(Too) Silent Worship and Whithered Meetings

Our Meeting is often silent. We're a small Meeting - our numbers don't usually reach double figures. But we've kept going for more than fifteen years and the Meeting for Worship is central to our activities. Some people prefer busier Meetings with lots of ministry. There are two reasons for that: they may wish to get more involved or they may wish to be relatively inconspicuous. But other people enjoy coming to our small Meeting and value the silence as much as any ministry that occurs. Not all ministry is spoken and there is much more to the silence of a gathered Meeting than a mere absence of words.

We do have an existence beyond Meeting for Worship as can be seen from our blog http://beestonquakers.blogspot.com

P.S. I found this post through following quakerquaker on Twitter.

Douglas Steere in his Pendle Hill pamphlet "On Speaking Out Of The Silence" makes the same observation:

I might begin by confessing that there are some persons who attend a Friends’ meeting for worship with the hope that there will be no vocal ministry at all. They prefer the silence, and resent messages of vocal ministry as intrusions. I suppose that in a certain sense all of us have these moments when we would rather not be disturbed.

  But the actual truth of the matter is that meetings that have turned completely silent almost inevitably wither away. Something is missing in the corporate relationship. This does not mean that an occasional completely silent meeting may not be one in which great things have happened within the hearts of those who attended. But the practical experience of the Society of Friends, historically, knows the fate of a meeting that is habitually mute.

I would suggest to "CC" that the issue is not what happens to meetings that are silent for "long periods"; the issue is what has happened to an individual — her/him, you, me, anybody — who is silent that long.

Why the long silence? Has there been nothing in her or his spiritual life, yours or mine, that has had enough content to be worth sharing?

Perhaps, if there has not been anything in our own lives worth sharing, the reason could be that we have not been turning continually to God to consult about what we're going through. We have not been asking, and that's why we haven't received.

If a seeker comes to a meeting, and no one there has anything to speak out of her or his personal experience, the seeker may conclude that there is just not much life in the meeting, and go on in search of a more vital spirituality elsewhere. That is indeed a part of the reason why some meetings wither away.

Peter wrote in his first pastoral letter: "...Always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; having a good conscience...." This is the apostle's own advice to be always ready to speak in ministry. It's the precursor to Fox's own challenge, "What canst thou say?"

The responsibility to keep the life in our meetings is not "the meeting's" but ours — CC's, yours, and mine.

I think that part of the concern about Meetings that are silent for too long is that we cannot adequately convey our faith by saying nothing. And if any sort of "ministerial afterthought" is shared, then a newcomer or attender may interpret that as a signal that vocal ministry occurs outside of waiting worship.

At one of the meetings for worship that I attend regularly, there has been a custom that towards the end of the hour, the Friend who closes worship invites worshipers to share what is still on their hearts "that may not have risen to the level of vocal ministry."

When there was a chance for that particular group, along with M&C members, to evaluate how well that format was working--it had been used when the worship had far fewer attenders--there was a fairly strong sense of the meeting that it was working well and was bearing fruit.

I recall that one Friend in particular commented that it helped (her? him?) understand that there was a difference between being led to speak and simply offering up a message because maybe it was a good idea or worthy thought.

Blessings,
Liz Opp, The Good Raised Up

The earliest claim I am aware of, made on the basis of a historical study, was by John Stephenson Rowntree, in his essay Quakerism Past and Present, which was one of the major foundations for the "Quaker renaissance" in Britain in the 1800s. His claim was based on an extensive study of membership statistics and meeting documents from the preceeding centuries; it was bolstered, I believe, by A.R. Barclay's Inner life of the Commonwealth, which came out soon after Rowntree's essay. He was writing at a time of controversy in the YM, when there were extreme statements for and against the value of vocal ministry (one Friend was recorded to have said, "The only thing the ministry requires among us is universal suppression," or words to that effect, I am quoting from memory.

Rowntree was writing to call the Society of Friends to renewal on various fronts, among them a renewal of the ministry, including the travelling ministry. While he was theologically pretty evangelical, he was deeply read in early Quakerism, especially Fox (his essay, "MIcah's Mother" on the Wilkinson-Story separation, is a very solid meditation and study on the tensions at play during the establishment of "gospel order" by Fox and others), and thoroughly committed to the free ministry - so although some people have used the idea that too-long-silent meetings wither to justify the pastoral system, that is not how Rowntree and his younger allies thought at all. (thouth there were a few British Friends who thought maybe the pastoral system should be tried-- this story is a complex one.) When his nephew, John Wilhelm Rowntree, and his contemporaries, like E. Grubb, W.C. Braithwaite, JW Graham, A.N. Brayshaw and others came along, a main goal of their liberalising work in the YM was the ecnouragement of an intellectually and ethically engaged, more daring and effective Christian ministry among unprogrammed Friends.

For more about the context for this conversation, I recommend JS Rowntree "Gospel ministry in the Society of Friends, " "The Work and maintenance of Gospel ministry," and JW Rowntree, "The problem of a free ministry" and "the present position of religious thought in the Society of Friends," among other papers from that era. Rufus Jones has a lot to say about the importance of a vital ministry, and the weaknesses that result from a weakened ministry, in his Later Periods of Quakerism, and some of his writings from the American Quaker days.

I seem to remember something John Punshon wrote -- probably in Encounter with Silence -- about 19th century meetings going for weeks and months at a time with no vocal ministry. He might have been referring to Rowntree's essay.

I am not sure if Punshon ascribed a reason for this. My own sense is that it had to do with an overly strict application of Elias Hicks' suspicion of self-centered ministry, ministry driven by what we would call the ego rather than by the Living God. The "how do we know the difference" is the perennial problem of Quaker ministry, I think.

Unless a meeting has adopted an ideological never-ever-under-any-circumstances-say-ANYTHING-in-meeting-that-isn't-100%-for-certain-from-God, I think Marshall's diagnosis is pretty accurate.

I would add to it only that I do think there's a corporate dimension that suppresses ministry as well. When members of a meeting as a whole don't know each other very well, or where they know each other too well and have unresolved conflicts or disunity, that, too, can contribute to a drying up (or dilution) of vocal ministry. Silence then becomes the common denominator, but it is the dead slience of fearful apprehension rather than the vitality of reverential awe and expectation.

In my experience, when a meeting is active in its other ministries -- pastoral care of members, religious education, evangelism and outreach, engagement in and service to the larger society, etc. -- vocal ministry kind of takes care of itself.

I just got back to NY from a trip to IL., having been on the road for the past week and a half and not reading e-mail or blogs.

I was kind of surprised and immensely grateful for the responses to my question about silent meetings. If I needed to be convinced that Quaker Blogs Rule, I was certainly convinced by what I read. In the old days it would have taken eons to gather the information provided by those learned Friends. Chances are I would have given up somewhere along the way, so I would like to thank each and every one of them for his/her contribution. I plan to follow up and read Rowntree's essays if I can find them in print. I do have a copy of Punshon's Encounters with Silence and Douglas Steere's On Speaking Out of the Silence, so will start there.

I'm sorry to be communicating with you this way but I couldn't decided which ID(?) category to use; I'm not particularly into anonymity...........I"m known as Cousin Claire in AVP circles here in NY state, so you could identify me that way if you would be so kind as to forward this to those who took the time and thought to answer my question about silent meetings.