Retro Quaker Vocal Ministry Flowchart

June 16, 2022
“Speaking into the Silence” from the August 1991 Friends Journal.
“Speak­ing into the Silence” from the August 1991 Friends Journal.

Peo­ple have been com­ment­ing a lot on this chart Friends Jour­nal shared on social media last week. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the August 1991 issue, what I love most about it is its 1990s-era flow­chart design. What would it be today — some punchy info­graph­ic per­haps? We dove into the archives because this mon­th’s issue is all about Quak­er vocal min­istry and at least two of the fea­ture arti­cles men­tion these kinds of charts.

From Paul Buck­ley:

There is a fre­quent­ly repro­duced dia­gram that graph­i­cal­ly guides poten­tial speak­ers through a series of ques­tions they are to con­sid­er when they feel an urge to rise and speak. These exam­ine whether a poten­tial mes­sage is divine­ly inspired; whether it is intend­ed for the speak­er alone or for oth­ers present; and whether this is the right time and place to deliv­er it. These resources are all use­ful, but they only address one half of the act of vocal min­istry: one that is, by far, the small­er and per­haps less impor­tant por­tion. The oth­er part is the min­istry of lis­ten­ing, and we are all called to be lis­ten­ing ministers.

From Edna Whit­ti­er:

Since the begin­ning of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, writ­ten advices have guid­ed Friends. Year­ly meet­ings’ faith and prac­tice books, Pen­dle Hill pam­phlets on vocal min­istry, and indi­vid­ual month­ly meet­ings’ “Wel­come to Quak­er Wor­ship” hand­outs have guide­lines for speak­ing or not speak­ing in meet­ing for wor­ship. In 2019, Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence even pub­lished a poster of a cir­cle flow chart with guide­lines for deliv­er­ing a mes­sage dur­ing worship.

Brent Bill has sub­se­quent­ly shared the graph­ic Whit­ti­er men­tions and yes, it is very 2020’s info­graph­i­cal in design!

But I link to the arti­cles because these kinds of when-to-speak kind of charts can always become prob­lem­at­ic. As Bet­sy Caz­den replied on Twit­ter: “The peo­ple who need it least will spend the full hour obsess­ing about the flow-chart and will nev­er speak. The peo­ple who need it most nev­er will.” Just a few weeks ago I was sit­ting on a bench in Crop­well (N.J.) Meet­ing test­ing and retest­ing my moti­va­tions and lead­ings to rise and give min­istry. I gave a final breath to stand up when I heard the “good morn­ing Friends” fol­lowed by the sounds of hands slap­ping on hands in rise-of-meeting hand­shakes. Over the years I have learned not spend my whole hour obsess­ing but had not real­ized this meet­ing’s wor­ship was only 45 minutes!

Foodways and Folkways

June 10, 2019

I wrote the intro to the June-July Friends Jour­nal, our issue on “Food Choic­es.” There was a strong inter­est in some cir­cles to have a whole issue advo­cat­ing veg­e­tar­i­an diets. Although I’m sym­pa­thet­ic (I’ve been a veg­an since my ear­ly 20s) I’m aller­gic to claims that all Quak­ers should adopt any par­tic­u­lar prac­tice. It feels too close to Mar­garet Fel­l’s sil­ly poor gospel, a mis­un­der­stand­ing of way Quak­er process medi­ates between indi­vid­ual and group behavior.

Food unites and food divides. It both marks us into tribes and gives us oppor­tu­ni­ties to reach past our soci­etal lim­its. From chick­en bar­be­ques to vegetarian-dominated potlucks, what we put on the table says a lot about our val­ues, and how we wel­come unfa­mil­iar food choic­es is a mea­sure of our hos­pi­tal­i­ty. How do kitchen-table spreads of tofu and chick­pea dips rein­force cer­tain stand-apart cul­tur­al norms? Are Friends who like bar­be­cue ribs less Quak­er? What about meet­ings that still host the annu­al chick­en din­ner or clambake? 

George Fox Speaking

April 2, 2019

At some point 18 months ago, we at Friends Jour­nal decid­ed that a future issue would revolve around humor. I remem­ber feel­ing a lump in my stom­ach at the time. I’ve learned to stop and poll my moti­va­tions before mak­ing a Quaker-related joke — not to see if it’s fun­ny, but to make sure that at least most Quak­ers might think it’s fun­ny. Well, that humor issue is out and avail­able online. Many of the fea­tures talk about humor but the first fea­ture actu­al­ly aims for humor itself. Don McCormick imag­ines Quak­er his­tor­i­cal fig­ures brought into modern-day cable news pro­gram­ming as they describe some of our rather odd customs.

George gives the cam­era a steely-TV-anchorman-type look and says, “Hel­lo, this is the evening edi­tion of Fox News. George Fox speak­ing. For our first sto­ry, let’s turn to Will ‘the Quill’ Penn at the sports desk.”

“Good evening,” says Will. “Well, it’s half-time over at Sier­ra Friends Center’s out­door bas­ket­ball court, and the Wool­man Wom­bats are bat­tling it out with the Quak­er Oafs. Both teams just com­plet­ed the league’s required work­shops on non­vi­o­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the Alter­na­tives to Vio­lence Project. The score at half-time is zero to zero. We have some footage from the sec­ond quarter.” 

What Does the Outside Say?

March 7, 2019

Also in Friends Jour­nal’s issue, “Out­side the Meet­ing­house,” a piece from Brad Stock­er of Mia­mi Meet­ing in Florida:

Most Friends have an under­stand­ing of the archi­tec­tur­al mes­sage that our meet­ing­hous­es express. We under­stand the sim­plic­i­ty of the struc­ture. We under­stand the rea­son there are no steeples or cross­es on the out­side and why we have clear win­dows placed so as to invite the light to enter. We are equal­ly sen­si­tive to inte­ri­or design. While we come into fre­quent, inti­mate con­tact with the meet­ing­house exte­ri­or, and the land it sits on, we may be less aware of the mes­sage they convey. 

There may be a lit­tle whiplash to talk about but­ter­fly gar­dens after the recent arti­cle on Quak­er wor­ship from prison but I like the inten­tion­al­i­ty of Stock­er’s obser­va­tions: we are always mak­ing state­ments with the care (or non-care) of our phys­i­cal space. Miami’s the kind of coastal city where cli­mate change is very much not a the­o­ret­i­cal issue and Stock­er is very involved in his year­ly meet­ing’s earth­care edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tives. The meet­ing­house grounds are a place to mod­el good stew­ard­ship; tak­ing the care to have them be invit­ing and qui­et­ly demon­stra­tive of Quak­er val­ues is impor­tant outreach.

Is Quaker Culture an Obstacle to Faith?

February 2, 2019

From Isaac Smith:

I have tend­ed to describe this shift in under­stand­ing as the moment when Quak­erism “clicked” for me — when it ceased to be just the weird sub­cul­ture I grew up in, and more a mat­ter of con­vic­tion. Prac­tices that I ignored or nev­er quite under­stood, like mak­ing group deci­sions with­out tak­ing a vote, now made sense, because they were borne out of an attempt to make Christ the present teacher in all affairs. 

Isaac’s piece stems in part from the Decem­ber Friends Jour­nal, on Quak­ers and Chris­tian­i­ty. A large per­cent­age of the sub­mis­sions we received for the issue had remark­ably sim­i­lar per­son­al sto­ries: peo­ple had grown up in a restric­tive reli­gious tra­di­tion and come to Lib­er­al Friends because of its open­ness to spir­i­tu­al seek­ing. If any­thing they were hos­tile to Chris­tian­i­ty and dis­tinc­tive Quak­er pecu­liar­i­ties when they joined but over time they slow­ly shift­ed, often after get­ting to know ground­ed elder Friends. Now they qui­et­ly iden­ti­fied as Chris­t­ian Friends.

We could have print­ed a whole issue of (most­ly) con­vinced Lib­er­al Friends who had redis­cov­ered Chris­tian­i­ty. Instead we picked a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple for the print edi­tion and pub­lished the rest as part of our our extend­ed online edi­tion; you can read it all at the online con­tents. Although Isaac’s sto­ry is dif­fer­ent (he grew up as a Friend) it shares a sim­i­lar trajectory.

(Issac also has some ques­tions about Quak­er pub­lish­ing, with a link to a great 2009 blog post from Johan Mau­r­er. I feel I should talk about this issue too but that’ll take a bit more pon­der­ing on my part).

Is Quak­er Cul­ture an Obsta­cle to Faith?

Life after Death

January 14, 2019

Rhi­an­non Grant on Lib­er­al Quak­ers’ view on the afterlife:

Spend­ing some more time with this idea, includ­ing dur­ing Meet­ing for Wor­ship, I realised that I actu­al­ly have a strong intu­ition against there being any form of life after death. Not only do I not think that any life which may or may not occur after death should affect my actions now (I don’t do things because I want to get into heav­en or gen­er­ate good kar­ma for my next life, and nor do I accept escha­to­log­i­cal ver­i­fi­ca­tion), I active­ly think it’s unlike­ly, even impos­si­ble, that such a thing exists. 

Friends Jour­nal devot­ed an issue to The Art of Dying and the After­life a few years ago, includ­ing an intro­duc­tion I wrote.

Lib­er­al Quak­ers and Life after Death

A Racially Diverse Society of Friends?

January 2, 2019

The Jan­u­ary issue of Friends Jour­nal is online. I wrote the intro this month so I’ll just quote myself:

In recent years, a num­ber of Black Friends Jour­nal con­trib­u­tors have shared heart­break­ing sto­ries of not feel­ing wel­come in Quak­er cir­cles. As we planned this issue, we self-consciously added a ques­tion mark to the end of its title — “A Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends?” The choice of punc­tu­a­tion hints at a cer­tain weari­ness — are we real­ly still ask­ing this? — along with the sug­ges­tion that maybe many Friends are con­tent enough with the sta­tus quo that they might sim­ply answer “no” to a call for diversity.