Volunteering among Christian church attendees 1991-2006

Although volunteering is a strongly held value in many Christian churches, there may be important denominational differences in the extent to which this volunteering is encouraged as a church activity or whether attendees volunteer in the wider community. Some information about the voluntary activities of church attendees across Australia was collected as part of the National Church Life Surveys in 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006. This analysis examined denominational differences in volunteering within and beyond the congregation to identify whether the patterns have changed or remained stable over time. Involvement in social welfare and social justice volunteering also showed a fairly stable denominational pattern across the four years for both congregational-based and community-based involvement. Information on the total hours of volunteering was collected in 2001 and 2006 only. After demographic differences were taken into account, Pentecostals volunteered more hours within the congregation and Catholics volunteered fewer; however, there were no denominational differences in hours of volunteering beyond the congregation. The number of hours volunteered in each congregation was stable across 2001 and 2006. The strongest finding was that volunteering within the congregation was strongly related to volunteering beyond the congregation with many people volunteering in both the congregation and the community.