Volunteering is great for your community, and even more specifically Community of Christ, but did you know it can actually make a positive impact on your own life and health? Let’s talk about some of the many wonderful reasons to volunteer.

Build your confidence and learn new skills.

• It’s never too late to learn new skills. They can enhance your current career or give life to facilitating a new career. You may find a new-found passion you never realized existed. Learning new things will always give you confidence to face challenges in other areas of your life as well.
• Finding new interests and learning new skills can be relaxing, fun, and energizing. The energy and sense of fulfillment created by volunteering will spill over into other areas of your life. Experiences spent helping others can foster new perspectives on many aspects of your life, including current work and personal situations.

Meet and spend time with a diverse range of people.

• Through volunteering you can meet an incredibly rich and diverse range of people from all backgrounds and walks of life, particularly at International Headquarters. You never know whom you will meet, and what kind of impact this could have on your life. God works in mysterious ways and often brings people into your life at different times, for different reasons.
• Meeting new people is a wonderful way to develop your social and professional network of friends. Spending time with people from other cultures and backgrounds can be a great source of inspiration and open your mind and spirit to new ways of living and looking at life.

Improve your health.

• Medical scientists are beginning to discover there is healing power in helping others. There is a new field called psychoneuroimmunology, which researches the power of the mind to influence health and healing. Harvard psychologist David McClelland measured the antibody called IgA in students before and after watching a film on Mother Teresa, a Nobel Prize laureate. IgA is an antibody that helps the body defend itself from infection. Amazingly, Dr. McClelland found that the student’s immune response increased merely after watching the film on Mother Teresa’s selfless service to humanity. Imagine the potentially positive impact that helping others could have on your immune system!
• Allan Luks, author of The Healing Power of Doing Good, says there is medical and scientific documentation to support the health benefits of volunteering. This includes a heightened sense of well-being, an improvement in insomnia, a stronger immune system, and speedier recovery from surgery.
• People who have strong social support networks have lower premature death rates, less heart disease, and fewer health risk factors. (Public Health Agency of Canada)
• Volunteering has a wonderful way of putting people in highly social situations, which increases your opportunity for close interpersonal relationships and strengthens your sense of identity.

Develop a strong sense of achievement!

• There is choice involved in volunteering wherein you have made a decision to help others. That is empowering and rewarding personally.
• Volunteering is a way to return some of the benefits that society has given to you back to society. It is often thought, “I am only one person. How can I make a difference?” Aren’t we glad Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King didn’t think this way? You are only one person, but it only takes ONE to start something, even if it is to make a positive difference in your corner of the world. Feel empowered to make a difference!

There are many ways that volunteering positively impacts the universe. As with Mother Teresa or Princess Diana, the reverberation of their work is global. You, too, can affect the lives of many by the service you provide in your hometown. You may not be as well known as these individuals but that doesn’t mean you cannot have the impact. The difference you make in one person’s life can have a “domino effect” on the lives of many.

I hope you have gained some insight and feel motivated to make a difference in even the smallest way for others in your community. The mission statement of the Community of Christ truly speaks to the essence of volunteering: “We proclaim Jesus Christ and promote communities of joy, hope, love, and peace.” This personifies the heart of volunteerism. Promoting communities of joy, hope, love, and peace encompasses what we are all about.

President Steve Veazey sends out a wonderful message on our Web site: (www.CofChrist.org/volunteers/ ): “I would like to sound a call for a new wave of volunteering in the church in support of all aspects of our ministries, and particularly in response to the need for volunteers at International Headquarters and at historic sites.

This call is directed to those who have reached a point in their lives where they are able to offer volunteer service according to their interests, means, and gifts. Such volunteering is an expression of lifelong response to Christ’s call to provide servant ministry and do many good things of one’s own free will” (see Doctrine and Covenants 58:6d).

Community of Christ welcomes volunteers at International Headquarters, historic sites, and at the congregational level. There are many ways to offer your ministry, and we hope you will feel compelled to contact us. For volunteer information for International Headquarters, contact Mica Wiemann at volunteer@CofChrist.org, phone 1-800-825-2806, or on the Web at www.CofChrist.org/volunteers/. For volunteer information at historic sites, contact Lachlan Mackay at lmackay@CofChrist.org, or by phone at (217) 453-2246.

We encourage your service and applaud you for your efforts with us and the many other valuable organizations that benefit from your volunteering. Now, get out there and make a difference—the sooner you do, the faster you will see the overwhelming positive impact it has on your own life and the lives of those around you!

—Mica Wiemann reporting
Herald News August 2008