Brethren volunteers take part in vocations program.

A pilot project is giving 11 volunteers with Brethren Volunteer Service (BVS) a chance to think about their vocational calling. The year-long project of the Lilly Foundation's Theological Exploration of Vocation program is for college-age fulltime volunteers. It is being carried out with five volunteer organizations: BVS, Lutheran Volunteer Corps, Jesuit Volunteer Corps, Mission Year Program, and the Presbyterian Year in Mission.

Each organization has its own facilitator for the project--the BVS facilitator is David Witkovsky, campus minister at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pa. James Ellison, an outreach minister of the Presbyterian Church working with at-risk children and youth at the Mother Jones House in Wheeling, W.Va., is a consultant for the project and has been visiting each of the volunteer organizations to interview participants as well as "alumni" volunteers. Leading the team of facilitators is Wayne Meisel, head of the Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Foundation that since 1989 has become one of the largest privately-funded service scholarship programs and a philanthropic leader in the anti-hunger movement (see www.bonner.org).

The Fund for Theological Education became interested in volunteer organizations as a source for the pilot project because they represent a cadre of young people involved in the church who may become church leaders in the future, Ellison explained.

The volunteer organizations--as well as the volunteers--will benefit from a more disciplined approach to the discernment of vocation, Ellison said. BVS hopes that the project will help volunteers "think more seriously about where God's calling them during this time and afterward," said director Dan McFadden. Many volunteers choose fulltime service because of the spirituality component of such work, he said.

The project, which began in the late summer of last year, will include three retreats for the 11 BVS participants, led by Witkovsky. Each participating volunteer seeks out a mentor to guide in thinking about call and vocation, and each is asked to participate actively in a local faith community. In March, six participating volunteers from each organization will attend a conference at Princeton University.

Ellison is interviewing the participating volunteers and BVS alumni, visiting the volunteers' placement sites, and helping with issues that they raise. In the process he will help BVS figure out what works and what does not work for people who are using the volunteer experience to help them discern their calling. A grant of $20,000 has been given to BVS from the Fund for Theological Education to cover expenses for these events as well as some other work that BVS is doing to facilitate conversation with pastors.

The volunteers will learn a lot about themselves, but so will the organizations taking part. Ellison gave examples of weaknesses and strengths the organizations are already discovering through the process of meeting with each other's staff. "The Brethren model really impressed everybody," he said. BVS's three-week orientation is "very in depth," and it was the only organization to have volunteer placement take place during orientation, he said. BVS also is "unique" in the volunteers' "strong sense of community and strong identity with the denomination," he added.

Staff of other volunteer agencies "worried about the way Dan feeds the volunteers during orientation," Ellison said with a smile. BVS volunteers receive only $2.25 per day for food during orientation, and part of the orientation is spent learning how to shop and eat adequately with that small amount of money. Another concern raised with "tongue-in-cheek" comments by Ellison was the "drop-off day" during orientation, in which pairs of volunteers are dropped off in an unfamiliar location and must find their way back to the orientation after working for free for a family or organization along the way. "In many way they (the other volunteer agencies) thought that was a pretty neat thing to do," McFadden said of the drop-off day.

Ellison hopes the one-year pilot will expand into a several-year program, and will include more volunteer organizations in the future. The end result of the project will be a report and a design for larger investment into volunteer programs, he said.

McFadden hopes that volunteers who participate "are listening for the call and are paying attention to that call," he said. "Are we looking for more pastors? Sure. But the bigger picture is that service is for all of us who are trying to follow Christ's call."

For more information about BVS see www.brethren.org/genbd/bvs/index.htm.

Source: 2/15/2006 Newsline
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