Since retiring, volunteering with BRF has been a mixture of something familiar and something new.
The familiar has come in the form of re-engaging with Messy Church BRF and now being part of the support teams.
The new took the form of becoming BRF’s prayer advocate. I was hesitant at first, but it’s a role that I have increasingly relished because it has given me the opportunity to be creative again, this time writing prayers and articles about prayer as well as putting together the BRF Prayer Diary. It has been exciting to see how those prayers have been passed on to play their part by God’s grace in how BRF has navigated its way through the pandemic.
We choose to volunteer; it’s not something we have to do in order to earn a living wage or guarantee security in old age. This makes volunteering a special kind of work for which we are made by God. I have been fortunate in my life to do jobs that I loved. That is not always the case for people and so to discover an outlet for ‘the good works that we were created to do from the beginning’, as Paul puts it (Ephesians 2:10), is a privilege not to be missed.
It is when we reach out to help others that we are most helped – this is the surprising equation of giving and receiving that lies at the heart of our faith in God.
Martyn Payne is BRF’s prayer advocate.
