Last week­end I was invited to speak to Abing­ton (Pa.) Meeting’s First-day school (n.b. proper FJ stylesheet) to talk about vocal min­istry in wor­ship. I haven’t been to wor­ship at that meet­ing for eons and can’t speak to the con­di­tion of its min­istry, but I do know that vocal min­istry can be some­thing of a mys­tery for unpro­grammed Friends. Many of us are “con­vinced,” com­ing to the Soci­ety as adults and often have a nag­ging feel­ing we’re play-acting at being Friends, but I’ve met many life-long Quak­ers who also won­der about it.

Per­haps as a response to these feel­ings, we some­times get rather pedan­tic that what­ever way we’ve first encoun­tered is the Quaker way. The cur­rent fash­ion of vocal min­istry in the Philadel­phia area is for short mes­sages, often about world events, often con­fes­sional in nature. What I wanted to leave Abing­ton with was the rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent ways unpro­grammed Friends have wor­shipped over time and how some of our prac­tices out­side wor­ship were devel­oped to help nur­ture Spirit-led ministry.

(writ­ten this a.m. but only posted to lim­ited cir­cles, cut and pasted when I saw the mix-up)

Google+: View post on Google+

Over on Tape Flags and First Thoughts, Su Penn has a great post called “Still Think­ing About My Quaker Meet­ing & Me.” She writes about a process of self-identity that her meet­ing recently went through it and the dif­fi­cul­ties she had with the process.

I won­dered whether this dif­fi­culty has become one of our modern-day stages of devel­op­ing in the min­istry. Both Samuel Bow­nas (read/buy) and Howard Brin­ton (buy) iden­ti­fied typ­i­cal stages that Friends grow­ing in the min­istry typ­i­cally go through. Not every­one expe­ri­ences Su’s rift between their meeting’s iden­tity and a desire for a God-grounded meet­ing com­mu­nity, but enough of us have that I don’t think it’s the foibles of par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­u­als or monthly meet­ings. Let me tease out one piece: that of indi­vid­ual and group iden­ti­ties. Much of the dis­cus­sion in the com­ments of Su’s post have swirled around rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent con­cep­tions of this.

Many mod­ern Friends have become pretty strict indi­vid­u­al­ists. We spend a lot of time talk­ing about “com­mu­nity” but we aren’t prac­tic­ing it in the way that Friends have under­stood it–as a “reli­gious society.” The indi­vid­u­al­ism of our age sees it as rude to state a vision of Friends that leaves out any of our members–even the most het­ero­dox. We are only as united as our most far-flung believer (and every decade the sweep gets larger). The myth of our age is that all reli­gious expe­ri­ences are equal, both within and out­side of par­tic­u­lar reli­gious soci­eties, and that it’s intol­er­ant to think of dif­fer­ences as any­thing more than language.

This is why I cast Su’s issues as being those of a min­is­ter. There has always been the need for some­one to call us back to the faith. Con­trary to modern-day pop­u­lar opin­ion, this can be done with great love. It is in fact great love (Quaker Jane) to share the good news of the directly-accessible lov­ing Christ, who loves us so much He wants to show us the way to right­eous liv­ing. This Quaker idea of right­eous­ness has noth­ing to do with who you sleep with, the gas mileage of your car or even the “cor­rect­ness” of your the­ol­ogy. Jesus boiled faith­ful­ness down into two com­mands: love God with all your might (how­ever much that might be) and love your neigh­bor as yourself.

A “reli­gious soci­ety” is not just a “com­mu­nity.” As a reli­gious soci­ety we are called to have a vision that is stronger and bolder than the lan­guage or under­stand­ing of indi­vid­ual mem­bers. We are not a per­fect com­mu­nity, but we can be made more per­fect if we return to God to the full­ness we’ve been given. That is why we’ve come together into a reli­gious society.

“What makes us Friends?” Just fol­low­ing the mod­ern tes­ti­monies doesn’t put us very squarely in the Friends tradition–SPICE is just a recipe for respect­ful liv­ing. “What makes us Friends?” Just set­ting the stop­watch to an hour and sit­ting qui­etly doesn’t do it–a wor­ship style is a con­tainer at best and false idol at worst. “How do we love God?” “How do we love our neighbor?” “What makes us Friends?” These are the ques­tions of min­istry. These are the build­ing blocks of outreach.

I’ve seen nascent min­is­ters (“infant min­is­ters” in the phras­ing of Samual Bow­nas) start ask­ing these ques­tions, flare up on inspired blog posts and then tail­dive as they meet up with the cold-water real­ity of a local meet­ing that is unsup­port­ive or inat­ten­tive. Many of them have left our reli­gious soci­ety. How do we sup­port them? How do we keep them? Our answers will deter­mine whether our meet­ing are reli­gious soci­eties or communities.

My work­shop part­ner Wess Daniels just posted an update about the upcom­ing work­shop at Pen­dle Hill. Here’s the start. Click through to the full post to get a taste of what we’re preparing.

Mar­tin Kel­ley and I will be
lead­ing a
week­end retreat at Pen­dle Hill in just a cou­ple weeks (May 14–16)
and I’m start­ing to get really excited about it! Mar­tin and I have been
col­lab­o­rat­ing a lot together over the past few months in prepa­ra­tion for
this week­end and I wanted to share a lit­tle more of what we have
planned for those of you who are inter­ested in com­ing (or still on the
fence). During the week­end we will be encour­ag­ing con­ver­sa­tions around
build­ing com­mu­ni­ties, con­ver­gent Friends and how this looks in our local
meet­ings. I wanted to give the descrip­tion of the week­end, some of the
queries we’ll be touch­ing on, and the out­line for the week­end. And of
course, I want to invite all of you inter­ested par­ties to join us!

Read the full post on Wess’s blog

One of the blue­prints for Quaker com­mu­nity is the “Epis­tle from the Elders at Balby” writ­ten in 1656 at the very infancy of the Friends move­ment by a gath­er­ing of lead­ers from York­shire and North Mid­lands, England.

It’s the pre­cur­sor to Faith and Prac­tice, as it out­lines the rela­tion­ship between indi­vid­u­als and the meet­ing. If remem­bered at all today, it’s for its post­script, a para­phrase of 2 Corinthi­ans that warns read­ers not to treat this as a form to wor­ship and to remain liv­ing in the light which is pure and holy. That post­script now starts off most lib­eral Quaker books of Faith and Practice.

But the Epis­tle itself is well worth dust­ing off. It addresses wor­ship, min­istry, mar­riage, and how to deal in meek­ness and love with those walk­ing “dis­or­derly.” It talks of how to sup­port fam­i­lies and take care of mem­bers who were impris­oned or in need. Some of it’s lan­guage is a lit­tle stilted and there’s some talk of the role of ser­vants that most mod­ern Friend would object to. But over­all, it’s a remark­ably lucid, prac­ti­cal and rel­e­vant doc­u­ment. It’s also short: just over two pages.

One of the things I hear again and again from Friends is the desire for a deeper com­mu­nity of faith. Younger Friends are espe­cially drawn toward the so-called “New Monas­tic” move­ment of tight com­mu­nal liv­ing. The Balby Epis­tle is a glimpse into how an ear­lier gen­er­a­tion of Friends addressed some of these same concerns.

ONLINE EDITIONS OF THE EPISTLE AT BALBY:
Quaker Her­itage Press: qhpress​.org/​t​e​x​t​s​/​b​a​l​b​y​.​h​tml
Street Cor­ner Soci­ety: strecor​soc​.org/​d​o​c​s​/​b​a​l​b​y​.​h​tml
Wik­isource: en​.wik​isource​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​T​h​e​_​E​p​i​s​t​l​e​_​f​r​o​m​_​t​h​e​_​E​l​d​e​r​s​_​a​t​_​B​a​l​b​y​,​_​1​656

DISCUSSIONS:
Brook­lyn Quaker post & dis­cus­sion (2005): brook​lyn​quaker​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​5​/​0​3​/​e​l​d​e​r​s​-​a​t​-​b​a​l​b​y​.​h​tml

A busy Quaker week. On Tues­day I heard North Car­olina Friend Betsy Blake give a talk called “He Lives” at Pen­dle Hill, the story of how “Jesus has been her rock” to quote from the pro­gram descrip­tion. It was a great talk and very well received.

Betsy is a grad­u­ate of the Quaker pro­gram at Guil­ford (so she was a
good fol­lowup for Max Carter’s talk this week­end) and she helped
orga­nize the World Gath­er­ing of Young Friends a few years ago. The talk was recorded and should be up on the Pen­dle Hill shortly (I’ll add a link when it is) so I’ll not try to be com­pre­hen­sive but just share a few of my impressions.

Betsy is the kind of per­son that can just come under the radar. She starts telling sto­ries, funny and poignant by turn, each one a Betsy story that you take on its own mer­its. It’s only at the end of the hour that you fully real­ize she’s been tes­ti­fy­ing to the pres­ence of Jesus in her life in all this time. Real-life sight­ings, com­fort­ing hands on shoul­ders fam­ily tragedy, intel­lec­tual doubts and expanded spir­i­tual con­nec­tions all come together like dif­fer­ent sides of the elephant.

One theme that came up a few times in the question-and-answer sec­tion is the feel­ing of a kind of spir­i­tual tiredness–a fatigue from run­ning the same old debates over and over. It’s an exhaus­tion that squelches curios­ity about other Friends and some­times moves us to fol­low the easy path in times of con­flict rather than the time-consuming & dif­fi­cult path that might be the one we need to be on.

The last time I was in the Pen­dle Hill barn it was to lis­ten to Shane Clai­borne. I’m one of those odd peo­ple that don’t think he’s a very good speaker for lib­eral Quak­ers. He down­plays the reli­gious instruc­tion he received as a child to empha­size the pro­gres­sive spir­i­tual smörgås­bord of his adult­hood with­out ever quite real­iz­ing (I think) that this early edu­ca­tion gave him the lan­guage and vocab­u­lary to ground his cur­rent spir­i­tual trav­els. Those who grow up in lib­eral Quaker meet­ings gen­er­ally start with the dab­bling; their chal­lenge is to find a way to go deeper into a spe­cific spir­i­tual prac­tice, some­thing that can’t be done on week­end trips to cool spir­i­tual destinations.

Betsy brought an appre­ci­a­tion for her grounded Chris­t­ian upbring­ing that I thought was a more pow­er­ful mes­sage. She talked about how her mom was raised in a tra­di­tion that could talk of dark­ness. When a fam­ily mem­ber died and doubt of God nat­u­rally fol­lowed, her mother was able to remind her that God had healed the beloved sis­ter, only “not in the way we wanted.” Pow­er­ful stuff.

The sounds at Pen­dle Hill were fas­ci­nat­ing: the sound of knit­ting nee­dles was a gen­tle click-clack through the time. And one annoy­ing speaker rose at one point with an annoy­ing ser­mon­ette that I real­ized was a modern-day ver­sion of Quaker singsong (lib­eral Friend edi­tion), com­plete with dra­matic pauses and over-melodious deliv­ery. Funny to real­ize it exists in such an unlikely place!

And a plug that the Tues­day night speaker’s series con­tin­ues with some great Friends com­ing up, with North Carolina’s Lloyd Lee Wil­son at bat for next week. Hey, and I’ll be there with Wess Daniels this May to lead a work­shop on “The New Monas­tics and Con­ver­gent Friends.”

Had a good time with Philadel­phia Yearly Meet­ing high school Friends yes­ter­day, two mini-session on the tes­ti­monies in the mid­dle of their end-of-summer gath­er­ing. The sec­ond ses­sion was an attempt at a write-your-own tes­ti­monies exer­cise, fueled by my testimonies-as-wiki idea and grounded by pas­sages from an 1843 Book of Dis­ci­pline and Thomas Clarkson’s “Por­trai­ture”. My hope was that by reverse-engineering the old tes­ti­monies we might get an appre­ci­a­tion for their spir­i­tual focus. The exer­cise needs a bit of tweak­ing but I’ll try to fix it up and write it out in case oth­ers want to try it with local Friends.

The invite came when the pro­gram coor­di­na­tor googled “quaker tes­ti­monies” and found the video below (loose tran­script is here):

An inter­view with Raye, a mem­ber of Ohio Yearly Meet­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive who serves on their Elec­tronic Out­reach Com­mit­tee. You can also watch it on Quak­erQuaker: Quaker Video and Elec­tronic Out­reach.

Raye: Ohio Yearly Meet­ing holds our yearly meet­ing in Bar­nesville Ohio–some peo­ple know us as those Bar­nesville folks. We have an elec­tronic Out­reach Com­mit­tee and that includes the over­sight and min­istry asso­ci­ated with our web­site. We spend time think­ing about how to open up to peo­ple who might be inter­ested in Friends’ ways and might want to know more about us whether or not they’ve ever read the Jour­nal of George Fox. We’re try­ing to expand our wit­ness, if you will.

One of the ques­tions that has come up in this elec­tronic out­reach group is: what types of com­mu­ni­ca­tion or video are use­ful for some­one to get to know us but also respect­ful of the fact that we do wor­ship and that wor­ship is a spir­i­tu­ally inti­mate time. We’re try­ing to bridge and deal with respect­ing the wor­ship­pers, the Friends them­selves, to not put on a per­for­mance and yet to try to com­mu­ni­cate what it is that is edi­fy­ing in prac­tice and worship.

Mar­tin: How do you give new­com­ers a taste of Quak­ers with­out direct­ing it too much? If you just have that silent empty box it’s hard for new­com­ers to know what should be fill­ing that box.

Raye: One of the things Friends have done for hun­dreds of years is to pub­lish, to keep jour­nals and to share that. But that’s not all there is to the Friends expe­ri­ence. There are those quiet times and those moments of min­istry that we believe are Spirit-inspired. Many of us wish we could give peo­ple a lit­tle taste of that because that doesn’t show up in a lot of pub­lished writ­ings. That spon­ta­neous and timely, and at times prophetic, wit­ness that we see in our Meet­ings. We have con­sid­ered dig­i­tal video as a way to do that.

Mar­tin: I love the video pos­si­bil­i­ties here. Video can be a way of reach­ing out to more people.

Raye: It’s not just any­thing that can be writ­ten. Cer­tainly the writ­ings that have been pub­lished are very help­ful in get­ting some sort of a glim­mer of where we have been, or in some cases where we are headed or where we are. But there is noth­ing like that expe­ri­ence of being with Friends in meet­ing. It doesn’t always hap­pen but there are these moments called a cov­ered meet­ing or a gath­ered meet­ing where every­body seems to be in the same place spir­i­tu­ally and when seems to be mes­sages and gifts com­ing through peo­ple. That’s dif­fi­cult to get across.

We’re hop­ing that with video we can dis­cuss these kinds of things after the fact. We don’t want to turn it into a spec­ta­tor sport or performance.

Mar­tin: Authen­tic­ity is a key part of the Quaker mes­sage. You’re not prac­tic­ing what you’re going to say for First Day or Sun­day. You’re sit­ting there and wait­ing for that imme­di­ate spirit to come upon you.

Raye: We don’t know when that will hap­pen. There are meet­ings where every­body is very quiet, where there’s a sense of that spirit and unity but it may be an out­wardly quiet meet­ing. I have been in meet­ings where some­one stood up and began to sing their mes­sage or a psalm or some­one had a won­der­ful ser­mon that was per­fect for the moment. These things hap­pen but we don’t know when they will.

On a recent evening I met up with Gath­er­ing in Light Wess, who was in Philadel­phia for a Quaker-sponsored peace con­fer­ence. Over the next few hours, six of us went out for a great din­ner, Wess and I tested some tes­ti­monies,
and a revolv­ing group of Friends ended up around a table in the
conference’s hotel lobby talk­ing late into the night (the links are
Wess’ reviews, these days you can reverse stalk him through his Yelp
account).

Of all of the many peo­ple I spoke with, only one had any kind of
fea­tured role at the con­fer­ence. With­out excep­tion my con­ver­sa­tion
part­ners were fas­ci­nat­ing and insight­ful about the issues that had
brought them to Philadel­phia, yet I sensed a per­vad­ing sense of missed
oppor­tu­nity: hun­dreds of lives rearranged and thou­sands of air miles
flown mostly to lis­ten to oth­ers talk. I spent my long com­mute home
won­der­ing what it would have been like to have spent the week­end in the
hotel lobby record­ing ten minute Youtube inter­views with as many
con­fer­ence par­tic­i­pants as I could. We would have ended up with a
snap­shot of faith-based peace orga­niz­ing circa 2009.

Next week­end I’ll be burn­ing up more of the ozone layer by fly­ing to Cal­i­for­nia to co-lead a work­shop with Wess and Robin M. (details at Con​ver​gent​Friends​.org,
I’m sure we can squeeze more peo­ple in!) The par­tic­i­pant list looks
fab­u­lous. I don’t know every­one but there’s at least half a dozen
peo­ple com­ing who I would be thrilled to take work­shops from. I really
don’t want to spend the week­end hear­ing myself talk! I also know there
are plenty of peo­ple who can’t come because of com­mit­ments and costs.

So we’re going to try some experiments–they might work, they might not. On Quak­erQuaker, there’s a new group for the event and a dis­cus­sion thread open to all QQ mem­bers (sign up is quick and pain­less). For those of you com­fort­able with the QQ tag­ging sys­tem, the Deli­cious tag for the event is “quaker.reclaiming2009”. Robin M has pro­posed using #con­ver­gent­friends as our Twit­ter hashtag.

There’s all sorts of mad things we could try (Ustream video or live
blog­ging via Twit­ter, any­one?), wacky wacky stuff that would dis­tract
us from what­ever mes­sage the Inward Christ might be try­ing to give us.
But behind all this is a real ques­tions about why and how we should
gather together as Friends. As the bank­ing sys­tem tanks, as the envi­ron­ment
strains, as com­mu­ni­ca­tions costs drop and we find our­selves in a curi­ous new econ­omy, what chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties open up?