Why Volunteering Matters

Last spring break, I helped lead a group of students on a service-learning trip to the U.S.-Mexico border. One of our days was spent serving with Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley.

As we arrived at the Humanitarian Respite Center, I thought I had a pretty clear picture in my mind of what the day would look like. I imagined interacting with people in the midst of a journey, people navigating the uncertainty and vulnerability that comes with migration, people who needed a safe place to rest before continuing on to wherever they were going next. But when we arrived, the people I expected to encounter weren’t there.

The reality of the situation had changed. Changes in policy had changed the role of the facility, too. The respite center had originally been established to welcome immigrants awaiting court hearings, providing food, showers, clothing and a safe place to spend the night before they traveled to family and friends in other cities and states.

Now, the center was responding to a different set of needs. It continued to provide food, clothing, showers, medicine and other supplies, but the people coming through its doors were increasingly people from the local community who were hungry, experiencing homelessness or otherwise vulnerable. So our group did what was needed that day. We sorted donated clothing and prepared warm meals that would later be distributed to people who needed them.

And while we worked, something happened that I didn’t expect at all. I met a nun who served there. In the course of talking, I discovered that she belonged to the same religious order as a dear family friend from my hometown. I grew up Catholic, and Sister Pat had been part of my congregation, my community and even my neighborhood. And here I was, hundreds of miles from home, serving at the border, talking with someone who knew her. It felt like a small-world moment. Or maybe it was a God’s-world moment! I had traveled to the border expecting to encounter a world that was unfamiliar to me. Instead, God reminded me that his world is deeply interconnected. The people we serve aren’t simply “people over there.” They are part of the same world, the same story, the same human family.

We often imagine service as something we plan. We identify a need, create a project, show up and accomplish the task. But the people and communities we serve aren’t static. Needs change. Circumstances change. Communities change. And the call to serve requires us to pay attention.

Catholic Charities hadn’t stopped serving because the particular need they had originally responded to had changed. They adapted. And they continued asking the question: What does this community need now?

As Christians, we believe that the world is not as it should be. Sin has fractured creation, relationships and communities. We see the effects of that brokenness all around us. But we also believe that God has not abandoned his creation.

God is restoring! Through Jesus, God entered into our broken world to reconcile, redeem and restore. And remarkably, God invites us to participate in that work. And that truth should shape the way we think about volunteering.

We aren’t the saviors. We don’t show up because the world is waiting for us to fix it. We show up because God is already at work, and he invites us to join him. Sometimes that means meeting an immediate need: preparing a meal, packing food, repairing a home, mentoring a child or simply sitting with someone who is lonely.

But something happens to us as we serve. We are formed. We begin to see differently. Volunteering gets us outside of ourselves and outside of our normal routines. It introduces us to people, places and experiences we might otherwise never encounter. It expands our understanding of God’s world. It also teaches us to listen.

We may arrive thinking we know exactly what someone needs, only to discover that the most faithful thing we can do is pay attention, ask questions and respond to what is actually in front of us. And sometimes, through serving, we discover something about ourselves. We discover gifts we didn’t know we had. We discover needs that stir something deep within us. We discover places where our abilities and passions intersect with the needs of the world.

Theologian Frederick Buechner famously described vocation as the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger. We can discover that place by serving.

That was part of what happened for me at the border. Our group arrived expecting one kind of experience. Instead, we found ourselves participating in a different expression of the same restorative work. The need had changed, but the invitation to serve had not. And there was something beautiful about that. We didn’t get to choose the chapter of the story we were stepping into. We simply got to participate in the chapter God was writing in that place, at that moment.

I think that’s one of the great gifts of volunteering. We may begin by thinking we’re going somewhere to make a difference for someone else. But somewhere along the way, God changes the way we see the world. He changes the way we see other people. He changes the way we see ourselves. He changes us! And as he does, he teaches us to recognize his work around us.

We may not know what chapter we’ll step into when we say yes. But we might be surprised by what God does, not only through our hands, but in our hearts.