Comments on: It’s My Language Now: Thinking About Youth Ministry

By: Liz Opp

Liz Opp — Wed, 18 May 2005 17:35:59 +0000

Hi, Martin.
I had commented earlier to this post, and I’m re-reading what you’ve written because of your reference in a later post. While re-reading this essay, I remembered a comment that I had wanted to make originally but didn’t.
It’s about the specific musing you had, Will there ever be a Friend under thirty-five invited to give a major Gathering plenary talk?
In 1996 in Hamilton, Ontario, I believe, a panel of young adult Canadian Friends provided the plenary one night. I believe Evalyn Parry and Jane Orion Smith were among the panelists. Though it was only my second Gathering and I had not embraced Quakerism fully then, I recall the power of the testimony and stories of these Friends.
I’m sure you’ll have some response that may “disqualify” that particular plenary session from what you intended in your question, but I wish to affirm that I have heard from Friends nearly 10 years later how that particular evening still lives within them…
Blessings,
Liz, The Good Raised Up

By: Robin Mohr

Robin Mohr — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 15:27:25 +0000

I think that membership is one of the issues that Friends have unofficially laid down and to our own detriment.
I think Friends have traditionally, and we should again, distinguish between people who simply choose to worship with us and those who wish to make a commitment to our community.
I think we should have rampant seekers’ classes for newcomers and other forms of welcoming and move people who are interested along to membership. I think this has been and is a current lameness among Friends, but it doesn’t have to be. The formal process for applying in Pacific Yearly Meeting is really minimal. In my Monthly Meeting, we are actually working at making the process more meaningful for people. I don’t mean more difficult, but recognizing it as a powerful step in the spiritual journey of a seeker, young or old, and not giving it short shrift, so to speak.
I think we need to make a more serious investment in our members. I think we should have more spiritual support committees and classes that are particularly aimed, not at the beginner’s level, but at those who want to go deeper. I think that deeper levels of spiritual development require deeper levels of intimacy and that requires a certain degree of exclusivity. Not everyone who enjoys meeting for worship wants to convert to plain dress and the stricter testimonies on simple and sustainable and peaceable living, and that’s okay for them. They are welcome to worship and potluck with us, but I want a deeper level of engagement. I think that discerning God’s will and holding each other accountable is very difficult with people I don’t know (yet). Naming gifts and eldering people into leadership and supporting emerging ministers will be part of that. I think that membership is not a final resting place but a step across the threshold into the covenant community.
We (SFMM and broadly) have been unwilling to define the responsibilities of membership at even basic levels of attendance. We are usually unable to state what are the spiritual benefits of membership. If we are to wrestle with what God is calling us to do, this is going to be part of the work.
I think that the fact that Friends have lost sight of what membership means is part of the problem. We are unable to say, this Friend speaks for us, and that non-Friend doesn’t. I think that being able to articulate what we believe and define who we are are two parts of the same process.
Peace,
Robin

By: Martin Kelley

Martin Kelley — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 14:01:36 +0000

Hi Robin, I don't think it's hard. When a young person comes to you, you support them. You don't care about their membership status. You don't care how long they've been there. You don't care how long they'll be there. Formal membership is the hobgoblin of little Quaker bureaucratic minds. Quakers are Quakers and Quakers should support Quakers. It is our duty as Friends and Christians to reach out to everyone who reaches out to us in the Light. It's very simple really. Martin

By: Robin Mohr

Robin Mohr — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 11:42:37 +0000

Dear Martin,
I’m not clear what kind of programming you or FGC mean by Youth Ministries. Maybe they aren’t either? Accepting that programming alone isn’t enough, what do you think would be helpful?
Is it acceptable to include in a comment a question related to Young Friends but not posed in your post?
Among the issues that Pacific Yearly Meeting is talking about regarding Young Friends is the question of membership among a highly transient population. How do young men and women become members of a particular Monthly Meeting when they have grown up in one place, are now spending four years in another place 100‑3000 miles away, and expect to move after that to possibly a third location equally distant that may or may not have a local Quaker Meeting? What are the obligations of a Meeting to nurture a young Friend who will only be here for a year? How can we make the transitions between Meetings easier?
One of my personal concerns: How does this affect our traditions of marriage, i.e. how can a Meeting take a marriage under its care if the couple has been here for two years but is moving away in six months? (a serious problem in my personal experience)
One of my leadings is that we (my Monthly Meeting at least and probably everybody else:) should work more closely with our young teens to consider membership when they are still firmly living in their home community, and the relationship can be still go both ways — the Meeting teaching/supporting/holding accountable the young person and the young person serving the Meeting (on committees, etc.) and teaching/supporting/holding accountable the other folks. And then when they do move on, they would go as Members of our Meetings, with letters of introduction to whatever Meeting is closest to wherever they will be.
I think we need to grab them and focus on them right when they are most likely to duck the other way. Some/many other religions have traditions like this. Maybe Quakers didn’t need one when people didn’t move so often, but I think we have to continually find new ways to meet this gaping need. I think adolescence is a good time to ask people to consider their spiritual leanings, to think about their lives in terms of what God expects of them, and a membership clearness committee is a time-honored means of doing this.
I think if we committed to having these conversations in our Monthly Meetings, it would change how young people see the purpose of Yearly and Quarterly Meetings. From not just a social highlight of the year and a chance for puppy piles, but to really stretch their understanding of their own spiritual selves. I hear both yearnings among our Junior Yearly Meeting folks — they want to be known, they want to know Friends who are working deeply in their own spiritual fields, but when it comes right down to a choice between a meeting for worship and swimming, well, it’s hard. But then, that’s one of the roles of elders and parents. To listen to the complaining, to just sit there and take it, and still hold our youngers to their highest potential.
What do you think? Would this help?

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 16:55:03 +0000

Hi Martin: Thank you for your profound thoughts on the strengths/status/position of young adult Friends within FGC. I hear great struggle in your words, and want you to know there are many of us out here who find insight and understanding in your experiences. It sounds like you deal with FGC and Quaker hierarchy far more than most of us, and I certainly sympathize with your/our frustrations. I lend a cautionary note on seeking apologies from older Friends. We each share in the work that needs to be done; forgiveness requires no apology. Moving on; however, appears to at least require acknowledgement.
Your upcoming FGC workshop sounds exciting. You have my encouragement. I hope to attend!

By: Martin Kelley

Martin Kelley — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 11:52:01 +0000

Dear Valued Wife Julino,
Well, you’ve certainly earned your cynicism. I agree that institutional change will lag far behind any emerging consciousness by younger Friends.

By: Julie DeMarchi Heiland

Julie DeMarchi Heiland — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 10:38:24 +0000

Martino, You didn't even mention that you posted anything new! I liked this piece a lot. Unfortunately I think the answer to your various questions about whether or not anything will change institutionally, bringing younger Friends into committees and actually understanding the problems that currently exist is "No," "No," and "No." I'd bet money on it. It won't happen. There were plans going into the consultation and ideas about what needed to be done. These plans remained after the weekend was over. I don't see the powers that be in FGC as even *remotely* "getting it," or giving a crap when younger employees can't make ends meet because of their insufficient salaries for that matter... even though I know you are slightly more optimistic. I think that's because I don't see them even trying to listen or recognize cultural problems in their institutions. More importantly, I don't see them as really and truly open to the will of God, and that's where it starts and ends in any and all cases, right? (I'm not just picking on FGC here--I think PYM, many Monthly Meetings, and other Quaker institutions have the same problems.) A really good piece though, so thanks. I hope some older adult Friends came away changed. Love, Julie

By: Martin Kelley

Martin Kelley — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 20:50:24 +0000

Liz with the good question (but of course!). Yes, actually I do feel I was faithful. I was able to stay in that space that was loose and open to the Spirit’s instructions. Just now I was moved by a jolt of recognition by your description of the teaching clerk in your Meeting: “its clerk was the type who took advantage of ‘teachable moments,’ making transparent for me and for others just what we were doing as Friends and why we doing it the way we were.” I feel I was patient to wait for the moments. I might have been playing that sort of a role! What joy!
It could have been different. After all, I wasn’t just challenging a branch of Friends that I generally love and respect. I was also at times challenging the very institution “that employs me”:http://www.fgcquaker.org/info/staff.html. But I tried to speak as led, without worrying about internal FGC politics (fortunately the General Secretary of FGC Bruce Birchard has lifted up a model of a leader who has seasoned judgment, the inner strength, and the open style which earns them considerable trust and respect from their colleagues, so it was fine to be open).
I have been just a little worried that teaching this summer’s Gathering workshop, “Strangers to the Covenant”:/quaker/strangers to an audience of 18–35 year-olds might not be as smooth as the “Quakerism 101”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000418.php class I taught at Medford Monthly Meeting last fall. But I really felt comfortable in the consultation’s small groups and I’m really excited by the energy, enthusiasm and insight of the “young adult Friends”:http://www.quaker.org/yfna/network.php there.