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!

Panel talk on Safety in Meetings

March 15, 2022

Updat­ed to reflect the pan­el has hap­pened: On Wednes­day the 23rd there was a Zoom pan­el on the March issue of Friends Jour­nal, “Safe­ty in Meet­ings,” co-sponsored by the mag­a­zine and by Quak­ers in Pas­toral Care and Coun­sel­ing (QPCC).

The March 2022 issue of Friends Jour­nal, Safe­ty in Meet­ings, has brought up impor­tant ques­tions and ideas for Friends con­cerned with pas­toral care and abuse pre­ven­tion. How do we rec­og­nize when the unthink­able hap­pens; how do we heal? How can we be open and wel­com­ing to all peo­ple; do clear bound­aries and com­mu­ni­ty expec­ta­tions con­tribute to that? Is there a Quak­er wit­ness to pro­tect the vul­ner­a­ble in our community?

Our pan­elists are QPC­C’s Bruce Heck­man and Friends Jour­nal authors Kody Hersh (Sacred Respon­si­bil­i­ty), Jade Rock­well (Sheep Among Wolves), Melin­da Wen­ner Bradley and Sita Diehl (Friend­ship and Care), joined by facil­i­ta­tors from both Friends Jour­nal and QPCC. 

Big props to FJ’s vol­un­teer co-news edi­tor Windy Cool­er, who’s been orga­niz­ing all this (she also con­duct­ed an inter­view for the issue).


Over forty peo­ple came to the pre­sen­ta­tion. It was quite mov­ing and itself mod­eled a car­ing com­mu­ni­ty. I’m grate­ful to see this issue be get­ting more atten­tion from Friends. It was not record­ed, for pri­va­cy’s sake, but there will be fol­low up.

Where do we hear God’s voice?

January 3, 2019

Angel­i­ca Brown on min­istry from unex­pect­ed sources:

I think about the peo­ple I’ve cared about who have need­ed to talk to them­selves and make nois­es. Who need to pace and say things we don’t under­stand. Spir­it is mov­ing through them, in this incar­na­tion­al way. Remind­ing them they still have bod­ies that can make nois­es, that they still can breath words into being. 

http://​www​.meet​ing​house​.xyz/​e​v​e​r​y​t​h​i​n​g​/​2​0​1​8​/​1​2​/​3​1​/​w​h​e​r​e​-​d​o​-​w​e​-​h​e​a​r​-​g​o​d​s​-​v​o​ice

Trustworthy Friends

January 3, 2019

Johan Mau­r­er has put togeth­er a sur­vey for Friends to talk about set­ting up trust­wor­thy churches:

A lot of Quak­er ener­gy has gone into reas­sur­ing skep­tics and wound­ed refugees that we Friends are not like “those peo­ple,” refer­ring to the zealots, author­i­tar­i­ans, and reli­gious entre­pre­neurs who have some­times giv­en faith a bad name. But what are we affir­ma­tive­ly promis­ing? And how do we increase our capac­i­ty to keep our promis­es and become more trustworthy? 

https://​ino​.to/​d​K​K​V​1T3

New eBook “Remixing Faith” Now Available

November 20, 2018

From Wess Daniels:

I have put this talk togeth­er in ebook form com­plete with lots of pic­tures and illus­tra­tions and for­mat­ting that adds to the read­ing expe­ri­ence. I want­ed to share this with all of you and make it as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble, so it is free to down­load. It should work with most modern-day eBook read­ers and apps. If that doesn’t work for you, I have also turned the talk into a down­load­able .PDF.

New eBook “Remix­ing Faith” Now Available

Creeds and stories

August 22, 2018

Isaac Smith was going to write some­thing about creeds:

I had been kick­ing around writ­ing some­thing on the uses and abus­es of creeds in the Quak­er tra­di­tion, but then I dis­cov­ered that Ben Wood had writ­ten a fair­ly defin­i­tive ver­sion of that essay already. So read that instead.

Ben’s 2016 piece on Quak­ers and creeds is def­i­nite­ly worth a read. I checked my records and I must have missed it at the time, so I’ll share it now. He goes deep into the kinds of creeds that Penn and Bar­clay gave in their writ­ings but also what the ear­li­er Chris­t­ian creed-makers were com­ing from. He also comes to today. Here’s a taste:

we can­not be creed-makers before we are story-preservers and story-tellers. We can­not hope to resolve dif­fer­ences unless and until we dig down into our own Quak­er sto­ry; unless we come to terms with its pow­er and impli­ca­tions. At least part of our sense of spir­i­tu­al malaise is a ret­i­cence to engage with the depth of the Quak­er tale. Part­ly that ret­i­cence is about a lack of teach­ing min­istry among Friends. We haven’t giv­en each oth­er the tools to become skill­ful read­ers of our own nar­ra­tive. We have assumed that peo­ple can just ‘pick this stuff up’ through a mys­te­ri­ous process of osmo­sis. This has led to a frag­men­ta­tion of under­stand­ing about the mean­ing and impli­ca­tions of Quak­er grammar.

In my world, talk of creeds has sprung up recent­ly fol­low­ing the Quak­er­S­peak video of Arthur Larrabee’s nine core prin­ci­ples of unpro­grammed Friends. His prin­ci­ples seem fair­ly descrip­tive of main­stream Lib­er­al Friends to me, but pre­dictably enough the video’s com­ments have peo­ple wor­ried about any for­mu­la­tion: “Espous­ing core beliefs — no mat­ter how well inten­tioned — risks intro­duc­ing a creed.” One of my pet the­o­ries is that the mid-century truce over the­ol­o­gy talk that helped Quak­er branch­es reunite (at least on the U.S. East Coast) has stopped working.

Quak­ers and Creeds