What a privilege for the Southridge staff to serve breakfast to some of our amazing volunteers!  This past Sunday we had approximately eighty of our Sunday morning volunteers enjoy a pancake breakfast with us at our Glenridge location.  We also did this for one hundred of our Vineland volunteers in the end of June.
I didn’t grow up in the church and still find myself continually in awe of the amount of hours our volunteers sacrifice without any expectations in return.  They serve out of a deeply felt responsibility to their church community and selflessness. Realizing that each and every role has the ability to make a difference in the lives of others. 
We have doctors and nurses sharing their gifts and talents by sitting  at the back of the auditorium ready to jump to the aid of whoever is in need on Sunday mornings. We have retired Pastors available and waiting to find just the right seat for our guests when they arrive. We have mothers setting mornings aside to care for other children while parents enjoy the Sunday morning message. We have teachers who set aside one morning of their two days off to invest in teaching youngsters about how much God loves each and every one of them. We have busy grandmothers making space to bake in order to make other volunteers feel appreciated and valued. We have elders of our church out in parking lots on Sunday morning  directing and welcoming guests just to make sure that there is room in our parking lot for the one neighbour or friend who might be attending for the first time. We have multiple business owners who wake up early on Sunday mornings to set up our portable locations so that everything is in place and each guest feels like we were waiting for them to arrive. We have university, college and high school students willing to put in many volunteer hours in order to help provide other young adults opportunities to hear the Gospel. 
I could go on and on and I would even encourage you to share any words of encouragement and praise to the Southridge volunteers who have served you or who you have served alongside. Together let’s take a moment and just celebrate our volunteers who are living a life of serving others. Thank you to all of you for continuing to be wonderful examples of what it means to live a life of serving others with the hope of leading people towards a life of following Jesus.