Hospitality, Healing, and Hot Chocolate: My Volunteering Story

I have been a grateful member of St James’s Church for over five years and during my time here I have been involved in all sorts of different volunteering roles across the social justice projects and within the congregation. I was therefore really excited to join the staff team six months ago to oversee all things volunteering at St James’s and manage the outreach projects. Before I began in post, I had been involved as a volunteer with the food outreach projects which provide hospitality and hot meals to people going through homelessness and helped to manage the Wardrobe project supplying essential items of clothing and toiletries to our guests. I also volunteered with our International Group community which supports refugees and people going through the asylum-seeking process. Within the congregation I’ve variously been a Sunday Welcomer, a member of the serving team, an intercessor and a hot chocolate maker (!) at our Tuesday evening Sanctuary service. I have also welcomed crowds of the public to the amazing Soul at St James’s monthly gospel event in the courtyard.

This may all sound as if I’ve been quite busy, but the truth is I often meandered between roles (with gratitude to the patience of the rota organisers!), trying out first one thing, and then settling on another, and taking time away as I’ve needed due to other life pressures and then reinvolving myself as I felt able. No matter my level of involvement, volunteering at St James’s has been a source of joy and connection to others across the wider St James’s community during the years I’ve been here.

However, my volunteering journey did not begin the moment I stepped across the threshold of the church. Whilst friends of mine who joined St James’s at a similar time dived straight into volunteering, it was a year after I arrived before I felt able to dip a toe into the many ways that there are to get involved. I came to St James’s following a difficult chapter in my life and looking back I can see that I first had to allow the generosity of the love and welcome that were offered to me to work their way into me and become the belonging and ‘rootedness’ that I needed – and that we all need.

A famous passage about love in John’s Gospel states that “we love because he first loved us”, and this to me sums up the heart of volunteering. What we call volunteering is in fact extraordinarily involuntary as the love we have received in our lives through human relationships and communities of all kinds, overflows into reaching out to help others. At St James’s this love is importantly also about creating a community that welcomes, includes and nurtures anyone who wishes to belong to it, without exception. It is a love that I am especially privileged to see lived out by all our volunteers with the outreach projects who include people from outside the congregation, people of different faiths as well as people who do not align with a religious belief. The involuntary nature of volunteering is what is sometimes described as ‘vocation’ in church language, but it is a universal principle of human interconnection and how we are drawn into relationship with one another, recognising that our own flourishing is contingent on that of others. What is asked of each of us in the work of love and justice is small and yet we enter into the Divine imagination as we live out the hope for a world transformed through initiatives which work for the dignity and equity of all people. This is love in action, and when we create space for it, we discover that there can never be a shortage of it. This abundance arises from what I think of as the ‘bidirectional’ flow of volunteering. As a volunteer at Sunday Breakfast (now Sunday Breakfast Club) I always received far in excess of the small amount of time and energy that I gave; I would arrive bleary eyed at 8am on a Sunday (I am NOT a morning person!) to serve coffees and hot food to our guests, and the kindness and generosity of spirit that many of them showed to me never failed to move me. The simple act of service of preparing and serving a meal or having a conversation with a guest also had the effect of distracting me from whatever worries might be preoccupying me, turning me outwards to think beyond my own concerns. I’m quite sure that none of our guests had any idea how much they helped me – and continue to help me as it’s been a joy to continue some of those relationships in my new role.

I believe that volunteering should be ‘life-giving’, and that creating ways for everyone to give as they can of their gifts and abilities in order to receive what they need in abundance is core to the blessing of life at St James’s. There are so many ways to become part of what we do, and to give according to the time and energy that you have. It’s also important to say that it’s fine not to volunteer, to simply receive, knowing that this is at least as important as giving. As the adage goes, “you are enough” and your presence is gift!

If you would like to explore ways to get involved with volunteering at St James’s or have a chat about the opportunities on offer, please email me at outreachmanager@sjp.org.uk. You can also visit our volunteering page to learn more Volunteer with us