Dear volunteer — You may serve as part of one of our worship teams – a singer, musician, sound, slides or video volunteer. You may teach a Sunday School class, or care for our youngest members in the nursery. Perhaps you offer leadership to our children and youth, or help out with Wednesday Pizza Drop In, serving pizza, fill the pop machine, or provide breakfast once a month for for High School students as they gather for prayer. Maybe you are part of the organizing group or serve with First Monday Lunch, giving seniors and others a welcome meal and great company. Maybe you are part of a team that leads a small study group from your home; you may be one of the volunteers who help take non-perishable food donations that have been dropped of at MBC to the food bank, or visit the Crisis Pregnancy Centre to help out, or 360 Kids Hub, to deliver our mission donations or volunteer with the downtown mission assisting the homeless and hungry of the GTA. There are so many areas where you volunteer your gifts and abilities as you bless the lives of others. Some of you, have the gift of mechanical know-how. Thank you! You keep the church running – literally, caring for the furnace, replacing burnt out light bulbs, or financially, by organizing the paying of bills, the planning of our budget, and keeping track of givings. Maybe you share the gift of hospitality, organizing coffee times or monthly breakfasts for the men in our congregation, or gather women, young and old, to share their stories or express their needs. You are giving a tremendous gift, not only to MBC, but, to all the lives that brush up against yours and all the others you are already influencing by your words and actions. If it weren’t for you and those who visit our shut-ins, or send notes of care or condolence or compassion, or set the table at the front of our sanctuary with white linen and display the elements of grace we partake of in communion, we would be the lesser for it. If it weren’t for you greeting at the doors of our building, offering a warm smile as you usher us into the sanctuary, or remembering us and calling us by name on those days we’ve all had, when we just need assuring that we’re not forgotten, and that we are valued, if it weren’t for you, oh, incredible volunteer, we would not be the church we are. We would not see Christ the way we do, when we see you!

Thank you for being the heart of MBC for everyone who serves and walks along side of you, and experiences the love of God through you! O volunteer, simply put, the church of Jesus Christ is alive and well because of you. You bring to light our purpose —”to know him and to make him known.”

As we find ourselves in a strange land, amid all the precautions and needs surrounding this pandemic, we miss being together in the usual ways.  Ah, but I know you’re continuing to offer yourself in whatever ways God leads you, and because of it, what a blessing anyone who has met you, is already receiving.

Holy God, within us and among us, help us share ourselves in Jesus’ name. AMEN

Enthusiastically and thankfully, as we serve together,

Pastor Craig