Opening Doors and Moving on Up

Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence has announced that Bar­ry Cross­no will be their new incom­ing Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary. Old time blog­gers will remem­ber him as the blog­ger behind The Quak­er Dhar­ma. FGC’s just pub­lished an inter­view with him and one of the ques­tions is about his blog­ging past. Here’s part of the answer:

Blog­ging among Friends is very impor­tant.  There are not a lot of Quak­ers.  We’re spread out across the world.  Blog­ging opens up dia­logues that just would­n’t hap­pen oth­er­wise.  While I laid down my blog, “The Quak­er Dhar­ma,” a few years ago, and my think­ing on some issues has evolved since then, I’m clear that blog­ging is what allowed me to give voice to my call.  It helped open some of the doors that led me to work for Pen­dle Hill and, now by exten­sion, FGC.  A lot of cut­ting edge Quak­er thought is being shared through blogs.

I thought it might be use­ful to fill in a lit­tle bit of this sto­ry. If you go read­ing through the back com­ments on Bar­ry’s blog you’ll see it’s a time machine into the ear­ly Quak­er blog­ging com­mu­ni­ty. I first post­ed about his blog in Feb­ru­ary of 2005 with Quak­er Dhar­ma: Let the Light Shine and I high­light­ed him reg­u­lar­ly (March, April, June) until the proto-QuakerQuaker “Blog Watch” start­ed run­ning. There I fea­tured him twice that June and twice more in August, the most active peri­od of his blogging.

It’s nos­tal­gic to look through the com­menters: Joe G., Peter­son Toscano, Mitchell San­tine Gould, Dave Carl, Bar­bara Q, Robin M, Brandice (Quak­er Mon­key), Eric Muhr, Nan­cy A… There were some good dis­cus­sions. Bar­ry’s most exu­ber­ant post was Let’s Begin, and LizOpp and I espe­cial­ly labored with him to ground what was a very clear and obvi­ous lead­ing by hook­ing up with oth­er Friends local­ly and nation­al­ly who were inter­est­ed in these efforts. I offered my help in hook­ing him up with FGC  and he wrote back “If you know peo­ple at oth­er Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions that you wish me to speak to and coor­di­nate with or pos­si­bly work for, I will.”

And that’s what I did. My super­vi­sor, FGC Devel­op­ment head Michael Waj­da, was plan­ning a trip to Texas and I start­ed talk­ing up Bar­ry Cross­no. I had a hunch they’d like each oth­er. I told Michael that Bar­ry had a lot of expe­ri­ence and a very clear lead­ing but need­ed to spend some time grow­ing as a Quak­er – an incu­ba­tion peri­od, if you will, among ground­ed Friends. In the first part of the FGC inter­view he mov­ing­ly talks about the ground­ing his time at Pen­dle Hill has giv­en him.

In Octo­ber 2006 he announced he was clos­ing a blog that had become large­ly dor­mant. It’s worth quot­ing that first for­mal goodbye:

I want to thank those of you who chose to active­ly par­tic­i­pate. I learned a lot through our exchanges and I think there were many peo­ple who ben­e­fit­ed from many of the posts you left. On a pure­ly per­son­al note, I learned that it’s good to tem­per my need to GO DO NOW. Some of you real­ly helped men­tor me con­cern­ing effec­tive­ly lis­ten­ing to guid­ance and help­ing me under­stand that act­ing local­ly may be bet­ter than try­ing to take on the whole world at once.

I also want to share that I met some peo­ple and made con­tacts through this process that have opened tremen­dous doors for me and my abil­i­ty to put myself in ser­vice to oth­ers. For this I am deeply grate­ful. I feel sure that some of these ties will live on past the clos­ing of the Quak­er Dharma.

Those of you famil­iar with pieces like The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion and Pass­ing the Faith, Plan­et of the Quak­ers Style know I’ve long been wor­ried that we’ve not doing a good job iden­ti­fy­ing, sup­port­ing and retain­ing vision­ary new Friends. Around 2004 I stopped com­plain­ing (most­ly) and just start­ed look­ing for oth­ers who also held this con­cern. The online orga­niz­ing has spilled over into real world con­fer­ences and work­shops and is much big­ger than one web­site or small group. Now we see “grad­u­ates” of this net­work start­ing to take on real-world responsibilities.

Bar­ry’s a bright guy with a strong lead­ing and a healthy ambi­tion. He would have cer­tain­ly made some­thing of him­self with­out the blogs and the “doors” opened up by myself and oth­ers. But it would have cer­tain­ly tak­en him longer to crack the Philadel­phia scene and I think it very like­ly that FGC would have announced a dif­fer­ent Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary this week if it weren’t for the blogs.

Quak­erQuak­er almost cer­tain­ly has more future Gen­er­al Sec­re­taries in its mem­ber­ship rolls. But it would be a shame to focus on that or to imply that the pin­na­cle of a Quak­er lead­ing is mov­ing to Philadel­phia. Many parts of the Quak­er world are already too enthralled by it’s staff lists. What we need is to extend a cul­ture of every­day Friends ready to bold­ly exclaim the Good News – to love God and their neigh­bor and to leap with joy by the pres­ence of the Inward Christ. Friends’ cul­ture should­n’t focus on staffing, flashy pro­grams or fundrais­ing hype.  At the end of the day, spir­i­tu­al out­reach is a one-on-one activ­i­ty. It’s peo­ple spend­ing the time to find one anoth­er, share their spir­i­tu­al jour­ney and share oppor­tu­ni­ties to grow in their faith.

Quak­erQuak­er has evolved a lot since 2005. It now has a team of edi­tors, dis­cus­sion boards, Face­book and Twit­ter streams, and the site itself reach­es over 100,000 read­ers a year. But it’s still about find­ing each oth­er and encour­ag­ing each oth­er. I think we’ve proven that these over­lap­ping, dis­trib­uted, largely-unfunded online ini­tia­tives can play a crit­i­cal out­reach role for the Soci­ety of Friends. What would it look like for the “old style” Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions to start sup­port­ing inde­pen­dent Quak­er social media? And how could our net­works rein­vig­o­rate cash-strapped Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions with fresh faces and new mod­els of com­mu­ni­ca­tion? Those are ques­tions for anoth­er post.

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6 thoughts on “Opening Doors and Moving on Up”

  2. Hi Mar­tin:

    Thank you so much for this post. I was think­ing about you and this larg­er his­to­ry you’ve shared as I was answer­ing those inter­view ques­tions for Chris Pifer. I’m grate­ful you cov­ered this.

    I want to pub­licly say thank you for con­nect­ing me to Michael Waj­da and FGC. My intro­duc­tion to Michael and the FGC Devel­op­ment Com­mit­tee led me to serve on FGC Cen­tral Com­mit­tee and to also become a Quak­er Quest trav­el team mem­ber. Lat­er, it was Michael who first took me to Pen­dle Hill for spir­i­tu­al nur­ture. That vis­it in turn led to my employ­ment at Pen­dle Hill. Your hunch to con­nect me to Michael proved pre­scient and life chang­ing. Yes, my road to where I am now would have been longer with­out blog­ging and with­out the sup­port, ground­ing and con­nec­tions extend­ed to me by peo­ple like you, Liz Opp and many oth­ers. Thanks. Also, I wish to share that the “now” I’m refer­ring to is a place where I feel more ground­ed in our prac­tices and I can live into my call. The fact that liv­ing into this call led me to be named as the next Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of FGC was a sur­prise in many ways. It was not the goal. Serv­ing God was and is the goal. But, I hope becom­ing Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary is an out­come that serves the good of many peo­ple and that I do this work ground­ed in Spirit.

    I also want to sup­port your obser­va­tion that “At the end of the day, spir­i­tu­al out­reach is a one-on-one activ­i­ty. It’s peo­ple spend­ing the time to find one anoth­er, share their spir­i­tu­al jour­ney and share oppor­tu­ni­ties to grow in their faith.” Yes, it’s the com­mu­ni­ty that we build with one anoth­er that real­ly mat­ters. I hope in my time at FGC I can work with staff, the board, vol­un­teers, and all sorts of Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties to help pro­vide the tools, pro­grams and oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple to grow fur­ther in their faith jour­ney by reach­ing out to one anoth­er. I love how online media has already helped sup­port this process for so many peo­ple and I look for­ward to how online media might be used in the future. With this in mind, I hope you will post soon concerning:

    “What would it look like for the “old style” Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions to start sup­port­ing inde­pen­dent Quak­er social media? And how could our net­works rein­vig­o­rate cash-strapped Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions with fresh faces and new mod­els of com­mu­ni­ca­tion? Those are ques­tions for anoth­er post.”

    With appre­ci­a­tion,

    Bar­ry Crossno

    Reply

    1. Hi Bar­ry: It’s great to see you here. I was hop­ing you might drop back into the blo­gos­phere. Hope it’s not too strange to be a pub­lic fig­ure that peo­ple talk about but of course that’s part of what you’ve signed up for! 🙂

      On the sup­port side, I’ll start off with the most obvi­ous answer: encour­age FGC pro­grams to use the Quak­er Ad Net­work. For FGC it’s a great way to reach tens of thou­sands of peo­ple with your mes­sage. The book­store, the Gath­er­ing, pub­li­ca­tions and job open­ings should all real­ly be using it. 

      I’m hop­ing that Quak­er­Ads can grow to sup­port a wider social media ecosys­tem. When I con­sid­er the time I put into it I’m maybe mak­ing min­i­mum wage (I con­sid­er it a form of mar­ket­ing for my social media con­sult­ing busi­ness). The real bene­fac­tors are the blog­gers. Right now we have one (Wess Daniels) as a test, but as we get more busi­ness I hope to add many many more. By year’s end, I’d love to see dozens of blog­gers mak­ing any­where from $20-$200 a month. One of the neater social media projects right now is Quak​ermaps​.com and while they’re still not on Quak­er­Ads (I bug Mic­ah and Jon fair­ly con­stant­ly), it’s an exam­ple of an incred­i­bly use­ful inde­pen­dent ser­vice that does­n’t need a big bud­get. FGC could give real sup­port to these sorts of projects by using Quak­er­Ads – and of course, you’d be reach­ing a wide audi­ence and gen­er­at­ing a lot of atten­tion and good will among bloggers.

      I’ll share one more con­cern. Right now, with one excep­tion, I can’t think of any­one active in blog­ging or Quak­er social media who’s on the staff of FGC, PYM, Pen­dle Hill or AFSC (PYM’s Stephen Dot­son has just start­ed a YAF net­work on Face­book). That’s wor­rysome. There’s no bridges. There’s no one who would have known your blog who is hav­ing week­ly staff meet­ings in any­one’s office. I can only spec­u­late on the cause: orga­ni­za­tions aren’t hir­ing the right peo­ple or maybe staffers are wor­ried about los­ing their jobs if they’re too active (there was that one guy back in 2006…). I tried to light a fire with PYM a few months ago but that appar­ent­ly land­ed on rocky soil.

      What­ev­er the rea­son, as Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of FGC you could encour­age more active engage­ment. I know FGC is work­ing on a six-figure com­mu­ni­ca­tions mas­ter plan but you can’t throw mon­ey at what’s need­ed. The most expen­sive, cutting-edge web­site in the world won’t change the cul­ture or break down the wall between staff and inde­pen­dent Quak­er social media. You’d be bet­ter off rebuild­ing FGC​Quak​er​.org in Blogspot and telling staff that if they want to keep their jobs they all have to post some­thing once a week. I’m being com­plete­ly seri­ous here. I doubt that’s on the table, but I do see fun­da­men­tal changes hap­pen­ing in how Friends com­mu­ni­cate, changes that will affect how we orga­nize. The insti­tu­tions that learn how to engage and adapt will be the ones that stay most relevant.

      Reply

    1. Yeah, I’m not sure… The most nat­ur­al form would be shar­ing leaked doc­u­ments, decon­struct­ing back­ass­ward atti­tudes and cri­tiquing cur­rent web­sites that are doing things wrong. I’ve grown tame in my old age, or maybe it’s Chris­t­ian mer­cy. What­ev­er, I’m more inter­est­ed in lift­ing up the indi­vid­u­als and groups where I see fresh life. 

      I was hav­ing an inter­est­ing chat yes­ter­day with a fel­low blog­ger. We were talk­ing about apos­ta­sy (!) and social media and the con­clu­sion I came to was the orga­ni­za­tions that have their eyes on the prize – I’d say the good news of Christ’s pres­ence in our lives, but real­ly it could be any strong vision for them­selves – will be focused out­ward, open to fresh peo­ple and new ideas. They won’t be stingy about link­ing to fel­low work­ers in the field. They’ll know that their com­peti­tors aren’t the fundrais­ing team in the next office, but a cul­ture of indif­fer­ence and triv­i­al­i­ty that pres­sures Friends and would-be Friends to care more about tran­sient fluff than their own spir­i­tu­al state. The Holy Spir­it wins when we take the time to care about “unim­por­tant” peo­ple (an iso­lat­ed blog­ger in Dal­las cir­ca 2005) or to build up the church by help­ing oth­ers in their min­istry even when it does­n’t advance our career or bring mon­ey to our orga­ni­za­tion’s fundrais­ing cam­paign. The Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends is a move­ment led by the Spir­it, to which our orga­ni­za­tions are sim­ply ser­vants. Those with cul­tures that under­stand this won’t have any prob­lems being relevant.

      Reply

  4. I real­ize this is not about me, but I’ll make it about me any­way. I can’t believe I’m still get­ting a shout-out on Quak­erQuak­er. I’m both hum­bled and impressed (with myself). 

    And I remem­ber the blog “The Quak­er Dhar­ma”, too. I can’t believe that guy is the new Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of FGC, whose not half bad look­ing, if I might be so bold, and I will be anyway…maybe I’ll rethink return­ing to Quakerism…

    Seri­ous­ly, I may not have much inter­est in reli­gion these days, but I always val­ued the Friend­ly blog­ging com­mu­ni­ty I once was a part of, and you helped con­nect me to it, and build and main­tain it. Thanks so much for your fel­low­ship and the excel­lent work that you con­tin­ue to do.

    Reply

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