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This week I received an email from a young seeker in the Philadelphia area who found my 2005 article "Witness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings" published in FGConnections. She's a former youth ministries leader from a Pentecostal tradition, strongly attracted to Friends beliefs but not quite fitting in with the local meetings she's been trying. Somewhere she found my article and asks if I have any insights.

The 2005 article was largely pessimistic, focused on the "committed, interesting and bold twenty-something Friends I knew ten years ago" who had left Friends and blaming "an institutional Quakerism that neglected them and its own future" but my hope paragraph was optimistic:

There is hope... A great people might possibly be gathered from the emergent church movement and the internet is full of amazing conversations from new Friends and seekers. There are pockets in our branch of Quakerism where older Friends have continued to mentor and encourage meaningful and integrated youth leadership, and some of my peers have hung on with me. Most hopefully, there's a whole new generation of twenty- something Friends on the scene with strong gifts that could be nurtured and harnessed.

Hard to imagine that only three years ago I was an isolated FGC staffer left to pursue outreach and youth ministry work on my own time by an institution indifferent to either pursuit. Both functions have become major staff programs, but I'm no longer involved, which is probably just as well, as neither program has decided to focus on the kind of work I had hoped it might. The more things change the more they stay the same, right? The most interesting work is still largely invisible.

Some of this work has been taken up by the new bloggers and by some sort of alt-network that seems to be congealing around all the blogs, Twitter networks, Facebook friendships, intervisitations and IM chats. Many of us associated with QuakerQuaker.org have some sort of regular correspondence or participation with the Emerging Church movement, we regularly highlight "amazing conversations" from new Friends and seekers and there's a lot of inter-generational work going on. We've got a name for it in Convergent Friends, which reflects in part that "we" aren't just the liberal Friends I imagined in 2005, but a wide swath of Friends from all the Quaker flavors.

But we end up with a problem that's become the central one for me and a lot of others: what can we tell a new seeker who should be able to find a home in real-world Friends but doesn't fit? I could point this week's correspondent to meetings and churches hundreds of miles from her house, or encourage her to start a blog, or compile a list of workshops or gatherings she might attend. But none of these are really satisfactory answers.   

Elsewhere:

Gathering in Light Wess sent an email around last night about a book review done by his PhD advisor Ryan Bolger that talks about tribe-style leadership and a new kind of church identity that uses the instant communication tools of the internet to forge a community that's not necessarily limited to locality. Bolger's and his research partner report that they see "emerging initiatives within traditional churches as the next horizon for the spread of emerging church practices in the United States." More links from Wess' article on emerging churches and denominations.

Sorry I've been awol on the blog lately. What a crazy few weeks this has been, as those who know my alter-ego can probably imagine. Not to be a scrooge but when did Christmas become such a monstrosity? I'm looking forward to a few stolen moments with family, hopefully with minimal sniffles all around.

Anyone liking music might want to try out Jango.com. It's the best implementation of a social music playing/recommendation service I've seen so far. It's in beta testing and there's still some kinks to work out. My user account looks to be here, though I should give warning that the current band list is overly influenced by a jokey classic rock lineup I put in (next up: a high school highlight station only Pam might love).

To the right: gratuitous cute kid pic. Theo traced all the letters in black ink. There's an accompanying video too. Update: and here it is below.

This weekend we took off for a family trip to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania--Julie and me, the kids and my mother Liz. I won't have time to do a long blog post, but highlights were the Verdant View farm B&B (link) where we stayed; the Strasburg Railroad (link) whose line runs through the farm's backyard, the Choo Barn model railway (link); and the amazing Cherry Crest Farm (link) with its corn maze and its simple games for kids of all ages (who knew you could have so much fun with a hill and a piece of burlap?!).

See the See the photo set on Flickr for more pictures and stories. Every shot is mapped, with links.

Large photo: Family at Strasburg RR: Martin, Liz, Theo, Julie, Francis. Below: Julie and the kids walking through fields at farm, Francis playing kung-fu with the farm dog, Theo running in terror from said dog, Engine 90 ready to pull out.

As will be obvious to anyone seeing this, the QuakerRanter has been seriously redesigned and moved off the Nonviolence.org server. I plan to talk about the technical underpinnings soon on MartinKelley.com. In the meantime email me if there's any horrifying glitches.

Update, 9/1/06:

My visitor logs picked up a very interesting new Google entry for my site that highlights the power of keywords and tags that are running on this new site. More over on Martinkelley.com in the immodestly titled post I am the King of Folksonomy.

There's been some head-scratching going on about QuakerQuaker over the last few weeks. In the service of transparency I've posted my contributor guidelines on the About QuakerQuaker page. Here they are:

Post should be explicitly Quaker: Any thoughtful posts from any branch of Friends that wrestles in some way with what it means to be a Quaker is fair game. While we all have our own issues that connect deeply with our understanding of our faith, the Blogwatch only seems to work if it keeps focused on Quakerism, on how we our faith and lives interact. Back when this was just a links list on my personal site I would get complaints when I added something that seemed related to my understanding of Quakerism but that wasn't specifically written from a Quaker standpoint (when we want to make this kind of link we should do so on our personal blogs where we can put it in better context).

Post should be timely: I’ve billed QuakerQuaker as "a guide to the Quaker conversation” and links should go to recently-written articles with strong voices. We’re not trying to create a comprehensive list of Quaker websites, so no linking to organizational homepages. While most links should go to blog posts, it’s fine to include good articles from Quaker publications. A link to something like a press release or new book announcement should only be made if it’s extraordinary. Remember that QuakerQuaker posts will only appear on the main site for a few days (if the initial setup goes well I can start work on some ideas to giave a more timeless element to the site).

Post should be Interesting: Don’t bookmark everything you find. If the post feels predictable or snoozy, just ignore it (even if the writer or topic is important). The Quaker bloggers all have their audiences and we don’t need to highlight every post of every blogger. Only make the link if the post speaks out to you in some way (it’s quite possible that one of the other contributors will pick up, finding something you didn’t and highlighting it in their description). That said, the posts you link to don’t have to be masterpieces; they can have grammatical and logical mistakes. What’s important is that there’s some idea in there that’s interesting. It might be a good discipline for each of us not to add our the posts from our own personal blogs but to let one of the other contributors do it for us.

That's it. While there are some vague assumptions in all this about the role of tradition and community, discipline and individualism, there's nothing about theology or who gets linked. This is a publication, with something of an editorial voice in that I've chosen who gets to add links and asked them to be subjective, but its very mellow and I've been happy to see contributors range far afield. Google tells us that this is one of 18.7 million "Quaker" websites and $10/month will get you your own so let's not do too much navel-gazing about what's linked or not linked. If you don't find it interesting, there are plenty of non-subjective Quaker blogs lists out there. I do listen to feedback and am always twiddling with the site so feel free to send email to me at martink-at-nonviolence-dot-org.

An early edition of "Nonviolence Web Upfront," which debuted December 29, 1997.

I started Nonviolence.org in late 1995 as a place to publicize the work of the US peace movement which was not getting out to a wide (or a young) audience. I built and maintained the websites of a few dozen hosted groups (including the War Resisters League, Fellowship of Reconciliation and Pax Christi USA) but I quickly realized that the Nonviolence.org homepage itself could be used for more than just as a place to put links to member groups. I realized I could highlight the articles I thought should get more publicity, whether on or off the Nonviolence.org domain. The homepage adapted into what is now a recognizable blog format on December 29, 1997 when I re-named the homepage "Nonviolence Web Upfront" and started posting links to interesting articles from Nonviolence.org member groups. In response to a comment the other day I wondered how that fit in with the evolution of blogging. I was shocked to learn from Wikipedia's article on weblog that the first use of the term occured on December 29, 1997--yes, the same day!

I think is less a coincidence than a confirmation that many of us were trying to figure out a format for sharing the web with others. Below is an excerpt from the email announcement for "Nonviolence Web Upfront." The reliable Archive.org has index of Upfront's second week, whose feature was a guest piece by John Steitz, Is the Nonviolence Web a Movement Half-Way House that sounds eerily similar to recent discussions on Quaker Ranter.

On electronic fellowships, online magazines and the freedom of this patchwork of independent cross-linked blogs: "Maybe the web's form of hyperlinking is actually superior to Old Media publishing. I love how I can put forward a strong vision of Quakerism without offending anyone--any put-off readers can hit the "back" button. With my Subjective Guide to Quaker Blogs and my On the Web posts I highlight the bloggers I find particularly interesting, even when I'm not in perfect theological unity. I like that I can have discussions back and forth with Friends who I don't exactly agree with. I have nothing to announce, no clear plan forward and no money to do anything anyway. But I thought it'd be interesting to hear what others have been thinking along these lines."