Brent Bill is continuing his “Modest Proposal” series on Quaker “revitalization” on his blog Holy Ordinary. Today’s installment (part seven) is great but I’m not sure where it leaves us. He starts by talking about how some Quaker body’s books of disciplines (“Faith and Practice”) are becoming more legalistic as they pick up ideas from other religious bodies. He then challenges yearly meetings and other Friends bodies to a “serious examination of their purpose and programs” in which they ask a series of questions about their purpose.
I agree with a lot of his observation. But at the same time I’m not sure what a serious examination would look like or would produce. In recent years my own yearly meeting has developed a kind of circadian rhythm of constant reorganization, tinkering with organizational charts, legislative processes design to speed up decisions, and changing times and frequencies of events hoping to attract new people. And yet, as I wrote a few weeks ago, when I went to sit in on a meeting of the governing body, I was the third or fourth youngest person in a room of about 75 Friends. It was pretty much the same group of people who were doing it ten years and multiple reforms ago, only now they are ten years older. We actually ripped through business so we can spend an hour naval-gazing about the purpose of this particular governing body and I can report it wasn’t the breath of fresh air that we might have hoped for.
A big part of the problem is we’ve forgotten why we’re doing all this. We’ve split the faith from the practice – and I don’t mean Christian vs non-Christian, but the whole kit-and-kaboodle that is the Quaker understanding of gospel order, a world view that is distinct from that of other Christian denominations. Lloyd Lee Wilson calls it the “Quaker gestalt” in Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order. When a spiritual tradition has an internal consistency, and the process and theology reinforce each other. Architecture and demeanor, cultural and business values fit together. It’s never perfect, of course, and maintaining the consistency against new influences and changing circumstances is often the source of unnecessary petty squabbling. But even something as innocuous as a meetinghouse’s bench arrangements can tell you a lot about a group’s theology and its balance towards authority and individualism.
It’s our understanding of our faith and our concept of body-of-Christ community which undergirds our institutional structures. When we don’t have a good grasp of it, we do things merely because “we’re supposed to” and the process feels dry and spirit-less. We defend particular institutions as necessary because they’re codified in our books of doctrine and lose our ability to positively explain their existence, at which point frustrated members will call for their abandonment as unnecessary baggage from a bygone age.
As an example, about seven years ago my quarterly meeting went through a naval-gazing process. I tried to be involved, as did my then-Quaker wife Julie. We asked a lot of big questions but others on the visioning committee just wanted to ask small questions. When Julie and I asked about divine guidance at sessions, for example, one fellow condescendingly explained that if we spent all our time asking what God wanted we’d never get anything done. We really didn’t know what to say to that, especially as it seemed the consensus of others in the group. One thing they were complaining about was that it was always the same few people doing anything but after a few rounds of those meetings, we ran screaming away (my wife right out of the RSoF altogether).
Re-visioning isn’t just deconstructing institutions we don’t understand or tinkering with some new process to fix the old process that doesn’t work. If you’ve got a group of people actively listening to the guidance of the Inward Christ then any process or structure probably can be made to work (though some will facilitate discernment better). Our books of “Faith and Practice” were never meant to be inerrant Bibles. At their core, they’re our “wiki” of best practices for Quaker community discernment – tips earned through the successes and failures of previous generations. I think if we understand our spiritual roots better we’ll find our musty old Quaker institutions actually still have important roles to play. But how do we get there? I like Brent’s questions but I’m not sure you can just start with them. Anyone want to share stories of spiritual deepening in their meetings or faith communities and how that fed into a renewed appreciation of Quaker bodies and process?
How many of us have seen or participated in placing a hand on the wall of the sanctuary and then saying, “This is not the church.” With this act, we are trying to illustrate that it is the people of our faith community who are the church and not the building. Do we have any idea what we just said? If the building is not the church, why do we spend so much time and effort dealing with it? If the building is not the church, why is it so important to us? After we have said, “This is not the church,” have we ever taken a far look in the direction we just pointed? What happens when we extend that thought?
What do capital campaigns and 6- or 7- or 8‑digit mortgages (or any mortgage amount) and sanctuaries with high vaulted ceilings and proper acoustic resonance and stained glass windows and basketball courts and dining halls and sculpted altars and carved pulpits and custom-built communion tables and decorative carpet and imported floor tiles and plentiful paved parking lots and meticulously manicured gardens have to do with living and sharing the Good News? – Nothing.
What do fund raisers and all the accompanying effort and bother and time and finding and organizing the required workers have to do with living and sharing the Good News? – Nothing.
What do praise bands and church orchestras and bell choirs and octaves of tuned bells and multi-rank pipe organs and grand pianos and synthesizers and adult choirs and children choirs and choir auditions and choir robes and music folders and the search and review and selection analysis and purchase of new music and multi-line PA systems and multi-screen video systems and live broadcasts and recorded broadcasts and hours of rehearsal time and church bulletins and church bulletin art work and church bulletin paper and designer fonts and newsletters and mailing lists and advertising and advertising placement and multi-media web sites and visits by unique IP addresses and the use of and the presence on new media have to do with living and sharing the Good News? – Nothing.
What do membership drives and attendance numbers and baptism numbers and tithing and bequeaths and endowments and liturgical employees and non-liturgical employees and salaries and benefits and committees and committee meetings and church boards and church board meetings and the consequential and unavoidable church politics have to do with living and sharing the Good News? – Nothing.
Much of what we call successful Christianity and successful worship and successful congregations has nothing to do with living and sharing the Good News.
Once we begin to think of our faith in terms of largeness instead of largess or in terms of measurable success or significant achievements or community stature or statistically significant gains or business models or congregational models or appropriate budget processes or cash flow direction or generally accepted accounting practices or independent audits or administrative requirements or managerial transparency or proper leadership roles and boundaries or membership trends or effective organizational structures or a current and accurate vision statement – at that point, we have become the money changers – we have lost our faith and deserve to be driven away for we are neither living nor sharing the Good News.
What would happen if the church universal – every congregational property, every regional office, every national office, every seminary, every camp – was sold and the net proceeds were used to establish a trust fund endowment to support nutritional, medical, legal, and educational services for the poor, the lost, and the hurt?
When you want a new status quo – a status quo different than the current status quo – you are asking for revolution. When you desire radical transformation – you are asking for revolution. When you are tired of capital campaigns for more structural imagery; nauseated by controversy over who is fit to be a church member, deacon, or elder; repulsed by the aggregation and protection of authority that defines narrow rigid paths to ordination; grievously hurt by the abandonment and refusal to acknowledge congregations who dare to be excited by their proclaiming and living the Good News; or sick of choosing better organization over better outreach – you are asking for revolution.
“Doing” has to be the new definition of faith. A “new definition” will not be statements of purpose/mission/vision or political participation or public stances on issues or styles of worship. It will be specific activities; specific ways of living that are the new definition. Participating in CODA or LifeLine or Habitat for Humanity will not be an outreach activity; it will be what we do and definitive of who we are. Supporting a free clinic or a food pantry or a shelter for the homeless will not be the focus of an annual fund-raising event; it will be part of our continuously active and visible theological and spiritual DNA. Worship will not be every Sunday morning – it will be whenever and wherever 2 or 3 (not 200 or 300, not 2,000 or 3,000, not 20,000 or 30,000) are gathered to live, study, and contemplate the Good News. Indeed, “doing” will be about living and being the Good News, not scheduling it as a repetitive activity on our digital calendar on the same day at the same time that always occurs at the same location and always follows the same sequence. “Doing” our faith does not require capital campaigns; local, regional, or national governing boards; seminaries; or licensing/ordination policies.
“Doing” our faith has to be seen as a radical, counter-cultural, defiant way of living. By its very nature, our faith is not supposed to be institutionalized and not measured by largeness, cultural pervasiveness, or authoritarianism. Our faith is supposed to be personal and divinely humane. Our faithful doing is to be delivered person-to-person, face-to-face, one-to-one – not by an invisible faceless remote committee or collective. “Doing” our faith can be accomplished only with more personal involvement and not with more technology that is better, more pervasive, more invasive, and increasingly remote and detached.
Should congregations be small groups meeting for worship in the homes of different members? Just imagine: Church with no offerings, no church governing boards and no board meetings, no committees and no committee meetings, no rehearsals, no fund raisers, no capital campaigns, no finances, no buildings, no property, no maintenance or repairs or replacements, no employees, no membership drives. Just imagine: Church as only worship, only studying, only witnessing in word and service to each other and the world.
excerpt from RECLAIMING CHURCH by Doug Sloan
http://dmergent.org/2010/06/03/reclaiming-church/
>explained that ‘if we spent all our time asking what God wanted we’d never get anything done’
This certainly explains how we keep getting so much done without accomplishing anything: We should maybe rename ourselves ‘The Society of Mary the Busy Kitchen-Help’?
What to do with people who keep saying: “That’s just intellectual stuff; what matters is Doing!”?
Sometimes I feel like reacting as you say your wife did! I think we were drawn/called to the RSoF for some purpose that escapes me– because in the tradition and some of the people I see great potential for carrying out God’s purposes. But sometimes these purposes seem inscrutable indeed!
Let us not forget the Inward Light of the Christ, resting in the SOUL of these
Meetings, and yes, upon, in, and around every must old navel present. We do our best, flawed as it may be.
Thee needs to remember; it’s only a Meeting, Yearly, monthly, 1st Day’s. Chill. Behold thou the face of Christ. Forget not thy first Love.
simon marc
I’m one who has occasionally responded to a new initiative with, “That’s not the way Quakers do it.” Partly that came out of personality, but also partly because of my great admiration for a system that seemed a healthy, holy blend of the spiritual leading the practical. It was easy for me to let the admiration verge on idolatry – lauding the structure per se, without staying down in the Spirit to be sure it was doing what we thought it was.
I do see frequent signs of the world creeping in, the MBA-ification of Quaker structures, with mission statements, task forces, efficiency goals, etc. The time pressure you refer to is an example; we don’t need to take time just for the sake of taking time, but we do need to take all the time the Spirit needs to get its message through our thick skulls. People who pay attention to their internal tides become aware of how our sense of time is speeded up in a fast-moving environment, and then slows down when we sit quietly under our personal boddhi tree.
It will never happen, but I’d like to ask the man who said we’d never get anything done if we waited to hear God’s input on it, if he would like to have a clearness committee to consider whether he is enough in tune with Friends’ faith and practice to be ready to be a member.
Martin, this is difficult for me to articulate, but I think you are right. When we get away from the big question of “What does God want us to do?” Ffriends can end up in a secular process that has no enlivening juice. One reason I believe my meeting is thriving is that we keep coming back to leadership of the Holy Spirit. It’s a holy quest. Sometimes we flub up and get side-tracked, but there really is an effort to look at each other, the world at large and our work together with spiritual eyes.
Blessings Abound,
Elizabeth