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.