Service

Virtually every religious tradition emphasizes compassion, generosity, service, and justice as priorities—even obligations—for people of faith. For example, in Jewish traditions, tzedakah (giving, or more literally, acts of justice) and gemilut chasadim (acts of loving kindness or service to others) are considered mitzvot—divine commandments that Jews have an obligation to observe. Christians point to numerous passages in the Gospels where Jesus emphasized compassion and justice as being central to faith, including the Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind…. You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37, 39, NRSV). Charity, or Zakat, is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Sympathy and compassion for the benefit and welfare of all beings is at the center of Buddhism. And compassion is one of the Three Jewels in Taoism.

This faith commitment—combined with growing evidence of the power of serving others for both nurturing faith and giving young people opportunities to contribute to the life of the faith community (while also contributing to overall positive development and thriving)—has led congregations of many faiths to engage young people in service as a core theme in their youth work. Youth service takes many different forms and uses many different terms, depending on the emphasis and tradition. It may include, for example, social action, activism, volunteerism, service learning, or missions.

Serving others through volunteer activities, service learning, and other forms of service has become a [Page 406]widespread emphasis in positive youth development and citizenship education in the United States since the 1980s. It is also growing internationally, with various forms of service and civic engagement formally operating in every major region of the world, though the concept of volunteering or service is less formalized in developing countries. A growing body of research in positive youth development and thriving shows consistently positive relationships between a prosocial orientation and service to others and a wide range of thriving behaviors, including a positive orientation to schoolwork, being seen as a leader, valuing diversity, and overcoming adversity. In addition, serving others is negatively related to a wide range of high-risk behaviors, including problem alcohol use, use of illicit drugs, use of tobacco, gambling, antisocial behavior, and violence.

Despite the increases in youth service to others through schools (with about two thirds of K-12 public schools in the United States offering community service opportunities for students), congregations remain a primary institution for engaging young people in service to others in the United States. According to Independent Sector, 53% of youth volunteers first learned about volunteer activities through their congregation. This pattern attests to the strong links between service to others and religious or spiritual commitments. Religious youth are almost twice as likely to engage in service as those who are not active in a faith community.

Search Institute surveys of 217,000 6th- to 12th-grade youth in public schools in the United States found that 60% of young people who attend services, programs, or other activities in a “church, synagogue, mosque, or other religious or spiritual place” at least 1 hour per week also say they serve in the community at least an hour a week. In contrast, only 36% of young people who are not active in a faith community are engaged in service to others at that same level. These findings are consistent with analyses of Monitoring the Future data on 12th-grade youth in the United States that show significant positive correlations between service and religious participation, even controlling for race, age, gender, rural or urban residence, region, parental education, number of siblings, and presence of father or male guardian in the household.

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