I had an inter­est­ing oppor­tu­nity last Thurs­day. I skipped work to be talk with two Quak­erism classes at Philadelphia’s “William Penn Char­ter School”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn_Charter_School (thanks for the invite Michael and Thomas!). I was asked to talk about Quaker blogs, of all things. Sim­ple, right? Well, on the pre­vi­ous Tues­day I hap­pened upon this pas­sage from Brian Drayton’s new book “On Liv­ing with a Con­cern for Gospel Ministry”:http://www.quakerbooks.org/get/1–888305-38-x:
bq. I think that your work will have the great­est good effect if you wait to find whether and where the springs of love and divine life con­nect with this open­ing before you appear in the work. This is even true when you have had an invi­ta­tion to come and speak on a topic to a work­shop or some other forum. It is wise to be sus­pi­cious of what is very easy, draws on your prac­ticed strengths and accom­plish­ments, and can be treated as an every­day trans­ac­tion. (p. 149).
Good advice. Of course the role of min­istry is even more com­pli­cated in that I wasn’t address­ing a Quaker audi­ence: like the major­ity of Friends schools, few Penn Char­ter stu­dents actu­ally are Quaker. I’m a “pub­lic school kid”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheltenham_High_School, but it from the out­side it seems like Friends schools stress the ethos of Quak­erism (“here’s Penn Charter’s statement”:http://www.penncharter.com/content/aboutpc/quakerism.asp). Again Dray­ton helped me think beyond nor­mal ideas of pros­el­tyz­ing and out­reach when he talked about “pub­lic meet­ings”: “We are also called, I feel to invite oth­ers to share Christ directly, not pri­mar­ily in order to intro­duce them to Quak­erism and bring them into our meet­ings, but to encour­age them to turn to the light and fol­low it” (p. 147). What I shared with the stu­dents was some of the ways my inter­ac­tion with the Spirit and my faith com­mu­nity shapes my life. When we keep it real, this is a pro­foundly uni­ver­sal­ist and wel­com­ing mes­sage.
I talked about the per­sonal aspect of blog­ging: in my opin­ion we’re at our best when we weave our the­ol­ogy with with per­sonal sto­ries and tes­ti­monies of spe­cific spir­i­tual expe­ri­ences. The stu­dents reminded me that this is also real world les­son: their great­est excite­ment and ques­tion­ing came when we started talk­ing about my father (I used to tell the story of my com­pletely messed-up child­hood fam­ily life a lot but have been out of the habit lately as it’s receded into the past). The stu­dents really wanted to under­stand not just my story but how it’s shaped my Quak­erism and influ­enced my com­ing to Friends. They asked some hard ques­tions and I was stuck hav­ing to give them hard answers (in that they were non-sentimental). When we share of our­selves, we present a wit­ness that can reach out to oth­ers.
Later on, one of the teach­ers pro­jected my blogroll on a screen and asked me about the peo­ple on it. I started telling sto­ries, relat­ing cool blog posts that had stuck out in my mind. Wow: this is a pretty amaz­ing group, with diver­sity of ages and Quak­erism. Review­ing the list really reminded me of the amaz­ing com­mu­nity that’s come together over the last few years.
One inter­est­ing lit­tle snip­pet for the Quaker cul­tural his­to­ri­ans out there: Penn Char­ter was the Gur­neyite school back in the day. When I got Michael’s email I was ini­tially sur­prised they even had classes on Quak­erism as it’s often thought of as one of the least Quaker of the Philadelphia-area Quaker schools. But think­ing on it, it made per­fect sense: the Gur­neyites loved edu­ca­tion; they brought Sun­day School (sorry, _First Day_ School) into Quak­erism, along with Bible study and higher edu­ca­tion. Of course the school that bears their legacy would teach Quak­erism. Inter­est­ingly enough, the his­tor­i­cal Ortho­dox school down the road aways recently approached Penn Char­ter ask­ing about their Quaker classes; in true Wilbu­rite fash­ion, they’ve never both­ered try­ing to teach Quak­erism. The offi­cial Philadel­phia Quaker story is that branches were all fixed up nice and tidy back in 1955 but scratch the sur­face just about any­where and you’ll find Nine­teenth Cen­tury atti­tudes still shap­ing our insti­tu­tional cul­ture. It’s pretty fas­ci­nat­ing really.