The Jan­u­ary issue of Friends Jour­nal is out and the theme is “Repa­ra­tions.” It’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong list of arti­cles.

Talk­ing with some­one from anoth­er meet­ing out our respec­tive out­reach strate­gies I remem­bered my long ago blog post, The Biggest Most Vibran­ty Most Out­reachi­est Pro­gram Ever. I’m sure this must have been inspired by some grand announce­ment by Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing or Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence about some now-forgotten out­reach pro­gram with breath-taking goals. But as I work at out­reach in a local meet­ing lev­el again and talk with oth­ers doing the same, it real­ly does seem like it need­n’t be so complicated.

I’ve writ­ten a wrap-up of a car­ol­ing event this Sun­day at Crop­well Meet­ing in Marl­ton, NJ. These write-ups aren’t real­ly writ­ten for prospec­tive vis­i­tors (they can get­ting FOMO jeal­ousy from the Face­book and Insta­gram feeds) but for oth­er Friends. Crop­well is a old meet­ing but almost died out and has been recon­sti­tut­ed over the last 15 months. Every­one seems espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in out­reach and these posts are a record of what we’re doing.

I’m cur­rent­ly in-process of for­mal­ly trans­fer­ring my mem­ber­ship from Atlantic City Area Meet­ing in Gal­loway, NJ, to Crop­well. ACAMM is a great meet­ing and seems to be doing well but Crop­well feels like a bet­ter fit for this phase of my Quak­er journey. 

It’s not unusu­al to hear silent (Lib­er­al, unpro­grammed) Friends state rather assured­ly that our wor­ship is the tra­di­tion­al Quak­er for­mat. In their view, Friends who called their build­ings church­es and have hired min­is­ters are inno­va­tors who have lost some­thing impor­tant that the first Friends had.

Only it’s not exact­ly true. Mic­ah Bales answers a friend’s ques­tion about the dif­fer­ence in min­istry between pro­grammed and unpro­grammed Friends in his blog last week. As he points out, ear­ly Friends would typ­i­cal­ly min­is­ter for 20 to 90 min­utes. The semi-official birthing moment for Friends was a three-hour ser­mon by George Fox to 1000 seek­ers. They weren’t there to hear just him (he had just arrived in the area and was­n’t well known) but a whole gag­gle of preach­ers. I imag­ine it as a days-long Lol­la­palooza fes­ti­val with Fox elec­tri­fy­ing the crowd from the sec­ond stage. Silence was­n’t the goal. 

I don’t know a Lib­er­al Friends meet­ing any­where that would be com­fort­able with some­one min­is­ter­ing for 20 min­utes, much less three hours. As the Quak­er move­ment set­tled in, the ser­mons took on a dis­tinct form — explic­it­ly Chris­t­ian and bib­li­cal — and they were gen­er­al­ly giv­en by only by spe­cif­ic peo­ple rec­og­nized in the ministry.

Today, typ­i­cal­ly, any­one at all can stand in min­istry at a Lib­er­al Friends meet­ing. Two to five min­utes is the norm for a “mes­sage.” The top­ic cer­tain­ly can be Chris­t­ian but in many meet­ings that’s the excep­tion. At a Friends church, mean­while, the ser­mons are giv­en by spe­cif­ic peo­ple, will have Chris­t­ian con­tent, and will go on for an extend­ed peri­od of time. In those respects, the for­mat is clos­er to ear­ly Quak­er wor­ship. And this should­n’t be a sur­prise: they were respond­ing to changes in min­istry and expec­ta­tions just as we Lib­er­al Friends have done.

Mic­ah also talks about prepa­ra­tion and describes the idea of “rad­i­cal­ly extem­po­ra­ne­ous preach­ing” among Lib­er­al Friends as a kind of “fetish.” He might have a point. I love the sto­ry about a min­is­ter who would­n’t have a clue about what he was going to say until he rose to his feet¹. For him, the obe­di­ence to Christ was to trust that words would come if he were only to faith­ful­ly stand up. It’s such a cool sto­ry, but that’s not how my min­istry has ever come.

About six months ago we had a total­ly silent wor­ship at the meet­ing I’ve been attend­ing. It was nice but at the end the clerk rose, affirmed it was nice, but then said wor­ship should always have min­istry. It’s struck me as true and the state­ment has stuck with me. 

I often have min­istry form­ing in my head in wor­ship but am per­haps over­ly con­scious and keep it to myself. There’s always a bal­anc­ing act of course and some Friends feel free to say what­ev­er when­ev­er they want. But I think I myself have per­haps both over-fetishized an antipa­thy to plan­ning and also set myself an over­ly high bar for speaking.

In a NYTimes opin­ion piece today, Ezra Klein teas­es: “The Quak­er way has a lot to teach us about social media.”

You have to scroll deep into the arti­cle to find the Quak­er con­nec­tion. Spoil­er: it comes from let­ting in silence and let­ting delib­er­a­tion be a slow­er process. He links to a Rex Ambler book on the Quaker​books​.org web­site (yea!) but it’s out of stock and not show­ing up (doh!) [Update: they got the link work­ing first thing Mon­day morn­ing after I gave them the heads-up, huzzah!]

Klein also talked about Quak­ers in August, in a con­ver­sa­tion with William MacAskill on Effec­tive Altru­ism (a con­cept about which I’m extreme­ly skep­ti­cal), when they talked about Quak­er abo­li­tion­ist Ben­jamin Lay. He obvi­ous­ly has us on the mind. It’d be kind of cool if Klein went beyond talk­ing about Quak­ers to talk­ing with Quak­ers (my DMs are always open).