I’m pret­ty used to the stan­dard rhetor­i­cal paths of Quak­er sto­ries after so many years as an edi­tor but every once in a while one comes along and knocks my socks off.

I’ve writ­ten before¹ that I’m not a fan of the “when to speak in meet­ing” flow­charts Friends some­times post in the meet­ing­house to dis­cour­age vocal min­istry. One is expect­ed to test an incom­ing mes­sage against half a dozen queries and only speak if they can clear them all in the space of an hour. A lot of new­com­ers see these and decide to just keep quiet.

Chris­tine Hart­mann was just one of these new atten­ders. She writes “after study­ing all this, I decid­ed to hold off speak­ing in meet­ing, if at all pos­si­ble, for fear of get­ting it wrong.” She was so care­ful and so scrupu­lous that her silence almost cost her her life. I’m not kid­ding. Lit­er­al­ly. Read the arti­cle. Wild, wild.

(Yes, there are dis­rup­tive new­com­ers who give inap­pro­pri­ate min­istry in Quak­er wor­ship. In my expe­ri­ence they’re rarely the ones sit­ting down and study­ing flow­charts. The vis­i­tors these charts deter are the care­ful and thought­ful ones who are already tying them­selves in knots won­der­ing whether they should speak. These are the folks you want to encourage.) 

Health and the Quak­er Com­mu­ni­ty — A Life-Changing Les­son from Silence 

A med­ical emer­gency dur­ing Quak­er wor­ship reshapes one Friend’s view of min­istry, com­mu­ni­ty, and the sacred respon­si­bil­i­ty of…

Friends Journal 

1. See: Retro Quak­er Vocal Min­istry Flow­chart, An Expect­ed Mir­a­cle.