By: Carole Hom
When I was a kid, our monthly family gatherings featured a houseful of aunties, uncles, cousins, and enough food to feed a small army. In the waning hours of one such occasion, my mom told my 7-year-old self to go help my aunt do the dishes. I dutifully trotted off to the kitchen and soon reported back to my mom. “She told me that she didn’t need help.” My mom replied, “She didn’t mean it. Go back and ask her again.” So I did. Lo and behold, this time, she handed me a dish towel and happily accepted help in drying towers of plates and glassware.
Decades later, a friend couch surfed in my apartment for a few days as part of a trans-continental move to Davis. After dinner one day, she asked if I needed help cleaning up. I thanked her and told her to go relax instead. She chirped, “OK,” and settled down to read the paper. I felt disgruntled and mildly irritated without realizing why. Not until later did I recognize that I subconsciously expected Chinese etiquette in our interaction: Party A offers assistance, Party B declines it, Party A persists, and after a couple of rounds of this, Party B graciously accepts. Everyone leaves the exchange satisfied that the appropriate proprieties have been observed.
Other folks may have similar cultural norms. Moreover, volunteering in church sometimes can involve analogous and sometimes contradictory interactions. We’ve all heard in close juxtaposition, “It’s easier if I just do it myself,” “Why don’t they volunteer,” “Why don’t they ask me,” and “They asked me to help with X but my gifts don’t lie in that area” in various settings in and around St. Martin’s.
Perhaps we, as a church, might try the following things. If someone offers to help, graciously accept. Or, if assistance really isn’t needed, suggest another area in which the nascent volunteer might contribute. If someone asks you to help with X but you’d rather do Y, state that preference and ask whom to contact regarding Y. If you wonder why the same people always seem to do Z, volunteer to join them.
The harvest is plenty and we need to step up and step back to welcome laborers who offer their gifts.
