My life has been indelibly shaped by my experience of Christian service in a volunteer setting. Just a couple of weeks after I got married to Bonnie Haldeman, the two of us began a stint of several years of voluntary service in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Since both of us had grown up in the country, it promised to be an adventure in urban living. It was also an exercise in communal living, especially when we opened the household to covenant membership beyond the volunteer staff.
Much of my future was shaped by the interaction with a racially diverse community of young adults all committed to Jesus, but with varying gifts and opinions about life.
The primary focus of the volunteers was to provide daycare services and tell about the love of Christ to our urban neighbors. But we soon learned that it was just as important to serve one another as it was to serve others.
We learned that in order to love people whom we hardly knew, we needed to demonstrate love to the people that we knew best. This is a lesson that we had started to learn in our nuclear families, but there was so much more to learn.
Sharing mundane tasks while living in close quarters tested our limits as well as our commitments to serve and to be served by others. The service assignments helped to refine our motives for ministry, our assumptions about those who differed from us, and the practical ways to make a difference in the world.
All three of our children have also lived and worked in settings where they served the needs of others, either in distant foreign countries or in unfamiliar settings in the United States. My experience leads me to cheer on the efforts of Mennonite Mission Network to provide opportunities for Christian workers—regardless of age—to connect with those who can benefit from friendship and love.
That’s the primary focus of Christian service—demonstrating God’s love to those around us in the name of Christ. Along the way, we may find opportunities to see the world, to experience new adventures, or to gain a vital new perspective in life.
They’re like the chocolate chips in Bonnie’s best cookies, or the butter on her home-baked bread. You guessed it; she refined those baking skills in a Christian service household, and I’m the primary beneficiary!
