless, and I would love to help anyone interested get more involved in the life of our congregation in ways they would enjoy. As I’ve shared, it’s amazing what can happen when we are led by love, and follow what inspires us. This kind of giving is life to our souls and a gift to others. I hope each of us and our church as a whole will be able to say with more conviction every year, it is truly more blessed to give than to receive.
