Vital volunteers

In the month of Volunteers’ Week, Jackie Macadam examines how thousands of people give their team each week to help the Church of Scotland.

THEY walk among us. Unseen. Often unthanked. But utterly vital to the way society – and our church – works. They are volunteers.

The Church of Scotland depends on its volunteers to keep going. It relies on the wealth of experience in its parishes, in its pews.

Highlighting the importance of volunteers to the Church, the Rev David Cameron minister at Kilmarnock: New Laigh Kirk, said: “Volunteers are the lifeblood of the Church of Scotland.”

He added: “From leading worship to serving tea, from pastoral visiting to governance, volunteers make it possible for the Church to live out its calling in every corner of the country. They are found not only within the walls of the kirk, but also at the heart of many Christian charities and community projects, extending the reach of the Church far beyond Sunday services.

“In congregations, volunteers serve in countless ways. Elders lead prayers and pastoral care. Musicians and readers enrich worship. Sunday School leaders and youth workers help nurture faith in the next generation. Others organise coffee mornings, maintain buildings, manage finances, or offer quiet companionship to the lonely. Without them, the day-to-day running of the church would be impossible.

“Beyond congregational life, volunteers carry the Church’s mission into the world. Many serve with the Church of Scotland social care arm, CrossReach, or local charities such as foodbanks, homelessness support, addiction recovery services or befriending schemes. Groups like these thrive on the compassion and commitment of volunteers offering practical help with housing, food, and companionship. In every setting, volunteers make Christ’s love visible and tangible.

“From leading worship to serving tea, from pastoral visiting to governance, volunteers make it possible for the Church to live out its calling in every corner of the country.

“Volunteering can be demanding, but it is also deeply joyful. It brings people together in fellowship and purpose. It builds up the Church. It bears witness to a gospel of hope. In a time when resources are stretched and needs are growing, volunteers are more important than ever — not as unpaid labour, but as fellow ministers of the good news. You cannot put a price on that!

“In the Church of Scotland, every act of service — seen or unseen — is part of the shared ministry of Christ’s body. Volunteers remind us that the Church is not a building or a programme, but a people shaped by love and sent to serve.”

The Rev Owain Jones retired recently from his parish on the Isle of Bute. He has fond memories of working with the volunteers who worked diligently alongside him.

“Mrs J was a sparklingly intelligent, wonderfully witty woman of 95, who played an even older reed organ, pumped by foot-pedals, in my first charge. She’d been a Sunday School teacher for 77 years, and organist for 72,” he said.

“One Sunday morning, her son handed me a note. “Dear Mr Jones; I’m so sorry; I’ve fallen and broken my hip. I won’t be at church for a few weeks…” I think she was away for six! But that morning, I had to preach and pump those pedals she’d pumped all those years. Before the middle of the second verse, I had a searing cramp in my left leg. Nobody had known that the bellows were split, and that Mrs Jones had had to pump about quadruple speed just to produce a sound! She must have done it by sheer willpower…

“‘Voluntas’ is the Latin word for ‘will’. People who ‘volunteer’ are willing to help, ‘willing themselves’ to make commitments that sometimes interfere with things they’d rather be doing. They conform their will to the needs of the group. Now, that’s ‘volunteering’, in any organisation. But in the life of the Church, there’s a deep but subtle difference.

“I’ve had treasurers who’d said 19 years previously: “I’ll do it for six months, no more!” and ‘Acting Treasurers’ who stayed in post for years until a successor could be found. I think of one Mission and Outreach convener who loved the parish, and drew the Session and congregation into that love, and took it out into the community. Youth leaders, BB officers, ‘Messy Church’ helpers who came up with all sorts of imaginative activities, but whose real gift was just taking children and teenagers seriously as human beings. Elders on door-duty, and people on the coffee rota, through whom the congregation embraced visitors, and made friends of strangers passing through. Volunteers all…

“The sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies drew a classic distinction between two human ways of being together: community, and society. A society is for something. Its members have a shared purpose, which they realise through a particular kind of activity. The purpose defines them.

“The Church is a community. So ‘What on earth is the Church for?’ is the wrong question. The better question is ‘What on earth is the Church?’ Paul’s answer is both simple and endlessly complicated: ‘Now, you are the Body of Christ, and each one of you a member.’ Each one of you does something different in, brings different gifts to, the life of the Body. ‘Volunteering’ means serving the Body so that the Servant King can serve the world. It means making our will one with His. That’s who we are. The Body of Christ, doing the will of Jesus, living, as he did, the life of the Kingdom here and now.”

The Church of Scotland Guild is perhaps one of the best examples of volunteering within the church.

Guild General Secretary Karon Gillon, explained the Guild simply could not function without volunteers.

“When I first began work with the church 11 years ago, I came from a background in the public and voluntary sector where volunteers played an important part in what we did,” she said.

“I was always amazed at their misconceptions about the church and the number of paid staff we have and a failure to appreciate how vital volunteers are to every congregation. In my own congregation, we have two paid members, the minister and the cleaner, and about 100 other folk who week in week out help with worship and other activities that make us who we are.

“The hospitality, the work with children and young people, the pastoral care, the worship team, the property team, the finance team the list is long and comprehensive. I would hazard a guess that churches are the biggest voluntary organisation in Scotland.

“I am sometimes asked how would the Guild manage without volunteers you ask? That’s easy – we wouldn’t.

“Volunteers are the backbone of the Guild, they have been for the past 137 years since the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland created the then Women’s Guild to allow women to become more engaged in the life and witness of the church. These women and now men have in the intervening period made a significant impact on the lives of people in their local communities, in other parts of Scotland and indeed across the globe. It is these volunteers who week in week out organise and run the programmes of the Guild which engage members in a wide variety of issues and encourage them to pray fervently for God’s work at home and overseas. It is these volunteers who make members feel valued and respected even when they are getting that bit older. It is these volunteers who have supported project partnerships raising awareness of issues such as homelessness, gender-based violence, female genital mutilation and prostitution.

“They have organised coffee mornings, bring and buy sales, sponsored events, soup lunches and so much more to raise almost £8 million for Guild projects and supported the church and other organisations with millions too. It is these volunteers who have embraced a partnership with the Guild in Malawi and who are open to learning and sharing with each other. Without volunteers the Guild, like the church, would not have survived. They are the lifeblood of our movement and we thank God every day for their dedication to His work.”

Volunteers’ Week takes place from June 2 to 8. Learn more at https://volunteersweek.org/