Saint John’s Abbey Volunteers
Volunteerism is about hospitality at its core and makes us all the better in who we are and what we do through our common ministries in expanding our generosity and showing our gratitude.
The volunteer program meets a number of valued needs both for the volunteers themselves as well as the monastic community. It provides a link of maintaining relationships with the abbey and participants while responding to specific opportunities for helping out. In doing so, the bond of relational support deepens in a shared goal of strengthening monastic apostolates and personal spiritual well-being.
The long and expanding list of help includes at least thirty volunteer opportunities:
abbey retirement center, driving, preparing bulk mailings, maple sapping and cutting wood for firing the syrup boilers, computer tutoring, overseeing the abbey gift shop and gift shop attendants, vegetable and flower gardening, donating flowering plants, woodworking, assisting the oblate program, guest house receptionist, lawn mowing, typing, general handyman, baking and cooking, abbey archiving, schola singing and liturgy, leading yoga and tai-chi, barbering, tailoring, quilting, candle making, cleaning, photographing, entertaining, accounting, English as a second language instructor, twitter account manager, and coordinating prison subscriptions to Liturgical Press publications.
Altogether over twelve months, about 80 lay volunteers contribute over 8,000 hours of getting things done with their hands and heads and voices and hearts for our common benefit. This effort is in addition to lay supervisors and support people and as many as 40 monks!
Many of the volunteers are our neighbors, some retired University faculty and support staff, and others come from as far as the Twin Cities, and even beyond. Over a dozen students are numbered among them and share time with the elderly monks in the Abbey Retirement Center, learning their stories and singing in the Abbey Schola.
A Letter from Abbot John
Thank you for your willingness to volunteer at Saint John's Abbey. We are grateful you have chosen to share your time and talents with us. On behalf of the monastic community, welcome.
The Saint John's Abbey Volunteer Program began in 2011 and is gradually growing. The program provides volunteers the opportunity to socialize, network and meet new friends. As volunteers in abbey ministries, you strengthen the efforts of our monastic community to be what Saint Benedict called a "School of the Lord's Service". By complementing one another's skills, volunteers and monks alike will benefit.
As a volunteer, you are part of the extended family of our Benedictine community, and you share in the prayer and good works of 150 vowed religious men of Saint John's Abbey. Volunteers are always welcome to join us at Eucharist or at prayers whenever their schedule permits.
Blessings and peace,
Abbot John Klassen, OSB