Call the parish office or talk to a parishioner after Liturgy. That’s the simplest answer. But let’s talk about what you’re really asking.
In Orthodoxy, we don’t think of parish work as “volunteering” in the way you might’ve experienced at First Baptist or the community center. We call it ministry or stewardship. The difference isn’t just vocabulary. When you’re baptized and chrismated, you become part of the Body of Christ, not a spectator, not someone who attends services and leaves the real work to professionals. You’re a minister now. The question isn’t whether you’ll serve, but where.
St. Paul tells the Corinthians that we’re all given different gifts for the building up of the Church. Some teach, some serve, some give, some show mercy. In a parish, that looks like everything from scrubbing toilets to chanting the psalms to teaching third-graders about the Theotokos. It’s all ministry. It all matters.
Here’s what most parishes need, ours included. Someone’s got to teach Church School on Sunday mornings, and if you think you don’t know enough, you’re probably wrong. You know more than the kids do, and you’ll learn alongside them. Someone’s got to set up coffee hour, and in Texas that means making sure there’s enough iced tea and that the AC is cranked down before people arrive sweating from the parking lot. Someone’s got to mow the lawn, fix the leaky faucet in the fellowship hall, update the website, edit sermon videos for posting online.
Then there’s the altar society, women who care for the altar linens, bake prosphora, prepare the church for feasts. There’s the choir, always looking for another voice even if you can’t read Byzantine notation. There’s visiting shut-ins, especially the elderly who can’t make it to services anymore. There’s helping with fundraisers, serving at parish meals, driving someone who doesn’t have a car.
Some of this sounds mundane. It is. But here’s the thing: in the Orthodox life, there’s no separation between the sacred and the everyday. When you’re washing communion linens or mopping the narthex, you’re caring for the house of God. When you’re bringing a meal to someone who just had surgery, you’re being the hands of Christ. St. Seraphim of Sarov spent years chopping wood and tending a garden. Manual labor, humble service, it’s how we’re formed.
The risk is treating parish work like a second job, something that drains you and leaves you resentful. That happens when service gets disconnected from prayer. If you’re teaching Church School but never praying for your students, never going to confession, never asking your priest for guidance, you’ll burn out. The Church isn’t asking you to be a machine. She’s inviting you into a rhythm where service flows from worship and back into worship again.
Start small. Pick one thing. Maybe you can’t commit to teaching every Sunday, but you can help with coffee hour once a month. Maybe you can’t join the choir, but you can help set up chairs for a parish event. Maybe you’re good with your hands and the building needs work, or maybe you’re good with people and someone needs a ride.
Don’t wait for a formal sign-up sheet or a committee to recruit you, though we do have those sometimes. Just ask. Parishes run on people who notice a need and step in. You’ll find that serving alongside other parishioners is one of the best ways to actually get to know them. You can stand next to someone at Liturgy for years and never really connect. Spend an afternoon together folding bulletins or painting a Sunday School room, and you’ll be friends.
One more thing. If you’re new to Orthodoxy, if you’re still a catechumen or you just got chrismated last Pascha, you might feel like you should wait until you know more before you serve. Don’t. You don’t need a theology degree to pour coffee or pull weeds. And honestly, some of the best Church School teachers are people who recently came into the Church, because they remember what it’s like not to know this stuff, and they explain it in ways cradle Orthodox sometimes forget to.
So call the office. Talk to someone after Liturgy. Tell them what you’re interested in or what you’re good at, and if you don’t know, tell them that too. The Church needs you. Not because we’re desperate for free labor, but because you’re part of the body, and the body doesn’t work when half its members are sitting on the sidelines.
