I’m a Quaker from
South Jersey with a love of
outreach and ministry.
More bio and my contact information in my
about Martin
post. My other sites: QuakerQuaker.org, a
social networking site for Quaker bloggers and
MartinKelley.com, my
technology blog and freelance web services site.
Comment Blog
There are periods in my Quaker blogging where I feel a stop to write on my blog. The quietness doesn't come from having nothing to say; rather I don't know how to say it. Is Christ's Spirit telling me simply to watch and understand, to sit mute as I see Friends laugh away His concerns? Or do I also have a call to name and witness it publicly?
During these times my online ministry generally comes out in my comments on other people's blogs. Here then are my links to my last ten comments. Please be aware that I do sometimes comment on non-Quaker sites (imagine!) which also show up here:
Elsewhere
For those interested, I do have a tech links blog over on my web design site, and that QuakerQuaker is mostly a overgrown links blog.
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Hi Martin, I'm still an interested outsider (very difficult to become an insider, I think). I'd like to ask - you mentioned in one of your comments "rising up the Quaker hierarchy". Does such a thing exist? Probably I've missed the point.
*Hi Phil:* Oh yes, a Quaker hierarchy exists. There is a strong insider culture in just about every institutional Quaker body I've known. It's sad. Too much of our work is speaking to ourselves.
One insight I had back in my early blogging days was that if we were really going to "gather a great people together" and bring the good news of Quakerism to the masses then we needed to be serving those who are not Quaker yet. They deserve our first allegiance. As I wrote in "comments over in Marshall's blog":http://journal.earthwitness.org/the-quaker-magpie-journal/2007/2/1/fgcs-sweat-lodge-an-effort-at-discernment.html "[Liberal Quakerism's] Achilles Heel is that it defines itself in terms of community, which means it has to prioritize those already in." I have suggested elsewhere that we need to develop a "Testimony Against Community":http://www.quakerranter.org/testimonies_for_twentiethfirst_century_a_testimony_against_community.php. If we worry about offending the sensibilities of those already in, we're selling out those who long to hear the good news we have to share. We need to develop an outsider culture.