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.

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?

That God is Light and in Him is no Darkness at all; and that he has sent His Son a Light into the World, to Enlighten all Men in order to Salvation and that they that say they have Fellowship with God, and are his Children and People, and yet walk in Darkness, viz. in Disobedience to the light in their Consciences, and after the Vanity of this World, they Lie, and do not the Truth. But they all such as love the Light, and bring their Deeds to it, and walk in the Light, as God is Light, the Blood of Jesus Christ His Son, should cleanse them from all Sin.

From “Rise and Progress of the People called Quakers,” p. 42 of my edition). I share this in part because Brent Bill’s been asking about the message of Friends. It was interesting to read Penn’s answer at breakfast this morning! It’s well worth unpacking the grammar of the long clauses!