At the beginning of this year, a new service program was launched at Westminster, the Faith in Action program. The goal of this program is to encourage high school students to serve in their community by requiring students to complete 20 hours of community service each year. While the program was initially launched with mild confusion, the weeks that have followed have been a roaring success.

“I’m very happy with how the program is going so far. We expected to have a few bumps along the road, but there have been very few bumps so far,” says Mrs. Brown, the director of Student Life at WCA. 

As a matter of fact, students at Westminster have already logged 3,787 service hours by participating in Faith in Action.

These service hours equate to $105,500 worth of service completed when calculating the money that has been saved by various organizations throughout the St. Louis area.

Furthermore, the program has had a positive effect on the students serving as well. It seems that getting an opportunity to work in their community has awakened a heart for service within the students of Westminster. 

“We can see how passionate they [students at Westminster] are for putting their service hours in every week […] it does mobilize the student body to seek out more service opportunities,” relates Dr. Butler, Westminster’s head of student development.  

Although accumulating service hours is a time consuming task, many students not only make time to serve in their community on a weekly basis, but actually look forward to the opportunities they get to serve. 

“It’s one of my favorite things […] whenever I started, I was really nervous to do it every Tuesday because I felt like it would take up all my time, but now I really love it and can’t wait until Tuesdays,” says Caralena Mayfield, a senior at Westminster. 

As students continue to serve through Faith in Action during the school year, there is little doubt they will discover that it is truly better to serve than be served.