Last night LizOpp, Robin M and myself host­ed our FGC Gath­er­ing inter­est group. The title was “On Fire!: Renew­ing Quak­erism through a Con­ver­gence of Friends.” All morn­ing long we’ve had Friends grab­bing our arms to tell us how pow­er­ful and impor­tant it was for them. One well-traveled Friend went so far as to say the spon­ta­neous wor­ship that occurred halfway through was the deep­est he’s expe­ri­enced in twen­ty years of Quak­erism. The obvi­ous chal­lenge for us hosts is keep­ing our egos secure­ly tamed from all this praise.

The work was­n’t ours. We sim­ply set the stage. My first impulse is to say we helped cre­ate an envi­ron­ment where the Spir­it could break into the event, but that’s not real­ly it. We tried to cre­ate a space where par­tic­i­pants would rec­og­nize when the Spir­it knocked on the door.

Food for Fire par­tic­i­pants.Blog­gers at the work­shop pose for a goofy attacking-one-another photo.

What hap­pened last night felt sim­i­lar to what hap­pened in last Feb­ru­ary’s Pow­ell House Food for the Fire work­shop. While I took notes and jour­naled a lot about it I nev­er gave a fol­lowup blog post. It was pow­er­ful and I need­ed to digest it. Luck­i­ly par­tic­i­pants Rob, Aman­da and Zach and Claire all shared about it or its themes in the weeks afterwards.

I’d like to share some­thing about the assump­tions and prepa­ra­tion that went into these two events. There’s no way to cre­ate a cookie-cutter agen­da to force a deep spir­i­tu­al high. In fact part of what’s need­ed is to move beyond pre­dictabil­i­ty. Both times I’ve had a clear sense that a point came when I was no longer facil­i­tat­ing, where Spir­it was active­ly guid­ing us and par­tic­i­pants were active­ly respond­ing to that process, even elder­ing us past the con­trol of facilitation.

When I came to Pow­ell House I had a work­shop descrip­tion and a keen inter­est in the top­ic. What I did­n’t bring was an agen­da. I’m try­ing to exper­i­ment with not being too pre­pared.* Ear­ly Friends held open meet­ings and while they often bore con­cerns and had themes that fre­quent­ly reoc­curred in their min­istry. Friends today rely very much on mod­els bor­rowed from high­er edu­ca­tion: we have work­shops that expect agen­das, we give talks that expect pre-printed speech­es. These are often the oppor­tu­ni­ties we get for teach­ing min­istries, yet they are very pro­grammed. The chal­lenge is to fig­ure out how to sub­vert them to allow for unpro­grammed surprise.

At Pow­ell House I spent time before each ses­sion walk­ing around the grounds in prayer for guid­ance on what to do next. I had brain­stormed ideas before­hand but my main prepa­ra­tion had been a lot of Quak­er read­ing and prayer in the weeks pre­ceed­ing the event. I want­ed the ses­sions to con­nect to the spir­i­tu­al con­di­tion of the par­tic­i­pants, as indi­vid­u­als and as a group. There were a few moments I thought I was nuts. For exam­ple, walk­ing around before the Pow­ell House Sat­ur­day after­noon ses­sion it seemed like read­ing a chap­ter of Samuel Bow­nas’s Descrip­tion of the Qual­i­fi­ca­tions would be a good idea, but by mid-afternoon I could see the sleepy faces. We did it any­way and faces and spir­it lit up. Peo­ple want­ed to engage with Bow­nas. As it turns out we read all of chap­ter three, “Advice to Min­is­ters in a State of Infan­cy.” It was so cool.

The real inbreak­ing hap­pened a lit­tle lat­er. The group was tired, din­ner was near­ing. I start­ed to rec­om­mend we go into a cir­cle to break up. One Friend inter­rupt­ed, looked at anoth­er across the room and said “you have some­thing to say, don’t you.” The sec­ond Friend said yes, then chal­lenged us that we had­n’t actu­al­ly answered our queries at all. The main ques­tion was still on the table. “What are we called to do?” There was a release. I knew I was not in con­trol of the work­shop any­more. We came into a prayer cir­cle and start­ed to talk about some of this. One Friend said some­thing about nam­ing who it is that call us. A theme came out that it was­n’t enough for us to find some sort of per­son­al sal­va­tion and com­fort in our Quak­er meet­ings: we need­ed to bring all the world into this if it was to be mean­ing­ful. It tru­ly felt like the Holy Spir­it was in the room. It was­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly so com­fort­able and it some­how seemed like not enough, but it point­ed to the work we need­ed to do afterwards.

Blog­ging par­tic­i­pants of On Fire! work­shop pose togeth­er. About fifty peo­ple total came out for the Mon­day night inter­est group. Click pho­to for names and links. Lots of dis­cus­sions hap­pened at the rise of the worship. The semi-impromptu post-discussion group. (Thanks for FGC’s Emi­ly for tak­ing & post­ing this!) FGC Gath­er­ing pho­tos on Flickr and Tech­no­rati

Last night, at the FGC inter­est group, some­thing sim­i­lar hap­pened. Robin, Liz and I had planned out the first half of the meet­ing. The most impor­tant piece: com­ing ear­ly to sit in prayer and hold­ing it well past the time the inter­est group was sup­posed to start. The work of Friends needs to be root­ed in wor­ship. We need to be still enough to hear the Holy Spir­it. If the medi­um is the mes­sage, our mes­sage was about the need to not pack our­selves in with agen­das. We start­ed pred­i­cat­bly enough by ask­ing the fifty-or-so par­tic­i­pants to give their names and to name a spir­i­tu­al prac­tice that gives them joy. We asked for space in between speak­ers to keep wor­ship at the fore and we were blessed by a self-faciliating group; Friends did hold the spaces in between.
Then the three of us told our sto­ries of start­ing spiritually-focused blogs and com­ing to find a fel­low­ship that extend­ed beyond our tra­di­tion­al Quak­er branch­es (hence the term “Con­ver­gence of Friends”). I went first and explained that I try­ing to be care­ful not to do this to lift myself up. My sto­ry is sim­ple and like those of many Friends. I was giv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny. The idea of tes­ti­mo­ny rang through­out the evening. Robin’s sto­ry in par­tic­u­lar was very ground­ed and com­ing last it took us into the unpro­grammed agenda-less time we had left free. Friends rose to give tes­ti­mo­ny of oth­er “con­ver­gent” expe­ri­ences, for exam­ple par­tic­pa­tion in the North­west Wom­en’s The­o­log­i­cal Con­fer­ences, events of the West­ern branch of the Chris­t­ian Friends Fellowship.

At some point a woman I did­n’t know stood up with­out being rec­og­nized and she had a pose of sup­pli­ca­tion. My first though, “oh no!” Then I noticed anoth­er Friend, wor­ship­ful in spir­it, who point­ed her to us. She said she was going to sing a song. “Oh no again!” I thought. But this was the facil­i­ta­tion com­ing off our shoul­ders. This was a Friend ris­ing to name what we need­ed and anoth­er Friend point­ing that we need­ed to go this direc­tion. It was like the two Pow­ell House Friends: one rec­og­niz­ing in the oth­er a need to share min­istry and being will­ing to break through “prop­er” group process. At the inter­est group the song was pow­er­ful, it brought us to a place where we could be low and thank­ful. We were now spon­ta­neous­ly in worship.

Liz, Robin and I had planned some clos­ing wor­ship but this was­n’t the time yet. But it was the time and the suceed­ing min­istry was heart­felt and large­ly from the Source.
The only fun­ny aside was that we felt we could­n’t let the group go on past our 8:45 end time, for the sim­ple rea­son that child­care end­ed then and we need­ed to let par­ents go. We men­tioned this around 8:30 but twen­ty min­utes lat­er the wor­ship was con­tin­u­ing. Just then the cell­phone of the Friend giv­ing min­istry went off: it was his daugh­ter call­ing to ask where he was! He turned off the phone but it gave us the excuse to close the meet­ing and invite an extend­ed meet­ing to con­tin­ue out­side. This was won­der­ful as there were a num­ber of oth­er similarly-themed inter­est groups (one on youth min­istries, the oth­er on the World Gath­er­ing of Young Friends) and par­tic­i­pants from all three groups met out­side and con­tin­ued the shar­ing for anoth­er two hours.

Lessons? Sim­ply to ground work­shop events in wor­ship, let the agen­da be emp­ty enough for the Spir­it to inter­vene (hav­ing back­up exer­cis­es just in case it does­n’t is fine!). I don’t think this is a fool­proof method. A lot depends on the par­tic­i­pants and how will­ing they are to share in the facil­i­a­tion and wor­ship. A lot also depends on Friends break­ing into the agen­da, for both times that was what turned the event from a work­shop to a gath­ered meeting.

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* For me the dan­ger is a per­son­al style that has long relied on a last-minute mir­a­cles (I was the kind of col­lege stu­dent who read all the mate­r­i­al through the semes­ter but did­n’t actu­al­ly start writ­ing any­thing until the night before an assign­ment was due). I don’t want my the­ol­o­gy to be an excuse for my pro­cras­ti­na­tion and I try to test this regularly.

Related posts

Lots of folks have been talk­ing about the Gath­er­ing and the Mon­day night inter­est group:

• Co-faciliator LizOpp also details some of the process of the Inter­est Group and of the semi-impromptu multi-generational inter­est group after­wards. She’s also writ­ten about the vis­its from Free­dom Friends Church.
• Co-facilitator RobinM has the first of a hand­ful of promised posts where she empha­sizes the impor­tance of ground­ing and start­ing the ses­sion in wor­ship.
• ChrisM describes how he could­n’t sleep after the Inter­est Group.
• Dave T has a quick check-in and descrip­tion.
• Paul L felt a real cov­er­ing of the meet­ing halfway through the Inter­est Group.
• Both AJ Schwanz and Gregg Koskela have posts about a post-Gathering meet-up of some Friends around a pic­nic table in Oregon.

I’m sure more reac­tion posts are up there and I’ll link to them as I find them. I sus­pect that in addi­tion to being the biggest group Quak­er blog­ger pho­to to date (sor­ry Gregg!), this will end up being the most blogged about Quak­er event yet, at least till Wess gath­ers West Coast­ers togeth­er next month. I count­ed at least 20 Quak­er blog­gers at the Gathering.