Won­der­ful diver­sity in the world. It is amaz­ing that we can find renewal in the same rites and rit­u­als that Fox and early Quak­ers found wanting.

I don’t know, most of my friends who grew up Roman Catholic aren’t prac­tic­ing any­more either.
The other option, of course, is to orga­nize First Day School along your prin­ci­ples. Every Meet­ing I know is look­ing for peo­ple to teach.
In our Meet­ing, we have a nurs­ery for the youngest, a lower ele­men­tary group, and an upper ele­men­tary through teen group on Sun­day morn­ings. I’m with you on mak­ing teenagers go to Meet­ing. But here’s what else we do.
Our lower ele­men­tary group, which has been run­ning since it was the preschool group, focuses each month on the topic of the Advices and Queries that are read in our Meet­ing each month. There are four of us who take turns teach­ing, because we care enough to pro­vide reli­gious edu­ca­tion for our chil­dren. We read a story, do an art project, maybe sing a song and have a snack. Often the other weeks use sec­u­lar lit­er­a­ture on the gen­eral theme. My per­sonal (radical?)commitment is to teach every month a les­son based on a Bible story. Mostly to be sure that my chil­dren (and the others)don’t grow up with­out learn­ing more about the Bible than Raffi’s ver­sion of Who Built the Ark? At this early age, I am just teach­ing the sto­ries straight up. In a few years, we will get to analy­sis and his­tor­i­cal accu­racy and the­o­log­i­cal com­men­tary. As an exam­ple: one month, A&Q: Peace. Gen­eral theme of FDS: Bul­lies. My week: Saul on the road to Dam­as­cus. Hor­ri­ble bully turned to great teacher by God. And it’s a great story for five to seven year olds. We acted it out.
I think it’s not devel­op­men­tally appro­pri­ate for chil­dren under the age of maybe eight to be expected to sit still for an hour. I wouldn’t want them to do it in school or in meet­ing for wor­ship. It can be done, and some­times my kids do it. But mostly young chil­dren need to walk in nature and exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent pos­tures for sit­ting and have prayers spo­ken out loud for them. Then they can take that expe­ri­ence of the Divine with them into Meet­ing for Wor­ship. We need to make explicit our artic­u­la­tion of our faith to share it with our chil­dren. The same holds true for adult new­com­ers. The fault is not doing enough of this for young chil­dren and then not mov­ing on from this for older chil­dren. They need to engage with adults who feel the power of God in their own lives and are will­ing to explain it and model how they prac­tice it. The best line of George W. Bush’s first cam­paign was about the soft big­otry of low expec­ta­tions. This is another part of what is hap­pen­ing to young peo­ple in our Soci­ety.
We will not change the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends if we don’t engage with it. Friends WILL fall apart and die out if those of us who see the truth and are will­ing to speak it don’t com­mit to teach­ing it.
This is my num­ber one com­plaint about young Friends: if you just com­plain and say my local Meet­ing doesn’t meet my needs so I don’t go, that is not the same as prac­tic­ing Quak­erism which by def­i­n­i­tion requires prac­tice within a local faith com­mu­nity. It is not easy to be the prophetic voice in a com­mu­nity. But it will make it eas­ier for the next per­son who comes along to find they are not labor­ing in com­plete iso­la­tion.
Teach­ing First Day School and serv­ing on the Quar­terly and/or Yearly Meet­ing Children’s pro­gram com­mit­tees are hon­est hard labor. There’s no fak­ing it. It is a lot harder than sit­ting in ple­nar­ies or at our com­put­ers and rant­ing about the state of the uni­verse, the United States or our Meet­ings. But this is where the oppor­tu­nity to change the course of human events is tak­ing place right now.
I don’t want my chil­dren to have to grow up and orga­nize ses­sions at FGC about what they didn’t learn in FDS. But that effort has to start now. In my Meet­ing. In your Meet­ing.
I can’t believe that you would write all this about youth min­istry in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends and not pro­vide it for your own child.
P.S. Obvi­ously, I’m a lit­tle late to the party and this is respond­ing to a post from last sum­mer. But I wanted to have this argu­ment with Zac Moon and some oth­ers last sum­mer at PYM. Maybe I’ll call him up and have it now.

Hi Robin,
I’d like to address some of the points you raised, as frankly I feel as if peo­ple like me, so to speak (youngish–meaning under 30 or 40–people who are ded­i­cated to God, and for­merly to Quak­erism), were severely cri­tiqued in your post.
As an aside, I should men­tion that most of my friends who I remain close with, who like I was, were raised Roman Catholics, remain deeply com­mit­ted to their faith. They teach reli­gious edu­ca­tion, are Nat­ural Fam­ily Plan­ning edu­ca­tors, and are very con­cerned about ortho­doxy in the churches that they attend. But I cer­tainly am aware of the flak­i­ness that exists within some parts of the Church, the poor cat­e­chism, and the fla­grant dis­re­gard for God that causes peo­ple to become inac­tive.
As far as orga­niz­ing Quaker FDS along one’s own prin­ci­ples, this is a dif­fi­cult thing. First it is dif­fi­cult to even HAVE a FDS in a meet­ing that has no chil­dren (or very few). I have trav­eled widely in Quakerism–in fact I attended a meet­ing in North­ern CA for the bet­ter part of two years when I lived there. This was an excep­tional meeting–ie a “large” one– that actu­ally did have chil­dren. But the vast major­ity of Friends meet­ings (unpro­grammed ones, at least) are very small and have next to no chil­dren. Of course this is a chicken or the egg sit­u­a­tion. Nev­er­the­less, I do not see many adult Quak­ers clam­or­ing to share their “faith” (if they have any, that is) with their chil­dren. Sec­ond, I fear that attempt­ing to orga­nize a FDS along one individual’s prin­ci­ples is not some­thing that would or should fly in a meet­ing any­way. I say this even though I had tried it from time to time. Third, I really wish I knew all these meet­ings that you know of who are want­ing peo­ple to teach FDS. In a cou­ple meet­ings I was involved with I offered to teach FDS and was flatly turned down. The unspo­ken rea­son, nat­u­rally, was that I was too young. In the meet­ing in North­ern CA I men­tioned, I was instead assigned to the hos­pi­tal­ity com­mit­tee to put out cook­ies and tea. Need­less to say I declined. (I should men­tion one thing that really got under my craw at this meet­ing. The Min­istry and Wor­ship com­mit­tee, which was the­o­ret­i­cally open to any­one to attend, met only on Wednes­day after­noons some­where around 11:00. This is the type of exclu­siv­ity that I have found abounds at most meet­ings on some level or another. Yeah, the­o­ret­i­cally we want your input, but in real­ity we’re not. Pas­sive aggres­sive? A lit­tle.)
It seems that from a very fun­da­men­tal point of view I have dif­fer­ences from you in out­look regard­ing the pri­mary pur­pose of reli­gious edu­ca­tion for peo­ple of any age. I do not view the search for analy­sis, his­tor­i­cal accu­racy, and the­o­log­i­cal inquiry as the pri­mary pur­poses of RE even later in life. The pri­mary goal of RE, from my per­spec­tive, is to instill faith in God and a mature life of prayer. From these things grow the virtues, and this lays the ground­work for life in com­mu­nity. I say this as some­one with a mas­ters degree in reli­gion, by the way, so I’m not opposed to the nerdly pur­suits you describe. I just don’t think they’re what meet­ings or churches’ reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams are pri­mar­ily for.
As to devel­op­men­tally appro­pri­ate wor­ship, I must also be blunt. I think all this “devel­op­men­tally appro­pri­ate” dis­cus­sion I fre­quently hear among Friends is mostly just an excuse. It’s an excuse to keep kids out of meet­ing because they are squirmy and noisy. It’s an excuse to lower our expec­ta­tions for chil­dren, not expect­ing them to have a life in the Lord all their own. It’s an excuse to not allow them to have a foun­da­tion in prayer that they NEED to prop­erly UNDERSTAND the reli­gious edu­ca­tion we seek to pro­vide for them. After all, if reli­gion rightly is first and fore­most expe­ri­en­tial, it is cru­cial that we all expe­ri­ence God. I was expected to sit through mass from the time I was a baby. Nobody carted me out because it was devel­op­men­tally inap­pro­pri­ate. And the result, from my per­spec­tive, was a healthy love for God and desire to live for Him. Nobody can con­vince me oth­er­wise because I think it’s crap.
Finally, I’ll just say–and per­haps not so politely–that I resent your impli­ca­tion that I and oth­ers like me failed to “engage” with Quak­erism and merely go around com­plain­ing about it. I “engaged” with Quak­erism for over eleven years. I was extremely involved–and, might I add, from about the age of 15. I did not leave eas­ily or with­out a fight. I finally decided that God was my pri­or­ity and I needed to fol­low Him. If this was not the inten­tion of most Friends I ran into–especially not the meet­ing I was a part of for all of the eleven years, not to men­tion the many I was involved with in sev­eral parts of the coun­try and elsewhere–then clearly I had to leave. I needed to return to a place where He would be hon­ored as King of the Uni­verse. This was hardly the case in most Quaker cir­cles I knew. It was my expe­ri­ence that if God was not receiv­ing my due atten­tion because of the “reli­gious” com­mu­nity I chose to asso­ciate with, then I had no option but to leave so that I could focus on Him.
Julie

Hi Robin, Whew!, glad to get this email. Yes, I thought we were on the same page and won­dered about that last post. I thought it was just one of those inter­net things. Last night I said to Julie “I think the com­ment will start off with an apol­ogy” and it warms my heart to see it. It’s inter­est­ing to see your own rela­tion­ship with Catholi­cism, it cer­tainly makes more sense of your reac­tion. I’m glad you’re still with Quak­erism despite every­thing (in this post and in the email you sent ear­lier today). I agree that the “what’s in it for me” ques­tion is not the right one, it’s cer­tainly not the one that moti­vated Fox and Fell and Penn and Wool­man, Fry and Mary Dyer.
That’s great that the children’s reli­gious ed is work­ing for your Meet­ing, I’m jeal­ous. This week­end I heard some really *solid* younger Friends talk about how impor­tant their reli­gious edu­ca­tion was to them as they grew so I know it’s not all gloom and doom. Gotta go, _West Wing_ is start­ing (pri­or­i­ties priorities!).

Hi Robin,
A cou­ple of things occur to me. My first thought is that if your six year old and oth­ers are say­ing that there is noth­ing there for them at the meet­ing, you bet­ter lis­ten to them. There’s prob­a­bly some­thing behind what they are say­ing, no mat­ter how annoy­ingly it is framed. Does that make sense? If your six year old is ALREADY artic­u­lat­ing that he feels a lack in his expe­ri­ence of Quak­erism, hear him!!! The time to address this prob­lem is now and his expe­ri­ence (or lack thereof) is very real. We all need and long for God–it’s how He designed us–and some­times when you hear peo­ple say things like this, that’s what’s behind it. Truly our hearts are rest­less until we rest in Him. St. Augus­tine was quite right about this! There is noth­ing truer.
My next thought is that I don’t think there are many of us who expect or expected Quak­erism to pro­vide some nifty and slick Young Adult Friends pro­gram to “ten­derly nur­ture” us. Hardly. Like you, it was my view for years in Quak­erism that it was largely a “do it your­self” reli­gion (and what it lacked I had to make up for myself, or just pitch in more). But I real­ize now there are a cou­ple of big holes in this assump­tion, even if it is largely the case. First, we don’t “do it our­selves.” Whether or not things get “done” is ulti­mately up to God. If He’s not the One we’re lis­ten­ing to to find out what needs doing and how we ought to be doing things, then cer­tainly there are big prob­lems. And very lit­tle that needs doing will actu­ally get done. The sec­ond prob­lem with this out­look on Quak­erism is that tra­di­tion­ally, Quak­erism was a much more struc­tured reli­gion with elders and min­is­ters, etc. There was account­abil­ity to larger groups. There were expec­ta­tions. Quak­ers were NOT expected to always have to go it alone and “do it yourself”–they were SUPPOSED to have the sup­port and prayers of their meet­ing, their trav­el­ing com­pan­ion, etc. The COMMUNITY was to act together as one body. The Quaker world is very dif­fer­ent now. Don’t get me wrong, there was never a golden age, but at least these were the going assump­tions about how things were sup­posed to work. So, as to being “ten­derly nur­tured,” I just wanted to cease to be INVISIBLE and to begin to be seen as an actual adult with my own mea­sure of Light. As such, I wanted the sup­port and prayer of my meet­ing (or at least a few peo­ple in it). Maybe occa­sion­ally be seen as wor­thy of doing some­thing aside from serv­ing cook­ies and tea. Maybe get nom­i­nated for some­thing real (or nom­i­nated at all). Call me crazy. But I wasn’t old enough and wasn’t anybody’s kid, so that made me a nobody. Of course, this was only one small part of what made me leave Quak­erism, but the fact that I believed I would never be con­sid­ered a full or vis­i­ble mem­ber until I was prac­ti­cally 50 cer­tainly didn’t help things any…no mat­ter what I did or how hard I tried. Or how much I prayed. And I cer­tainly couldn’t make any­one believe in God–that wasn’t chang­ing.
As to devel­op­men­tally appro­pri­ate RE/worship for kids, you are more than wel­come to email me directly if you want to con­tinue that dis­cus­sion. But hon­estly I don’t think we see eye to eye on this issue. A num­ber of weeks ago a woman who looked like she was about 50 or so, some­one who I’ve never seen before at my tra­di­tional Latin Rite Catholic church, noticed me with Theo (now 1 1/2) stand­ing just out­side the glass doors to the church, in the hall­way area. I took him out for a lit­tle while because he was being a lit­tle fid­gety and noisy. But we could still see and hear every­thing at mass from this loca­tion. She said to me some­thing to the effect of, “Isn’t there some kind of nur­sury or children’s pro­gram for the kids?” At first I didn’t under­stand her. What was she talk­ing about? I said, “What?” I learned that she thought that expect­ing a small child under some age to stay through­out most of mass was “tor­ture.” (I believe that’s the word she used.) I sim­ply replied by say­ing some­thing to the effect of, “We believe that chil­dren *should* go to mass and receive spe­cial graces by being in God’s pres­ence.” I haven’t seen her back at Mater Eccle­siae since.
God bless,
Julie