...and if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail. -Isaiah 58:10-11
WE ARE CALLED TO parched places, called to serve as ever-flowing springs of water. Faith-based volunteer programs-Jesuit Volunteer Corps, Lutheran Volunteer Corps, the Mercy Corps, multiple Mennonite volunteer programs, and a host of others-transform Isaiah's vision into practical application, serving as watered gardens for those following the call and those benefiting from it. In facilitating a volunteer movement to urban and rural America and to the two-thirds world, these programs embrace three tenets: to work on behalf of other people in need, to cultivate intentional Christian community, and to live a simple lifestyle.
In what are typically one- or two-year commitments (although some people are called to voluntary service as a way of life), these programs provide a place for daily challenges and blessings-to laugh and to cry with others on the journey, to give back a portion of what we have been graciously given, to mourn the suffering of a broken world, and to celebrate the promise of a liberating gospel. They place volunteers in uncomfortable spaces, from the uncomfortable inner cities across the nation to the uncomfortable situation of sharing a home and economic support with eight or 10 adults. At the same time, they are "light rising in the darkness," providing for the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of those who are called to parched places.
"We're trying to offer a year of spiritual formation in a Christian context," said Rose Berger, director of the Sojourners Internship Program. "Community is a central theme for us. Part of our discipling process is working in our ministries, living in a low-income neighborhood, putting oneself in a position of being challenged-in places that are otherwise uncomfortable. Community provides a place to explore what the gospel has to say about that situation, while providing emotional caring and perspective."
Volunteers serve as advocates, teachers, community organizers, and developers, and work with the mentally ill, elderly, children, prisoners, homeless people, refugees, and persons with AIDS. Michael Isensee put on a suit everyday to work in the Lutheran Office of Governmental Affairs. Reija Eeva came from Finland to pack gourmet soup mixes and counsel other packers at the Women's Bean Project in Denver. Jenny Dillon, a registered nurse, knew she wanted to work at Christ House, a medical facility for homeless men in Washington, D.C., but chose to do so as a volunteer with Mennonite Board of Missions.
"I was interested in making that a lifestyle and not just a choice for a small period of time," said Dillon, who is still a servant in Christ House, although she recently ended her formal connection with MBM after more than two years. "I was looking at volunteer agencies as a way to pursue a goal rather than an end in themselves. Volunteerism was a vehicle to help me fulfill that lifestyle."
THE LOCATIONS OF volunteer programs-urban and rural America, the two-thirds world-provide at least an introduction to what society looks like through the eyes of people at the bottom. "Most often that's not truly a shared experience, but volunteers begin to get an insight to people who are relatively poor, largely dependent on government assistance for their everyday lives," said Berger. "Also, I think for many folks who grew up in the suburbs, it begins to reduce the stereotype of what inner-city life is really like. You develop a great understanding of what a neighborhood can be like in a positive sense."
The Women's Bean Project and the Urban Servant Corps gave Eeva, a social worker and Lutheran deacon in Finland, the opportunity to build relationships with women from Five Points, a Denver neighborhood where many Americans would never venture.
"If I would be a tourist it would be very difficult to see inside of the culture," she said. "It was very interesting to know how people are doing things, how they think about helping others. I can say that I got friends there, and it gave me the chance to know their lives, their history, backgrounds, the situation they're living in now, a chance to see women's situation in this society, the different places they can get help to find a better life."
Community and spirituality cannot be separated from the work that these programs cultivate. "You need people who believe in a similar way, you need a place of support and nurture to be able to do the work we're here on this Earth to do," said Chris Bekemeier, executive director of Lutheran Volunteer Corps. "When people come to LVC, they feel they have a responsibility to give back because of what they have been given. They don't always realize that community is a place where they may be challenged the most. The learning that is needed most happens there and becomes a source of strength for the journey."
TODAY, WE ARE TAKING a stand in this country for the proposition that if we challenge people to serve and we give them a chance to fulfill their abilities, more and more we will all understand that we must go forward together. This is the profoundest lesson of national service. And it will be the great legacy of the wonderful people who make it come alive.
-President Bill Clinton
(bill signing for AmeriCorps, the White House, September 21, 1993)
Volunteerism was alive long before President Clinton signed the legislation. Safe-space programs aside, service has become trendy. College students choose hammers and nails in the Appalachians over beer and bikinis in Florida; Habi-tat for Humanity groups refurbish homes in towns small and large; church youth groups opt for work camps over ski trips.
"We pray together and they pay you," is how Bonita Bock, founder and director of the Urban Servant Corps in Denver, quickly sums up the difference between faith-based volunteer programs and AmeriCorps, Clinton's new national service program. Some administrators of faith-based programs, while praising Clinton for lifting up volunteerism, fear AmeriCorps has the potential to compete with established organizations for volunteers and volunteer placement sites.
Volunteer work sites usually pay a portion or all of a volunteer's stipend and board, while AmeriCorps volunteers come courtesy of the government. Most faith-based programs provide living expenses and a monthly stipend of $50 to $100. AmeriCorps pays a living allowance of about $7,500 per year and an education award of up to $4,725 per year. Are spirituality and community luxuries when you are a college student who needs to pay off loans?
"From the beginning they didn't pay attention to what was already happening," said Bekemeier. "We tried to be heard, but there were few opportunities to communicate with those folks. They should have spent some time thinking how it will impact what's already out there. Some programs have done very well for years, and have a lot of history to show they can do it very efficiently, very cost effectively."
Berger supports Clinton's initiative in providing a unified volunteer organization and encouraging a spirit of volunteerism, but believes what Sojourners has to offer is fundamentally different.
"An AmeriCorps volunteer cannot be involved in religious activity or anything that could be construed as a political act," said Berger. "In our case that is primarily why we are here-to bring together faith and politics; to explore a gospel that has fundamentally political components."
One point of struggle in the Urban Servant Corps' near decade of existence is that most applicants are white. This is true of most volunteer programs, and Bock said the reality is that most people who do not come from positions of power or privilege could not financially consider a program like this. What AmeriCorps has the potential to do is to broaden the base of volunteerism in this country, she said.
"We do know that we are the people who need to be the ones sharing," said Bock. "The people who volunteer come from a position of advantage. It is a privilege to volunteer. If our society is to change in terms of people sharing more equally with one another, it is those who are in privileged positions who have to recognize the need for stronger relationships with people who aren't in positions of power."
The absence of a huge financial base, which prevents some from being able to participate, is also a source of preservation for faith-based programs. Federal funding and federal programs can be here today and gone tomorrow, but programs that operate on almost nothing and encourage the possession of almost nothing are forced to become radically efficient and resilient.
"One of our strengths is that because we operate on a shoe string, we have some lasting power," said Bock. "We can't be threatened by one group pulling its financial support. What we do need to do to help college students make the choice is to fairly clearly lay out the differences."
We-God's people, President Clinton, AmeriCorps volunteers, people of privilege, people without power, all of humanity-are called to parched places. In those places we put on ties and sit through meetings and play with children and water gardens. Spirituality and community may not be essential to the experience or even a desire of every AmeriCorps volunteer, but they are integral to a person called to servanthood by a radical Jesus.
"Spirituality is a way to renew myself, to come back to the reason why I came, the call that I felt, the underpinning of faith and works," said Dillon. "You can't practice one without the other, or things become empty."
JILL CARROLL LAFFERTY was a 1993-94 participant in the Sojourners Internship Program and is now a staff writer for the Ottumwa Courier in Ottumwa, Iowa. She has lived by herself for five months and, at 5 feet 3 inches tall, she misses community the most when she has to change a light bulb in an apartment with 10-foot ceilings.
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