Disciple: not just a glorified volunteer
Several years ago our ministry, YWAM Urban Ministries Winnipeg, opened a small used bookstore called The Dusty Cover in our West End neighbourhood. It soon became a frequent hangout for all variety of locals, especially kids from a local school who were forced to leave school grounds during recess. With parents away from home and winter firmly upon us, they were always in search of a warm (and welcoming) place to wait out the lunch hour or after school. We decided to offer some after-school activities. It was a wonderful group.
However, for several reasons, a group that was partnering with us withdrew from the program, taking with them their volunteers. The program continued (even after the bookstore closed, running out of our home for a season), but the kids were struck by the loss of the volunteers. For reasons they did not understand, their friends no longer came around. One little girl said to us: "This is the third kids program where people just left us. They were Christians too."
It was at that point that I realized how central volunteering had taken in Christian concepts of discipleship and mission. While I am not suggesting the volunteerism is unimportant or that it should be done away with, I am deeply concerned with how we equate our commitment to being disciples with being volunteers. It is, in many ways, an idolatry of volunteerism. Instead, we need to rediscover the radical nature of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
A volunteer is someone who freely gives his or her time and energy to a task, usually for some altruistic purpose. This is a good thing, even necessary. However, a disciple is a devoted follower, an apprentice. Further, a disciple of Jesus is someone wholeheartedly devoted to the person, teaching and mission of Christ. While volunteerism can find a place within discipleship, it represents a tiny aspect of a far more demanding vocation.
In light of the children in our neighbourhood, volunteers can do great things to love and care for them. However, they can also opt out when it is no longer convenient, when their volunteerism is seen as an exceptional act of service above the status quo. On the other hand, the disciple relates to these children through the eyes of Christ—seeking to both see Jesus in them and be Jesus to them. They recognize that, like the incarnation, when we enter into the lives of others, we cannot simply opt out.
While volunteerism is and will remain an important way in which Christians can live out aspects of being disciples of Jesus, we must first cast off the assumptions of our consumerist culture that deceives us into believing that faithful obedience to God is yet another market options we can chose on a whim. What we need to see is those willing to embrace the vocation of genuine discipleship and to live lives of sacrificial service to God and others.
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