Volunteer!

Volunteer:

Volunteer: ‘a person who freely offers to take part in an enterprise or undertake a task’ – that is one dictionary definition for this important category of people, without whom so much of our civil society in this country would be inoperable. Of course, the adverb ‘freely’ can sometimes be stretched beyond credibility: we sometimes talk wryly of somebody being ‘volunteered’ for a task by somebody else, when in reality the only person I can truly volunteer is myself. But in its authentic meaning volunteering is a noble activity, and closely linked to altruism, because it is bound up not only with the idea of freedom but also with the idea of not being motivated by seeking any reward other than the satisfaction of the activity to which the volunteer pledges himself or herself.

The Church of England, of course, is a voluntary organisation, in the sense that it is one made up of volunteers – and that is true at every level, from the parish through the diocese to the national church. This is obviously true of those committed lay people, and self-supporting priests, who give so much of their energy, time and wisdom to supporting their churches in many varied ways; but it is also true of clergy too. ‘Stipendiary’ deacons, priests and bishops are just that – they do not receive a salary or wages in recompense for work done; rather, they are in receipt of a ‘stipend’, meaning a payment which is designed to set them free to be full-time volunteers in the service of the Lord and his glorious gospel.

Volunteering lies at the heart of church life, and it has done so ever since the time of the apostles, who were the first to abandon the comfortably remunerated work of fishing to follow the One who called them to be fishing for humans. ‘They left behind the hired servants in the boats’, the evangelists note pointedly – highlighting the wholeheartedness of the apostolic response to the Lord’s call for volunteers in his service. Throughout Christian history and still today, the whole economy, organisation and vitality of the church remains that of a voluntary society, and that means one in which work is undertaken, decisions are made, and authority is exercised only through the foundation of a freely given and received love for one another. We go astray when we try to regulate this divinely authored community of love by systems of command and control shaped by a secular society based on the principle of charging and paying for work done.

It is important to keep the voluntary principle at the forefront of our thinking as together we seek to shape our churches and our diocese in preparation for the future to which God is calling. Our new strategic framework sets out nine ambitious goals for us to aspire to over the next six years, including a doubling of our regular worshipping congregation, the formation of 200 new worshipping communities, 30 new vocations a year to each of ordained and licensed lay ministries, and so on. These goals cannot be achieved by buying in expertise, resources or manpower; they can only be reached through each of us volunteering to be a co-worker with the Spirit of God in the building up of the Kingdom. There are so many opportunities for volunteering both in the life of the church and in our outreach into our communities – from tea-makers to school governors, from food bank assistants to specialist advisers on our Diocesan Advisory Committee, from prison visitors to members of Diocesan Synod, and so on. We need volunteers all the time and in every place because our God still needs us to be partners in his great work of repairing and restoring the world and its peoples. I thank God every day for our thousands of volunteers; and I pray for thousands more.

Rt Revd Dr. Michael Ipgrave
Bishop of Lichfield