"[7] In Hubbard's words, The Volunteer Minister's Handbook "will be broadly distributed on [Scientology] and non-Scientology lines, bought by the man on the street.

He'll use some of the data, produce some miracles, save a marriage or two, rescue some kid from drugs, help his next door neighbor who's upset because her child's failing in school and couldn't care less, plus brighten up her yawning of Spring and teach him to study, and handle Aunt Martha's dizziness with assists.

[8] He should represent himself to the person or the person's family as a minister whose compassion was compelled by the newspaper story concerning the personThe program is the successor to earlier Scientology outreach efforts, notably the "Casualty Contact" program for recruiting new Scientologists (called "preclears") from hospitals, the scenes of accidents and other places where people might have experienced trauma.

"[1] Hubbard advised that "using his minister's card, an auditor need only barge into any non-sectarian hospital, get permission to visit the wards from the superintendent, mentioning nothing about processing but only about taking care of people's souls.

"[2] The primary objective was simply to recruit more members for Scientology: "Some small percentage of the persons visited or their families will turn up in his group.

"[6] In Russia, after the Beslan school hostage crisis tragedy in 2004, the Health Ministry ordered Scientologists out of the area, saying "that various psychological tactics the groups use, including what it called hypnosis, may be harmful not only for adults, but for children that have already suffered severe mental shock.

"[15][16] In the United Kingdom, Volunteer Ministers played a similar role in the aftermath of the 7 July 2005 London bombings, targeting the families of victims and emergency workers.

As in the United States in 2001, this resulted in controversy, and it was reported that Volunteer Ministers had been removed from the vicinity of survivors of the bus bombing in Tavistock Square.

Distributed in person by Scientologists dressed as Volunteer Ministers, local business owners in Switzerland sought information from a local activism group, Freie Anti-Scientology Aktivisten [Free Anti-Scientology Activists] (FASA), because they had been told the booklet was produced in cooperation with the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (BAG).