Church volunteering and exhaustion in the pandemic

If you want to waste time on the internet, put church names into the search engine of the Charity Commission and see how many ‘volunteers’ they have.

Lots of churches do what ours has done. The number of volunteers recorded is the size of the church family – it seems that everyone who belongs to the church is a ‘volunteer’.

Beneficial

Volunteering is crucial to charities and our communities. Many Christians serve their local communities in this way. Critical services are provided by those who give up their time unpaid for the benefit of others: from school governors and magistrates to food banks and sports clubs, and an enormous variety of things in between. It is beneficial for volunteers, too, as active volunteering can help with loneliness and poor mental health. But the word jars with me in the context of church. It is not that volunteering is not important to our church life. It is vital. However, we are not volunteers in the usual sense. We are so much more than that.