newcomers Posts

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.

One of the things I liked about my old Quaker job is that I occasionally had a moment in between all of the staff meetings (and meetings about staff meetings, and meetings about meetings about staff meetings, I kid you not) to take interesting calls and emails from Friends wanting to talk about the state of Friends in their area: how to start a worship group if no Friends existed, how to revitalize a local Meeting, how to work through some growing pains or cultural conflicts. I've thought about replicating that on the blog, and halfway through responding to one of tonight's emails I realized I was practically writing a blog post. So here it is. Please feel free to add your own responses to this Friend in the comments.

Dear Martin
I have read that Meetings that are silent for long periods of time often wither away. But I can't remember where I read that, or if the observation has facts to back it up. Do you know of any source where I can look this up?
Thanks,
CC

Dear CC,
I can't think of any specific source for that observation. It is sometimes used as an argument against waiting worship, a prelude to the introduction of some sort of programming. While it's true that too much silence can be a warning sign, I suspect that Meetings that talk too much are probably also just as likely to wither away (at least to Inward Christ that often seems to speak in whispers). I think the determining factor is less decibel level but attention to the workings of the Holy Spirit.

One of the main roles of ministry is to teach. Another is to remind us to keep turning to God. Another is to remind us that we live by higher standards than the default required by the secular world in which we live. If the Friends community is fulfilling these functions through some other channel than ministry in meeting for worship then the Meeting's probably healthy even if it is quiet.

Unfortunately there are plenty of Meetings are too silent on all fronts. This means that the young and the newcomers will have a hard time getting brought into the spiritual life of Friends. Once upon a time the Meeting annually reviewed the state of its ministry as part of its queries to Quarterly and Yearly Meetings, which gave neighboring Friends opportunities to provide assistance, advise or even ministers. The practice of written answers to queries have been dropped by most Friends but the possibility of appealing to other Quaker bodies is still a definite possibility.
Your Friend, Martin

• Robin M reads thriving churches book, Christianity for the Rest of Us
  If the keys to a thriving congregation are shared tradition, practice, and wisdom -- how are we sharing these with each other, especially newcomers? My meeting is in a growing phase right now. Can we step into the opportunities that God is showing us?
  (tags: quaker quaker.christianity quaker.outreach)
• Gregg K on the non-use of communion among Friends
  Only a few have anything to say in response to [question about use of communiion]. That troubles me; it tells me that we are not articulating well, we are not calling people toward, we are not setting before them the beautiful example of lives lit aflame.
  (tags: quaker quaker.evangelical quaker.ministry comment)
• Ben and Jody Richmond report from Friends Theological College in Western Kenya
  This is a testing time for the church in Kenya. Will we be able to be bearers of Good News that is deep enough to bring healing and hope to those who have been traumatized, and reconciliation to those who have experienced the reality of enmity?
  (tags: quaker quaker.kenya quaker.witness)
• Robin recommends Drayton's "Getting Rooted" pamphlet
  One of the best points for me was about maintaining the balance between finding our roots but not idolizing the past. It's good for anyone who has a tendency to think all the really good Quakers died before 1800.
  (tags: quaker quaker.books quaker.conservative)
• Robin on McLaren's social action
  So please excuse me if I feel like McLaren is re-stating the obvious. However, you know what else? Humans have a habit of continually stating and repeating the very, very obvious, and not just so our mouths don't freeze up.
  (tags: comment)
• Pastor Blue Jeans on making Jesus more important than Tiger Woods
  Maybe it is time for the church... to pay less attention to who is in the White house, and God forgive me(I know God will), what changes are needed in the Book of Discipline, and more time worried about telling the Good News to the world.
  (tags: comment)
• Richard M on leadings to go ahead on faith alone
  When such a leading strikes you know that you are supposed to go to a certain place or to be with a certain person. One can feel a little foolish making what is sometimes a big effort to go somewhere with no clear idea as to what you are going to do.
  (tags: quaker quaker.discernment)
• Blog use at Penn Charter school
  "Blogs change the way I teach," Kim explains. "In the classroom, I control most of the conversation, even if I try to get out of the way. But online, young people can engage with one another and really learn from one another."
  (tags: tech tech.internetculture)

Lots of links today as I finally checked through my blogrolls!

• RobinM announces Convergent Friends' Dinner in Indiana this April 2008
  Coinciding with meeting of Friends World Committee for Consultation. "Want to come? If you're reading this, and the idea of an informal meal with Friends you've never met before sounds good to you, you're invited."
  (tags: quaker.fwcc)
• Boundless Linda on laying down her own sword
  I came to Meeting today with an angry and resentful heart and I almost didn't come. As I sat here in worship, I felt such a shift in me. I'm thinking about the sword that I am called again and again to lay down, my need to be right.
  (tags: quaker quaker.alienation)
• Fellowship Brent on pulling in newcomers
  It made me wonder how many other folks have visited Friends and wondered if somebody had forgotten their part of the program? Do we do anything to help people know what to expect? A little pamphlet on silence and worship hardly seems like enough.
  (tags: quaker quaker.outreach)
• Silly Poor Peggy P with some gratitude toward the Qr blogosphere
  With out the Quaker blogosphere I would not know Robin, or the term convergent. I would not know Peterson Toscano, or Marvin Bloom. I would not have met Wess and Emily. I would not know my fellow Quaker Agitator who quits blogging more often than I post.
  (tags: quaker quaker.blogs quaker.convergent)
• Kenya news from the Friends World Committee on Consultation
  Friends have been contacting the World Office asking how they can help in the current emergency, and with peace and reconciliation in the longer term.
  (tags: quaker quaker.kenya)
• Quaking Elizabeth revisits the Good Samaritan
  Sounds to me like Jesus isn't just telling us that we need to be kind and loving. Seems to me that Jesus is actively shaming our little cookie-seeking lawyer. I'm going with the shame-on-you version of the story, 'cause I like that Jesus best.
  (tags: quaker quaker.christianity quaker.outreach)
• A Silly Poor Gospel: Soon and very Soon
  Peggy P has a blogger contest the week I'm too busy to surf!
  (tags: comment)
• Boundless Linda on "eco-Friendly" travel to Gathering
  We need to talk with one another, worship together, play together. Since there is such value to our gathering as Friends, shouldn't our meetings labor to support means of travel that allow us to live more fully our testimonies?
  (tags: quaker.fgc)
• Thin Place Dan on forgiveness as salvation and spiritual peace
  The doctrine of forgiveness shows up in a lot of different places. It is explicit in the Lord's Prayer, but it is also inherent in the commandments that we love our neighbors as ourselves, that we love our enemies, and that we not judge others.
  (tags: quaker quaker.ministry)
• Bill Clendineng on describing Meeting as a verb
  What if we reframe "meeting" as a verb? We could add a comma to the sign out front, making it "Plainfield Friends, meeting" -- as in "these are Plainfield Friends, who are meeting here." However, this would probably only confuse people more.
  (tags: quaker quaker.outreach)
• Will T on prayers for Kenya
  And I think how my faithfulness to the Peace Testimony and honesty and the command to love my neighbor and to bless those who persecute me would be tested if I were to find myself in such a situation. And I pray for [those] faced with exactly that test.
  (tags: quaker quaker.kenya)
• Unafraid Angelina on the gift of Quaker diversity
  I have a large extended family, so thinking of Quakers (and more broadly, Christians) in that way is constructive for me: we don't necessarily have to agree with or like one another, but there is an imperitive to at least respect if not love one another.
  (tags: quaker quaker.convergent quaker.youth)
• Bird-dogging for peace
  Peace groups on bus caravan asking hard questions of candidates
  (tags: quaker.video quaker.witness)
• Video introductions to Friends
  An introduction to the Friends Meeting House, Watford, UK
  (tags: quaker.videos quaker.outreach)

Even though my last post was a five minute quickie, it generated a number of comments. One question that came up was how aware individual Friends are about the specific Quaker meanings of some of the common English words we use--"Light," "Spirit," etc.(disambiguation in Wiki-speak). Marshall Massey expressed sadness that the terms were used uncomprehendingly and I suggested that some Friends knowingly confuse the generic and specific meanings. Marshall replied that if this were so it might be a cultural difference based on geography.

Go check out Mobtown Blues for a great post called All paths don't lead to the same mountain. that starts off about a talk by Brian McLaren, one of the emergent church's most prominent pastors, and goes on to talk about a recent Quaker outreach at a large East Coast liberal Friends meeting:

I was distressed to hear speaker after speaker extol Quakerism for what it is not: not oppressive, not judgemental, not elitism, not closed-minded, not fundamentalist, not doctrinaire... very few spoke of what makes the faith distinctive or spiritually powerful in its own right.

And then he delivers the punch line:

A couple of my friends, a same-sex couple who had expressed keen interest in exploring Quakerism were so appalled by the self-congratulatory smugness on display at that newcomers' breakfast, by the implicit condemnation of all of those other, "less evolved" faith traditions, that they never came back to the meeting.

He hits on so many true things here: that Quaker smugness, the claim we've transcended human biases, the negatively-stated identity.

Seekers try out a religious tradition because they think there might be some truth in its teachings. We do them a disservice when we meet them at the door with a watered-down gruel. And we do our meetings a disservice, as those seekers who have come looking for a positive Quakerism go elsewhere while the newcomers that do stay come because they liked the refugee religious attitude they were presented with.

The coincidence in all this is that last night Bill Samuel commented on the blog. Bill has been one of the most tireless Quaker outreach voices, most lately with Quakerinfo.com, but a few years ago he left Friends to worship at Cedar Ridge Community Church, an emergent church pastored by?.. Pastored by Brian McLaren. And he wrote that he knew other Friends who had left their meetings to join Cedar Ridge.

McLaren is good at articulating a positive vision of church, something Friends could once do too. I've visited one of Philadelphia's emergent churches a few times, though I'm not quite ready to join Bill as a "post-Quaker." Still, how many important once-Quakers and almost-Quakers have been lost with our fear of self-identity?

Last night I took advantage of an opportunity to stay late in the city to attend mid-week worship at a place I'll call Meeting A (a thin disguise, but I don't want this post to be about this particular meeting). Attendance was low, the worship never felt grounded and the one piece of vocal ministry didn't speak to my condition. I came expecting all this but the behavior after the rise of meeting surprised me. The greeter asked a member to provided ten minutes of information about someone never identified who was engaged in a ministry shrouded in never-defined Quaker acronyms. This done, we were dismissed without even so much as a go-round of names. A few people beat feet for the door and others beat feet for their friends, backs turned to the newcomer.

There's an irony in that this particular meeting was one of the targets of a multi-year yearly meeting campaign to field-test outreach ideas. Elaborate surveys, meeting self-evaluations and outside outreach mentors focused on six meetings. Gallons of ink continue to be spilt in yearly meeting publicity material about the program, yet after all years of attention no one at Meeting A apparently knows how to say "hello and howdido" to a stranger at mid-week worship. The failure of the the meeting's outreach efforts seem pretty obvious: no one there cared about who a stranger was, why he had come, whether he had been to a Quaker Meeting before or might have any questions. No one gave the stranger any reason to ever come back.

About a year ago I had the opportunity to sit in on Meeting A's religious education committee meeting. An exciting proposal for an adult R.E. program to attract newcomers was whittled down as every possible time for it was blocked by various committee meetings. There's nothing the dying meeting needed more than fresh blood yet it fiercely prioritized an over-elaborated committee structure that left no room for either outreach.

The tyranny of programs

One thing I've been noticing lately is that many Friends try to use ambitious programs to achieve goals that are better met through simple ministries. Meeting A needs someone who holds a concern for friendliness. I'm sure there's someone at the meeting carrying this gift; they could be identified and named. The Friend could be released from all committee work (gasp!) and given the simple permission to be friendly to newcomers and to any who might feel like outsiders to the meeting. They could hold the concern for friendliness and outreach at business meeting and gently labor with the meeting about the issues learned from befriending the newcomers. One or two people who faithfully held this as a calling could change the history of the meeting.

Part of this is a need to examine our dependence on committees. Meeting A is extreme but many Friends spend so much time in insider-focused committee meetings that they have little time to do much else. Why does the typical Quaker meeting have so many committees? Let's take the ubiquitous peace and social concern committee. Why don't rising concerns and ministries on social issues get brought to the ministry & council/overseers/elders and treated as any other leading? Meeting committees are often less interesting than the people in them. Many committees exude a chronic sense of being overburdened and actively resist taking on new leadings (in practice, this means that exciting ideas from younger Friends are routinely shut out,).

Why not release individual Friends to their leadings, with meeting testing and oversight and an open-ended possibility that leadings might come over time to be held by the meeting at large? Devolve some of the committee structure with a faith that the work that wouldn't be picked up is the work we don't need to be doing anyway. How amazing would it be to see a flowering of ministries or to see a whole meeting take on a homegrown concern? And how precious would it be if more individual Friends felt the encouragement to simply go up and talk to strangers at mid-week worship?