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Tim Zerger, pastor of Community Alliance Church, speaks about his work with Feed My Sheep Soup Kitchen during the United Way annual meeting and awards luncheon earlier this month.
By definition, a person cannot be a professional volunteer, but a handful of people in the area come close to embodying that contradiction, and one of them offered a few different perspectives on volunteering this week.
Tim Zerger, pastor of Community Alliance Church in Havre for the past 10 years, has been volunteering since he was a teenager, years before he even became a Christian.
"I was a Boy Scout. That's a big part of Boy Scouting is to learn how to serve," he said. "My parents encouraged it, and so I've always enjoyed serving. If it was helping out as a teenager with younger teenagers or anything for the hungry or the poor ... it always just fit me."
Among other volunteer work, Zerger serves on the board of Feed My Sheep Soup Kitchen, regularly working there during lunches, and he is called on to help with many short- to long-term volunteer efforts which range from talking to the Scouts to helping raise funds for the chapel at Northern Montana Care Center. Much of this volunteering is through his church's association with the local ministerial group.
"Almost all of the things I do are through the Greater Havre Area Ministerial Association," he said.
The Ministerial Association is a group comprised of the leaders of virtually all Havre-area churches which have come together to affect greater benefit to people and the community through combined efforts. The group provides a wide variety of assistance, from helping to raise money for projects like the care center chapel to providing emergency vouchers for gas and rooms for people who have found themselves in need after hours, such as stranded travelers or victims of domestic abuse.
His position as a pastor and his experiences through volunteering, which have him interacting with the full gamut of humanity from the mainstream to those who, for a variety of reasons, are the most destitute, have shaped Zerger's views on volunteering beyond his Boy Scout days.
"What I would say is different now is because I wasn't a Christian then — I became a Christian when I was in my mid-twenties — so then (when) serving people I got a lot out of it. I did it kind of for me," Zerger said. "And now I tend to serve people for them. I will give service to things I'm not particularly fond of doing," which might mean intervening in some kind of dysfunctional situation but, he added, "I do those things now because I think ... I see service as a higher, nobler thing than I did when I was younger.
"I hope that doesn't sound arrogant," he said, "but I have a different viewpoint on volunteering now than I did then."
And just as he didn't wish to sound too haughty about his volunteering, he also doesn't want it to sound like he finds no happiness from volunteering either.
"If everything I did was stressful and aggravating, I wouldn't do any of it — so there's a joy," he said, adding, "I love being a volunteer — and I love working with volunteers."
And whenever possible his volunteering involves music and the arts, a personal passion of his. As a bassist and a singer he volunteers his musical talents whenever possible, performing with bands formed to entertain at fundraisers, joining the MSU-Northern Community Orchestra, helping fill the ranks for the Montana State University-Northern pep band and recently singing with the Bullhook Bottoms Barbershop Chorus.
"I think most people when they volunteer for something they volunteer for something that they like to do," he said, adding that "they need to look for something that appeals to them, and a lot of times those things are all around us, so they just need to sort of pay attention to where the needs are."
He also advised that even when people are volunteering for a cause they believe in or enjoy they should still play to their strengths. This is a guideline he applies even to himself and his desire to help the hungry and poor.
"I don't want to cook at the Soup Kitchen. Nobody wants that," he said, with a joke, "but I don't mind going in and mopping the floors because I see a need there, and there's heavy work there that needs to be done … I say, 'those little old ladies don't need to be lugging that 40 pounds of trash out to the dumpster.'"
Coming from a more populated area in southern California, where many of the services and positions for which north-central Montanans volunteer were fulfilled by people paid to be there, Zerger sees a strong need for volunteers.
"In our community we have to have volunteers because we don't have much else" for options in fulfilling the need, he said.
Some of the areas he sees most in need of volunteering effort are things involving children and youth "because if we don't invest in them we're going to pay a price down the road," he said. On the other end of life's spectrum are the area's high percentage of elderly who, he said, "really we need to spend time with, like our church youth group has done things like shovel snow and do heavy jobs for older people.
"I think sports things, I think the arts, all of that (which) adds a bigger dimension to our lives is pretty important" to volunteer for, too, he said.
Then he had one last surprising perspective on the subject of volunteering that, in its own way, shows why the need for volunteers is there.
"I was going to say that I think everyone should try it, but I don't know if I really believe that, because there's some people out there that I don't think are suitable to volunteer because they've got … issues," he said. "But I think that volunteering has the potential to bring out the best in people, and so I think that if people do something that's selfless, by and large, that they're going to be better for it in just so many ways."
Along with clergy like Tim Zerger, many people in the community can be considered professional volunteers of sorts because their day job requires them to serve on boards and committees that are comprised mostly of community volunteers, or their work can only be completed through the aid of volunteers, or they simply come in contact with so many people who are in need that they volunteer whenever and wherever possible. Some of those positions are listed here:
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