Warn­ing: insid­er Quak­er con­ver­sa­tion to follow.

Over on her blog Robin M has a great post look­ing at the Con­ver­gent Friend con­ver­sa­tion now. It’s kind of State of the Con­ver­gent Friends report. It’s very good and well worth a read and makes me won­der again where exact­ly I stand.

Even though I was around at the ges­ta­tion and birth of the term, and even though it orig­i­nal­ly referred to a small group of blog­gers who I all love, I go back and forth between using and refus­ing to use the label. I don’t feel the need to always be explic­it­ly “con­ver­gent.” Some­times I can just embody the spir­it of it, which as a renew­al move­ment is real­ly just the same old spir­it of Quak­erism, which as its own renew­al move­ment is the same old spir­it of Chris­tian­i­ty, with is just that spir­it which ani­mates the world. 

See: it’s too easy to throw up terms as a defense shield or as a way of boost­ing our­selves. I know I’m prone to this trap. I’ll say “I’m doing this as a [Con­ver­gent Friend/Quaker/Christian]” as if that explains any­thing, as if care­ful lis­ten­ing to the Holy Spir­it isn’t all the author­i­ty that any of us needs.

I think a cen­tral part of the con­ver­gent expe­ri­ence is step­ping out­side of the insti­tu­tion­al box­es and walk­ing into the dis­com­fort zone of our brand of Friends – ask­ing the thorny ques­tions and point­ing out the incon­ve­nient ele­phants. If “Con­ver­gent Friend” ever set­tles down into a set def­i­n­i­tion and annu­al rit­u­als (like a Gath­er­ing inter­est group?), we’ll see our own brier patch­es take root along those incon­ve­nient pathways.

I’ve noticed Friends with bright ideas brand and sell them­selves, and have won­dered to myself how freely the gospel spir­it is mov­ing after ten years of Gath­er­ing work­shops and Pen­dle Hill work­shops. I’m not so much purist that I don’t under­stand that some­times those of us led to the min­istry have to push through doubts and present things we’ve promised to present even if we’re not in the best mood (pray­ing that we find that groove). But I’ve also sat through com­mit­tee meet­ings that felt like the Bill Mur­ray movie Ground­hog Day, where I look around and real­ize the same peo­ple have been sit­ting in the same room hav­ing the same con­ver­sa­tion for twen­ty years, and every­one is just so tired and the feel­ing is they’re all read­ing a script and would want to be any­where but where they are.

A friend­ly amend­ment to Convergent

Just the last thing is that for me if our work isn’t ulti­mate­ly root­ed in shar­ing the good news then it’s self-indulgent. I don’t want to cre­ate a lit­tle oasis or hip­py com­pound of hap­py peo­ple. Friends aren’t going to go to heav­en in our politically-correct smug­ness while the rest of the world is dying off. It’s all of us or none of us. If we’re not active­ly evan­ge­liz­ing <lib­er­al trans­la­tion: shar­ing the spir­i­tu­al insights and gifts we’ve been giv­en />, then we are part of the prob­lem. “Con­ver­gence” is Quak­er lin­go. When we say it we’re turn­ing our back to the world to talk amongst our­selves: a use­ful exer­cise occas­sion­al­ly but not our main work. 

I’ve been read­ing a lot of seek­er blogs where Quak­ers are men­tioned and I’m struck by how so many of the words we rou­tine­ly use in our blogs and self-statements are total­ly alien to others. 

It may be too late to throw a switch on the quickly-gathering-steam train that is the “Con­ver­gent Friends” express. But here’s my friend­ly amend­ment: Con­ver­gent Friends need to be ready to get out of the Quak­er con­fer­ence cen­ters and need to be ready to put aside the Quak­er arcana we’ve accu­mu­lat­ed over the years. If all we’re doing is sit­ting around talk­ing to room­fulls of Quak­ers in our hopeless-inaccessible lin­go then we’re fool­ing our­selves that any real renew­al is happening.

Frankly, I have no idea what this would look like. I’m as clue­less and scared by the pos­si­bil­i­ties as most of y’all. I just know we need to do it. Even if I had all the trav­el mon­ey and time in the world (I have nei­ther), I don’t know if I’d have enough moti­va­tion to get to the next Bar­nesville / Greens­boro / Rich­mond / New­berg / wher­ev­er con­fer­ence (I just real­ized I’m rein­forc­ing my last Quak­er post!). I love meet­ing oth­er Friends and I soooo miss see­ing oth­er Friends in my cur­rent rel­a­tive iso­la­tion. But. But. I wish I had a bet­ter end­ing to this post. I guess I’ll just throw it out to the com­ments: what are we being called to do to send this work into the world?