Volunteer Sunflower Plants

When plants, vegetable or flowers, grow unexpectedly, in a garden they are often called “volunteers.” You did not plant them but often welcome them. Last year in the flower circle in the center of my backyard garden I had a large sunflower volunteer plant. It looked good and I let it grow. The birds sure did enjoy the sunflower seeds when it was dying. This year there are no volunteers in the middle of the garden, not counting weeds as volunteer plants, but there are three sunflower plants growing in the garden. One is right in the corner at the beginning of the garden as a welcome sign and two (pictured on the side) are in the row next to the pole beans. Sunflower plants are welcome volunteers in my garden. However, I do not like the word volunteer to describe these plants. It is misleading since the seeds are doing what they do naturally and are not making any extra effort.


My dislike of the word volunteer comes from my days as a youth minister. To run a comprehensive youth ministry program for hundreds of youth in middle and high school took a lot of volunteers. Once I heard a speaker say how those that work in the youth ministry are not really volunteers. In a Christian framework an adult person working with youth is just, like the sunflower seed, doing what they naturally are called to do, in this case by baptism. When we share our time, effort, or money with those in need we are not doing anything extraordinary, like the word volunteer seems to suggest, but just doing what comes to us naturally. I once heard a Muslim woman explaining her Islam faith. One of the basic principles of the faith is to share what you have with others. It is the norm, not a volunteer action. So as the director of youth ministry I started calling the persons who worked in this ministry “youth ministers,” not volunteers. Most of them got the idea quickly and liked this name, youth minister, better than being called a volunteer. Naturally when adults enjoy working with youth you attract more adult youth ministers. It is like the sunflower volunteer plant. Last year I had one and now I have three. More and more adults became youth ministers. I think there is a better word than volunteers to describe this unplanned for plants but I cannot think of it now. So I will continue, until I find a better word, to call them volunteers in the Garden. But we all know that, just like the adult youth ministers, they are really doing what comes naturally and are not volunteers.

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