National Opportunities

Reaching across the country in love and service

 
Help build a new ELCA congregation or ministry in an underserved neighborhood, or help provide disaster relief – there are hundreds of opportunities across the country.
  • Lutheran Disaster Response needs volunteers, skilled and unskilled, to help people recover from domestic disasters. Lutherans have become well-known in the disaster response community as the experts in long-term disaster recovery. Find out more on the LDR volunteer Web page. 
  • Lutheran Social Ministry Organizations offer unique opportunities for service in communities across the nation.
  • Mission Builders donate their time and talent to build our churches. Partnering with an ELCA congregation who has no place to worship, they provide the technical know-how and manpower to get the job done. But beyond nails, hammers, saws, and 2x4s, Mission Builders build friendships, they build community, and they build faith.
  • ELCA Outdoor Ministry offers a searchable database -- Journeys Servant and Adventure Programs -- where you can find servant learning events, volunteer community service, social ministry, hunger and justice education, and high adventure in the outdoors.
  • Young Adults Needed for 2009 Youth Gathering: ELCA Youth Gathering organizers are seeking 800 young adult volunteers (age 20-25) to lead 36,000 high school youth and adult leaders at the 2009 Gathering in New Orleans July 22-26. "Servant companions" begin training July 20, 2009, and receive room and board. Apply now by visiting the Youth Gathering volunteer sign-up.

Long-term domestic (U.S.) service opportunities 

  • ELCA-affiliated camps and retreat centers (full-time and year-round positions): Find opportunities to serve throughout the year in outdoor ministries and camps, urban settings and border sites, many especially attractive to youth and young adults.
  • Holden Village (year-long or shorter): Each year Holden Village, a Lutheran center for renewal in Washington state's Cascade Mountains, operates through the efforts of more than four hundred volunteers who serve as its staff. 
  • Lutheran Volunteer Corps: Communities of four to seven volunteers share meals, household responsibilities, daily struggles, faith discussions and good times that are essential to strong families, neighborhoods, cities, and to a peaceful world.
  • Urban Servant Corps: Urban Servant Corps is a one-year, full-time Lutheran volunteer program involved in ministries serving inner-city Denver.