Unpresenting workshop style

October 19, 2010
· Martin Kelley

Non­prof­it blog­ger Beth Kan­tor often finds gems about pre­sen­ta­tion. Yes­ter­day she shared a “unpre­sent­ing” style of work­shop. She writes:

I do a lot of pre­sent­ing and am spend­ing to much time writ­ing bul­let points, cre­at­ing slides, and prac­tic­ing what I’m going to say. I think that this puts a stop to cre­at­ing con­ver­sa­tion in the room. I want­ed to learn some con­ver­sa­tion­al mechan­ics — so I could stop talk­ing at peo­ple and begin talk­ing with them.

Beth’s main link is to a Google Tech Talk “unpre­sen­ta­tion” by Heather Gold. Might be good back­ground lis­ten­ing today. I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in this for two rea­sons: first, obvi­ous­ly, is that pre­sen­ta­tions are often very bor­ing and it’s nice to think about more inter­ac­tive ways of engag­ing with an audience.

But sec­ond, many mod­ern Friends have default­ed to a lec­ture style in their reli­gious edu­ca­tion. I’m not sure it works. I’ve met peo­ple who have par­tic­i­pat­ed in mul­ti­ple Quak­erism 101 class­es and still don’t know basic facts. I myself have rebelled against pow­er point pre­sen­ta­tions and pre-set cur­ric­u­la to be more engag­ing but I’m not con­vinced that this has made me a great pre­sen­ter. It’s always worth find­ing new ways to present in a clear and direct and engages them with the issues they expe­ri­ence day to day.

I imag­ine this would be of inter­est not only to lib­er­al Friends who give work­shops, but pas­toral Friends with a con­cern to stay open to imme­di­ate rev­e­la­tion dur­ing wor­ship–Cherice B has a great post about this yes­ter­day , a response to part four of Brent Bil­l’s Mod­est Pro­pos­al series.

Some inter­est­ing points from Heather Gold’s pre­sen­ta­tion on “tumm­ling”

  • The best way to tumm­le is to be a very big ver­sion of your­self. Tumm­le means to make noise.
  • If you’re hap­py, i’m hap­py. The num­ber one way to do that is to care and to notice them — espe­cial­ly the peo­ple who don’t seem that involved.
  • I’m notic­ing [the dis­en­gaged per­son in the back]. if i can involve him a lit­tle bit i’m much more like­ly to involve more of you faster than if i pick the per­son in the front row with their arm up. a tech­nique to pull every­one in is to go to the fringes. go to the peo­ple who seem on the end, who seem like they have low­er sta­tus in what­ev­er com­mu­ni­ty you’re in (speak less, more nervi­ous, know few­er peo­ple) and go up to them.
  • Some peo­ple will be mad at you. Some peo­ple will be schmucks. Some peo­ple will want to talk a lot. You have to let all that be okay. Tools and rules will nev­er ever do as good a job as your con­fi­dence that you can han­dle any­thing. It’s time con­sum­ing to run through fifty rules in your mind; it’s not so time con­sum­ing to just be there.

Mega-meetings and missional communities

October 18, 2010
· Martin Kelley

On Twit­ter, C Wess Daniels (@cwdaniels) asks if this arti­cle on the future of Evan­gel­i­cal­ism in North Amer­i­ca by David Fitch applies to Quak­ers. Fitch writes:

The future of the tra­di­tion­al evan­gel­i­cal church as I see it is: a.) mega church­es con­tin­u­ing to grow, con­sol­i­dat­ing what is left of the Chris­ten­dom pop­u­la­tions…; b.) small­er church­es of under 200 slow­ly dying and even­tu­al­ly clos­ing, and c.) the birthing of new mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ties through  either seed­ing new mis­sion­ary com­mu­ni­ties or tran­si­tion­ing (the afore­men­tioned) dying small church­es into vibrant places of mission.

On the face of it, it’s bizarre to com­pare lib­er­al Friends to main­stream Chris­t­ian evan­gel­i­cals, but there are sim­i­lar­i­ties if you scale back the num­bers. I think some larg­er Friends meet­ings have mega-church-like dynam­ics. They have strong fam­i­ly pro­grams and con­nec­tions to near­by Friends schools and/or retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties. They serve as the local pro­gres­sive lib­er­al hub of their com­mu­ni­ties. They’re not deeply root­ed in Quak­er spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and are proud of the spir­i­tu­al het­ero­doxy. They’re very orga­nized – name tags, “Friend­ly 8” din­ners, expe­ri­enced clerks. They stand in con­trast to the bulk of small­er meet­ings that are dying fast and won’t be around anoth­er generation.

Fitch clear­ly thinks the inter­est­ing work falls under the last cat­e­go­ry, “mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ties” and argues that a “sig­nif­i­cant part” of church resources should be devot­ed to “efforts in train­ing mis­sion­ary pas­tors.” His big ques­tion is whether the small “b” church­es can evolve into the “c” mis­sion­al communities.

I’m not sure that we real­ly need train­ing pro­grams but for argu­men­t’s sake let’s say Fitch is right. Lib­er­al Friends don’t have any­one to devote church resources to train­ing (the clos­est ana­logue be the Earl­ham School of Reli­gion). We do have small mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ties spring­ing up but so far there’s been lit­tle sup­port or recog­ni­tion from local meet­ings or larg­er Friends bod­ies. What would it look like to equip these efforts in an unpro­grammed Quak­er set­ting? Is it all but inevitable that they’ll have to rely on self-organized asso­ci­a­tions? Will they remain as wor­ship groups? Is that fine?

Tell them all this but do not expect them to listen

October 8, 2010
· Martin Kelley

It seems to me that one of the cor­ner­stones of Judeo-Christian phi­los­o­phy is to remem­ber the sto­ries. I’m more than three-quarters of the way through the Bible (I’m stretch­ing my One Year Bible plan across two years) and that’s real­ly all it is: sto­ry after sto­ry of human’s rela­tions with God. Friends have picked up this method­ol­o­gy in a big way. Our pri­ma­ry reli­gious edu­ca­tion is the jour­nals elders have been asked to write to recount the tri­als and prophet­ic open­ings of a life lived in an attempt at spir­i­tu­al obedience.

There must be a pur­pose to this con­stant sto­ry review, some way it deep­ens our own spir­i­tu­al lives. One gift it gives to me is per­spec­tive. I was just tak­ing an evening bath and found myself get­ting upset about a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion from my past and stopped to pick up my One Year Bible. The Old Tes­ta­ment read­ings for most of Tenth Month come from Jere­mi­ah. Here’s a bit of God’s instruc­tions to the prophet:

“Tell them all this, but do not expect them to lis­ten. Shout out your warn­ings but do not expect them to respond. Say to them, ‘This is the nation whose peo­ple will not obey the Lord their God and who refuse to be taught. Truth has van­ished from among them; it is no longer heard on their lips.’ ” (Jer 7:27)

And lat­er:

“Jere­mi­ah, say to the peo­ple, ‘This is what the Lord says: When peo­ple fall down, don’t they get up again? When they dis­cov­er they’re on the wrong road, don’t they turn back? Then why do these peo­ple stay on their self-destructive path? Why do the peo­ple of Jerusalem refuse to turn back? They cling tight­ly to their lies and will not turn around.’ ” (Jer 8:4)

Here we are, Sixth Cen­tu­ry B.C., and the spir­i­tu­al state of God’s peo­ple is in a ter­ri­ble state. It makes my aggriev­e­ments look pet­ty. And maybe that’s the point. The rela­tion­ship between God and His peo­ple have been in a rol­lar coast­er ride for mil­len­nia. Sure, Jesus’ new covenant brought about a lot of changes but did­n’t end hypocrisy or faith­less­ness. Protes­tants can point to the ref­or­ma­tion and Friends to the new peo­ple gath­ered by George Fox but both move­ments long ago floun­dered on the shoals of human weak­ness. His­to­ry has­n’t stopped. The tri­als of the spir­i­tu­al don’t stop. We don’t get a free ride of spir­i­tu­al ease just because we’re on the cur­rent edge of human history.

As ear­ly Friends were aware, a spir­i­tu­al life still requires lift­ing of the cross. It’s easy to let dis­ap­point­ments lead to despair, and to retreat into the many temp­ta­tions of the mod­ern world has at ready sup­ply. In that state it’s easy to put off wor­ry­ing about our duties to our fel­low humans, to life on earth and to God. Every once in a while I’ll get whiny about some­thing and my dear wife will say “get over it and do what you need to do already.” We’ve remem­bered the sto­ry of Jere­mi­ah for 2500 years for the same rea­son: “you think you’ve got it bad, you’re not being dec­i­mat­ed and enslaved in Baby­lon!” Perspective.

* * *

I’m still think­ing about one of the con­ver­sa­tions I had the oth­er week at Vineland Men­non­ite Church–about the dif­fer­ence between the­ol­o­gy and Bib­li­cism. I like the­ol­o­gy and I like learn­ing about the con­text of Bible sto­ries I read. I enjoy hear­ing new the­o­ries about old para­dox­es (for exam­ple, Mar­tin Luther King’s take on the sto­ry of the Good Samar­i­tan fas­ci­nates me in part because it reminds me that the sto­ry is set on a real road and is intend­ed as a sto­ry about real peo­ple mak­ing dif­fi­cult choic­es). But I’m also aware that it’s easy to spend so much time read­ing and talk­ing about the com­men­tary that I for­get to read the orig­i­nal sto­ries them­selves. If sto­ries are reli­gious ed, then we have to remem­ber to actu­al­ly read the sto­ries. Some­times when I stum­ble on the cool blogs of the clever­est min­is­ters I won­der if they stop to actu­al­ly read the sto­ries. So much ener­gy seems to be expend­ed on mak­ing up new words and giv­ing mes­sages of easy hope. I can’t see Jere­mi­ah join­ing them at the local church brew pub fest to hoist a Rolling Rock. The cur­rent New Tes­ta­ment read­ing in the One Year Bible is Paul’s let­ter to the Coloss­ian, which includes this gem:

Don’t let any­one cap­ture you (Colos­sians) with emp­ty philoso­phies and high-sounding non­sense that come from human think­ing and from the spir­i­tu­al pow­ers of this world, rather than from Christ.

I’m sure George Fox hoot­ed in joy when he read that line! The sto­ries remind us that all is not well and that all will not be well. Temp­ta­tions still nips at our best inten­tions. The great­est temp­ta­tion is self-reliance. Our test as indi­vid­u­als and as a peo­ple will be demon­strat­ed by how we patient­ly and faith­ful­ly we bear the hard­ships we encounter and keep our trust in the risen Christ.

From the Vault: More Victims Won’t Stop the Terror (10/2001)

October 7, 2010
· Martin Kelley

Today is the ninth anniver­sary of the war in Afghanistan. In recog­ni­tion, here’s my Non​vi​o​lence​.org essay from 10/7/2001. It’s all sad­ly still top­i­cal. Nine years in and we’re still mak­ing ter­ror and still cre­at­ing enemies.

The Unit­ed States has today begun its war against ter­ror­ism in a very famil­iar way: by use of ter­ror. Igno­rant of thou­sands of years of vio­lence in the Mid­dle East, Pres­i­dent George W. Bush thinks that the hor­ror of Sep­tem­ber 11th can be exor­cised and pre­vent­ed by bombs and mis­siles. Today we can add more names to the long list of vic­tims of the ter­ror­ist air­plane attacks. Because today Afgha­nis have died in terror.

The deaths in New York City, Wash­ing­ton and Penn­syl­va­nia have shocked Amer­i­cans and right­ly so. We are all scared of our sud­den vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. We are all shocked at the lev­el of anger that led nine­teen sui­cide bombers to give up pre­cious life to start such a lit­er­al and sym­bol­ic con­fla­gra­tion. What they did was hor­ri­ble and with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. But that is not to say that they did­n’t have reasons.

The ter­ror­ists com­mit­ted their atroc­i­ties because of a long list of griev­ances. They were shed­ding blood for blood, and we must under­stand that. Because to under­stand that is to under­stand that Pres­i­dent Bush is unleash­ing his own ter­ror cam­paign: that he is shed­ding more blood for more blood.

The Unit­ed States has been spon­sor­ing vio­lence in Afghanistan for over a gen­er­a­tion. Even before the Sovi­et inva­sion of that coun­try, the U.S. was sup­port­ing rad­i­cal Muja­hadeen forces. We thought then that spon­sor­ship of vio­lence would lead to some sort of peace. As we all know now, it did not. We’ve been exper­i­ment­ing with vio­lence in the region for many years. Our for­eign pol­i­cy has been a mish-mash of sup­port­ing one despot­ic regime after anoth­er against a shift­ing array of per­ceived enemies.

The Afghani forces the Unit­ed States now bomb were once our allies, as was Iraq’s Sad­dam Hus­sein. We have rarely if ever act­ed on behalf of lib­er­ty and democ­ra­cy in the region. We have time and again sold out our val­ues and thrown our sup­port behind the most heinous of despots. We have time and again thought that mil­i­tary adven­tur­ism in the region could keep ter­ror­ism and anti-Americanism in check. And each time we’ve only bred a new gen­er­a­tion of rad­i­cals, bent on revenge.

There are those who have angri­ly denounced paci­fists in the weeks since Sep­tem­ber 11th, angri­ly ask­ing how peace can deal with ter­ror­ists. What these crit­ics don’t under­stand is that wars don’t start when the bombs begin to explode. They begin years before, when the seeds of hatred are sewn. The times to stop this new war was ten and twen­ty years ago, when the U.S. broke it’s promis­es for democ­ra­cy, and act­ed in its own self-interest (and often on behalf of the inter­ests of our oil com­pa­nies) to keep the cycles of vio­lence going. The Unit­ed States made choic­es that helped keep the peo­ples of the Mid­dle East enslaved in despo­tism and poverty.

And so we come to 2001. And it’s time to stop a war. But it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly this war that we can stop. It’s the next one. And the ones after that. It’s time to stop com­bat ter­ror­ism with ter­ror. In the last few weeks the Unit­ed States has been mak­ing new alliances with coun­tries whose lead­ers sub­vert democ­ra­cy. We are giv­ing them free rein to con­tin­ue to sub­ject their peo­ple. Every weapon we sell these tyrants only kills and desta­bi­lizes more, just as every bomb we drop on Kab­ul feeds ter­ror more.

And most of all: we are mak­ing new vic­tims. Anoth­er gen­er­a­tion of chil­dren are see­ing their par­ents die, are see­ing the rain of bombs fall on their cities from an uncar­ing Amer­i­ca. They cry out to us in the name of peace and democ­ra­cy and hear noth­ing but hatred and blood. And some of them will respond by turn­ing against us in hatred. And will fight us in anger. They will learn our les­son of ter­ror and use it against us. They cycle will repeat. His­to­ry will con­tin­ue to turn, with blood as it’s Mid­dle East­ern lubri­cant. Unless we act. Unless we can stop the next war.

That of God via William Penn

October 3, 2010
· Martin Kelley

Asked what we believe many mod­ern Friends will reply “That there is that of God in every­one.” It’s an ear­ly Quak­er phrase but what exact­ly do we mean by it? Part of its cur­rent pop­u­lar­i­ty is its ambi­gu­i­ty. We live in a fierce­ly indi­vid­u­al­is­tic age and it can be read as a call to per­son­al inde­pen­dence: “I don’t need to care what you think because I’ve got that of God in me!”

So it’s use­ful to read William Pen­n’s thoughts on spir­i­tu­al indi­vid­u­al­ism in The Rise and Progress of the Peo­ple Called Quak­ers. He’s talk­ing about those mem­bers of the still-new Soci­ety of Friends who had become the “great­est trou­ble,” who “fought domin­ion over conscience”:

They would have had every Man inde­pen­dent, that as he had the Prin­ci­ple in him­self, he should only stand and fall to that, and no Body else: Not con­sid­er­ing that the Prin­ci­ple is one in all and though the Mea­sure of Light or Grace might dif­fer, yet the Nature of it was the same; and being so, the struck at the Spir­i­tu­al Uni­ty, which a Peo­ple, guid­ed by the same Prin­ci­ple, are nat­u­ral­ly led into: So that what is an Evil to one, is so to all, from the Sense and Savour of the one uni­ver­sal Prin­ci­ple which is com­mon to all, and which the Dis­af­fect­ed also pro­fess to be the Root of all true Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship, and that Spir­it into which the Peo­ple of God drink, and come to be Spiritually-minded, and of one Heart and one Soul.

For Penn, that of God is the spir­it of the inward Christ – a spir­it we can drink from to find spir­i­tu­al uni­ty. It is an author­i­ty root­ed not in our own human weak­ness but in  uni­ver­sal spir­i­tu­al truths that are acces­si­ble to all.

Spiritual self-understanding as pretext to organizational renewal

October 1, 2010
· Martin Kelley

Brent Bill is con­tin­u­ing his “Mod­est Pro­pos­al” series on Quak­er “revi­tal­iza­tion” on his blog Holy Ordi­nary. Today’s install­ment (part sev­en) is great but I’m not sure where it leaves us. He starts by talk­ing about how some Quak­er body’s books of dis­ci­plines (“Faith and Prac­tice”) are becom­ing more legal­is­tic as they pick up ideas from oth­er reli­gious bod­ies. He then chal­lenges year­ly meet­ings and oth­er Friends bod­ies to a “seri­ous exam­i­na­tion of their pur­pose and pro­grams” in which they ask a series of ques­tions about their purpose.

I agree with a lot of his obser­va­tion. But at the same time I’m not sure what a seri­ous exam­i­na­tion would look like or would pro­duce. In recent years my own year­ly meet­ing has devel­oped a kind of cir­ca­di­an rhythm of con­stant reor­ga­ni­za­tion, tin­ker­ing with orga­ni­za­tion­al charts, leg­isla­tive process­es design to speed up deci­sions, and chang­ing times and fre­quen­cies of events hop­ing to attract new peo­ple. And yet, as I wrote a few weeks ago, when I went to sit in on a meet­ing of the gov­ern­ing body, I was the third or fourth youngest per­son in a room of about 75 Friends. It was pret­ty much the same group of peo­ple who were doing it ten years and mul­ti­ple reforms ago, only now they are ten years old­er. We actu­al­ly ripped through busi­ness so we can spend an hour naval-gazing about the pur­pose of this par­tic­u­lar gov­ern­ing body and I can report it was­n’t the breath of fresh air that we might have hoped for.

A big part of the prob­lem is we’ve for­got­ten why we’re doing all this. We’ve split the faith from the prac­tice – and I don’t mean Chris­t­ian vs non-Christian, but the whole kit-and-kaboodle that is the Quak­er under­stand­ing of gospel order, a world view that is dis­tinct from that of oth­er Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions. Lloyd Lee Wil­son calls it the “Quak­er gestalt” in Essays on the Quak­er Vision of Gospel Order. When a spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tion has an inter­nal con­sis­ten­cy, and the process and the­ol­o­gy rein­force each oth­er. Archi­tec­ture and demeanor, cul­tur­al and busi­ness val­ues fit togeth­er. It’s nev­er per­fect, of course, and main­tain­ing the con­sis­ten­cy against new influ­ences and chang­ing cir­cum­stances is often the source of unnec­es­sary pet­ty squab­bling. But even some­thing as innocu­ous as a meet­ing­house­’s bench arrange­ments can tell you a lot about a group’s the­ol­o­gy and its bal­ance towards author­i­ty and individualism.

It’s our under­stand­ing of our faith and our con­cept of body-of-Christ com­mu­ni­ty which under­girds our insti­tu­tion­al struc­tures. When we don’t have a good grasp of it, we do things mere­ly because “we’re sup­posed to” and the process feels dry and spirit-less. We defend par­tic­u­lar insti­tu­tions as nec­es­sary because they’re cod­i­fied in our books of doc­trine and lose our abil­i­ty to pos­i­tive­ly explain their exis­tence, at which point frus­trat­ed mem­bers will call for their aban­don­ment as unnec­es­sary bag­gage from a bygone age.

As an exam­ple, about sev­en years ago my quar­ter­ly meet­ing went through a naval-gazing process. I tried to be involved, as did my then-Quaker wife Julie. We asked a lot of big ques­tions but oth­ers on the vision­ing com­mit­tee just want­ed to ask small ques­tions. When Julie and I asked about divine guid­ance at ses­sions, for exam­ple, one fel­low con­de­scend­ing­ly explained that if we spent all our time ask­ing what God want­ed we’d nev­er get any­thing done. We real­ly did­n’t know what to say to that, espe­cial­ly as it seemed the con­sen­sus of oth­ers in the group. One thing they were com­plain­ing about was that it was always the same few peo­ple doing any­thing but after a few rounds of those meet­ings, we ran scream­ing away (my wife right out of the RSoF altogether).

Re-visioning isn’t just decon­struct­ing insti­tu­tions we don’t under­stand or tin­ker­ing with some new process to fix the old process that does­n’t work. If you’ve got a group of peo­ple active­ly lis­ten­ing to the guid­ance of the Inward Christ then any process or struc­ture prob­a­bly can be made to work (though some will facil­i­tate dis­cern­ment bet­ter). Our books of “Faith and Prac­tice” were nev­er meant to be inerrant Bibles. At their core, they’re our “wiki” of best prac­tices for Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty dis­cern­ment – tips earned through the suc­cess­es and fail­ures of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions. I think if we under­stand our spir­i­tu­al roots bet­ter we’ll find our musty old Quak­er insti­tu­tions actu­al­ly still have impor­tant roles to play. But how do we get there? I like Bren­t’s ques­tions but I’m not sure you can just start with them. Any­one want to share sto­ries of spir­i­tu­al deep­en­ing in their meet­ings or faith com­mu­ni­ties and how that fed into a renewed appre­ci­a­tion of Quak­er bod­ies and process?

Gladwell and strong tie social media networks

September 28, 2010
· Martin Kelley

A lot of peo­ple, include Jeanne Burns over on Quak­erquak­er, are talk­ing about Mal­colm Glad­well’s lat­est New York­er arti­cle, “Small Change: Why the Rev­o­lu­tion Will Not Be Tweet­ed”.

Mal­colm Glad­well’s modus operan­di is to make out­ra­geous­ly counter-intuitive claims that peo­ple will talk about enough that they’ll buy his boss’s mag­a­zine, books and bobble-head like­ness­es. I find him lik­able and divert­ing but don’t take his claims very seri­ous­ly. He’s a lot like Wired Mag­a­zine’s Chris Ander­son, his some­times spar­ring part­ner, which isn’t sur­pris­ing as they work for the same mag­a­zine empire, Conde Nast Pub­li­ca­tions.

In his arti­cle, Glad­well takes a lot of pot­shots at social media. It’s easy to do. He picks Clay Shirky, anoth­er New York “Big Idea” guy as his rhetor­i­cal straw­man now, claim­ing Shirky’s book “Here Comes Every­body” is the “bible of social-media move­ment.” Read­ing Glad­well, you kind of wish he’d get out of the echo box of circle-jerk New York Big Talk­ers (just get­ting out of the Conde Nast build­ing’s cafe­te­ria would be a good start).

Glad­well’s cer­tain­ly right in that most of what pass­es for activism on Twit­ter and Face­book is ridicu­lous. Click­ing a “Like” but­ton or chang­ing your pro­file image green does­n’t do much. He makes an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion between “weak ties” (Face­book “friends” who aren’t friends; Twit­ter cam­paigns that are risk-free) and “strong ties.” He cites the Civ­il Rights move­ment as a strong-tie phe­nom­e­non: the peo­ple who put them­selves on the line tend­ed to be those with close friends also putting them­selves on the line.

What Glad­well miss­es is strong-tie orga­niz­ing going on in social media. A lot of what’s hap­pen­ing over on Quak­erQuak­er is pret­ty strong-tie – it’s trans­lat­ing to work­shops, arti­cles, and is just one of a num­ber of impor­tant net­works that are form­ing. Peo­ple are find­ing each oth­er and mak­ing real con­nec­tions that spill out into the real world. It’s not that online orga­nizes cre­ates real world changes, or even the reverse. Instead, under the right cir­cum­stances they can feed into each oth­er, with each com­po­nent mag­ni­fy­ing the oth­er’s reach.

One exam­ple of non-hierarchical involved social media is how Quak­er blog­gers came togeth­er to explain Tom Fox’s motives after his kid­nap­ping. It did­n’t have any effect on the kid­nap­pers, obvi­ous­ly, but we did reach a lot of peo­ple who were curi­ous why a Friend might choose such a per­son­al­ly dan­ger­ous form of Chris­t­ian wit­ness. This was all done by inter-related groups of peo­ple with no bud­get and no orga­ni­za­tion­al chart. But these things don’t have to be quite so life-and-death.

A more recent exam­ple I’ve been able to see up close is the way my wife’s church has orga­nized against dioce­san attempts to shut it down: a core group of lead­ers have emerged; they share pow­er, divide up roles and have been wag­ing an orga­nized cam­paign for about 2.5 years now. One ele­ment of this work has been the Savest​marys​.org blog. The web­site’s only impor­tant because it’s been part of a real-world social net­work but it’s had an influ­ence that’s gone far beyond the hand­ful of peo­ple who write for it. One of the more sur­pris­ing audi­ences have been the many staff at the Dioce­san head­quar­ters who vis­it every day – a small group has tak­en over quite a bit of men­tal space over there!

It’s been inter­est­ing for me to com­pare Quak­erQuak­er with an ear­li­er peace project of mine, Non​vi​o​lence​.org, which ran for thir­teen years start­ing in 1995. In many ways it was the big­ger site: a larg­er audi­ence, with a wider base of inter­est. It was a pop­u­lar site, with many vis­its and a fair­ly active bul­letin board for much of it’s life. But it did­n’t spawn work­shop or con­fer­ences. There’s no “move­ment” asso­ci­at­ed with it. Dona­tions were min­i­mal and I nev­er felt the sup­port struc­ture that I have now with my Quak­er work.

Non​vi​o​lence​.org was a good idea, but it was a “weak tie” net­work. Quak­erQuak­er’s net­work is stronger for two rea­sons that I can iden­ti­fy. The obvi­ous one is that it’s built atop the orga­niz­ing iden­ti­ty of a social group (Friends). But it also speaks more direct­ly to its par­tic­i­pants, ask­ing them to share their lives and offer­ing real-world oppor­tu­ni­ties for inter­ac­tion. So much of my blog­ging on Non​vi​o​lence​.org was Big Idea thoughts pieces about the sit­u­a­tion in Bosnia – that just does­n’t pro­vide the same kind of imme­di­ate per­son­al entre.

Mal­colm Glad­well min­i­mizes the lead­er­ship struc­ture of activist orga­ni­za­tions, where lead­er­ship and pow­er is in con­stant flux. He like­wise min­i­mizes the lead­er­ship of social media net­works. Yes, any­one can pub­lish but we all have dif­fer­ent lev­els of vis­i­bil­i­ty and influ­ence and there is a fil­ter­ing effect. I have twenty-five years of orga­nized activism under my belt and fif­teen years of online orga­niz­ing and while the tech­nol­o­gy is very dif­fer­ent, a lot of the social dynam­ics are remark­ably similar.

Glad­well is an hired employ­ee in one of the largest media com­pa­nies in the world. It’s a very struc­tured life: he’s got edi­tors, pub­lish­ers, copy­ed­i­tors, proof­read­ers. He’s a cog in a com­pa­ny with $5 bil­lion in annu­al rev­enue. It’s not real­ly sur­pris­ing that he does­n’t have much direct expe­ri­ence with effec­tive social net­works. It’s hard to see how social media is com­ple­ment­ing real world grass­roots net­works from the 40th floor of a mid-town Man­hat­tan skyscraper.

Relat­ed Reading:

Visit to Vineland Mennonite Church

September 27, 2010
· Martin Kelley

Yes­ter­day the fam­i­ly vis­it­ed Vineland NJ Men­non­ite Church.

We were com­ing after 8:30 Mass at Julie’s church and arrived a few min­utes before the wor­ship ser­vice while they were doing their reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­gram. But the dis­tinc­tion between reli­gious ed and wor­ship was min­i­mal, almost non-existent. Atten­dance at both was near-universal (about 110 total) and much of the wor­ship itself was reli­gious edu­ca­tion. There was a series of 15 min­ute’ish ser­mons (deliv­ered by var­i­ous men), bro­ken up by some four-part a capel­la singing (beau­ti­ful), recita­tions from a Bible verse they were mem­o­riz­ing and kneel­ing prayer (a sur­prise the first time, as they all spin around sud­den­ly to face the back, kneel and pray).

It’s prob­a­bly one of the most reli­gious­ly con­sci­en­tious com­mu­ni­ties I’ve seen. A lot of the ser­vice involved review­ing belief struc­ture. Their book of dis­ci­pline is very slim, not much more than a tract, but it’s some­thing they use and they spent part of the time read­ing from it. Much of the wor­ship hour was meant to rein­force who they were, why they were and how they were – to explain over and over why they led their dis­tinc­tive life. Theirs is a vol­un­tary asso­ci­a­tion for those who agree to fol­low the author­i­ty of the group’s teach­ings. I sus­pect that every adult in the room could give a detailed pre­sen­ta­tion on con­ser­v­a­tive Men­non­ite faith and give detailed answers about points of doc­trine. At the risk of insert­ing my own opin­ion I will ven­ture that the wor­ship ser­vice felt a bit dry (as Julie said, there was­n’t a ounce of mys­ti­cism in the whole pro­ceed­ing) but I don’t think the mem­bers there would feel offend­ed by this obser­va­tion. Excit­ing the sens­es is less impor­tant than review­ing the val­ues and liv­ing the moral life.

Visu­al­ly, the group is strik­ing. Every man in the room wore a long-sleeved white dress shirt but­toned all the way up, dark pants and black shoes; all had short hair and only one or two had facial hair. I was more dis­tinc­tive­ly plain in my broad­falls and sus­penders but the effect of sixty-or-so men and young boys all dressed alike was visu­al­ly stun­ning. Like a lot of plain peo­ples, the women were more obvi­ous­ly plain and all but one or two wore lightly-colored cape dress­es and head cov­er­ings (I lat­er learned that the excep­tions were new­com­ers who weren’t yet mem­bers). Seat­ed was seg­re­gat­ed, women on the left, men on the right. Gen­der roles are very clear. There were kids – lots of kids – all around, and a big focus of the ser­mons was fam­i­ly liv­ing. One extend­ed ser­mon focused on dis­cern­ing between pro­vid­ing well for one’s fam­i­ly vs. greed and the bal­ance between work­ing hard for your fam­i­ly vs. giv­ing up some things so you can spend time with them. Kids were present through­out the ser­vice and were rel­a­tive­ly well behaved.

The church itself was called a meet­ing­house and was plain – no cross­es of course. Peo­ple sat in pews and there was a raised area up front for min­is­ters and elders. The build­ing dou­bled as a school­house dur­ing the week and its school­rooms had a lot of Rod and Staff books, famil­iar from our own home school­ing. A mem­ber described the school as one leg of the three-legged stool, along with church and fam­i­ly. If any one part of the equa­tion was lack­ing in some way, the oth­er two could help insure the child’s moral wel­fare. School was free for church mem­bers but was open on a tuition basis to non-Mennonites. These out­siders were required to make cer­tain lifestyle choic­es that would insure the school stayed rel­a­tive­ly pure; the most impor­tant require­ment was that the fam­i­ly not have a tele­vi­sion at home.

My reg­u­lar read­ers will have one ques­tion on their mind right about now: did any­one invite us to lunch? Why yes they did! We did­n’t even have to prompt it. We knew a cou­ple there – M and J, who run a restau­rant in the local farmer’s mar­ket, a favorite Sat­ur­day morn­ing stop for us. They took us under their wing when they rec­og­nized us, sit­ting with us dur­ing wor­ship and then show­ing us the school. J said that if we came back again we could come over for lunch. Then she back­tracked and offered that we could come now, explain­ing that the church had had recent dis­cus­sions over whether it was too pushy to ask first-time atten­ders to lunch or whether they should restrain them­selves and invite them on the sec­ond vis­it. Wow, a church that thinks about this?!

So we fol­lowed them to their place for lunch. It was a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask more ques­tions and get to know one anoth­er. Meals are impor­tant. Julie and I had won­dered why there were Men­non­ites in Vineland NJ of all places – and two Men­non­ite church­es at that! Short sto­ry is that there had been a civil­ian pub­lic ser­vice facil­i­ty in Vineland for con­sci­en­tious objec­tors and Lancaster-area Men­non­ites decid­ed that “the boys” sta­tioned there need­ed the ground­ing of a local church com­mu­ni­ty (appar­ent­ly oth­er C.O. camps were scenes of debauch­ery – Men­non­ite drag rac­ing in Col­orado Springs was cit­ed). This became Nor­ma Men­non­ite Church, which still exists and is anoth­er local church I’ve been mean­ing to vis­it for years (hi Mandy!). In the 1960s, there was a great round of lib­er­al­iza­tion among Men­non­ites, an unof­fi­cial aban­don­ment of the dis­tinc­tives cod­i­fied in their books of dis­ci­plines. Many church­es split and the Vineland Church was formed by those mem­bers of Nor­ma who want­ed to main­tain the discipline.

This prob­a­bly explains the strong focus on the rules of the dis­ci­pline. For those want­i­ng more of the his­to­ries, I com­mend Stephen Scot­t’s excel­lent “An Intro­duc­tion to Old Order and Con­ser­v­a­tive Men­non­ite Groups” along with any­thing else Stephen Scott has writ­ten. The Vineland con­gre­ga­tion is part of the East­ern Penn­syl­va­nia Men­non­ite Church con­fer­ence, pro­filed on pages 173 – 176. A lot of the Men­non­ite issues and splits are echoed among Friends and we’d do well to under­stand these cousins of ours.

The result is a church that’s big on group prac­tice: the dress, the lifestyle. M. told me that they don’t believe in the­ol­o­gy but in Bib­li­cism. He explained that they don’t think the Bible con­tains the word of God but instead that it is the Word of God and he paused to let the dis­tinc­tion sink in. The Bible is not to be inter­pret­ed but read and fol­lowed, with spe­cial atten­tion giv­en the gospels and the let­ters of Paul.

So no, I’m not going to go Con­ser­v­a­tive Men­non­ite on you all. I have a TV. My pro­fes­sion is web design (they’re not into the inter­net, natch). I’m mar­ried to a pracitic­ing Catholic (I don’t know how they would bend on that) and at this point my brain is wired in a curi­ous, out­ward way that would­n’t fit into the nor­ma­tive struc­tures of a group like this. Doctrinally-speaking, I’m a Friend in that I think the Word of God is the Inward Christ’s direct spir­it and that the Bible needs to be read in that Light. There’s a lot of peo­ple who would­n’t fit for var­i­ous rea­sons, peo­ple who I would want in my church (they main­tain a hard line against remar­riage after divorce and I did­n’t even ask about gay issues). But I have to admit that the process and struc­ture puts togeth­er a real­ly great com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple. They’re hard-working, kind, char­i­ta­ble and not near­ly as judg­men­tal as you might imag­ine – in prac­tice, less judg­men­tal than a lot of pro­gres­sive reli­gious peo­ple I know. Non-resistance is one of the pil­lars of their prac­tice and they were gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in Julie’s Catholic church and my expe­ri­ences among Friends and we talked a fair bit about Islam.

Nor­mal­ly I’d give a big thanks to the church and M & J here, except I know they won’t read this. I am grate­ful to their kind­ness in shar­ing their church, beliefs and fam­i­ly meal with us.