As the clerk of a small meeting, I find myself frequently juggling these multiple categories of membership. When we had plumbing issues a few months ago, there were lots of emails with a core half-dozen regulars who I can depend on to help with logistics and contacts with local contractors (this group is so consistent that when I go to send a message to one, my email program asks me if I want to include all the others).

When there’s an event coming up, the email list expands to include a small group of recent newcomers who make it to worship a few times a month. Every so often I look over this list to see if there’s someone who’s dropped away, and I’ll take a minute to write them a special email asking how they are and inviting them to attend. I would hate for a semi-regular to drop away and think we hadn’t noticed.

There’s also a wide constellation of people who attend once in a proverbial blue moon. Some are members of nearby meetings who occasionally hit us up for a change of pace. Others are local history buffs who will come to hear a particular speaker but make sure to come early because they like their once-a-year Quaker worship. Few of these visitors will ever become regulars but they probably know someone who might, and their word-of-mouth recommendation could help connect a new seeker with our small band.

When it’s time to send out the annual fundraising appeal, I’ll reach out to another, rather special class of members, those at a distance, many of whom I’ve never met. They might hail from one of the founding families of the meeting; perhaps they grew up there themselves and have fond memories. It might be easy to forget about these members but that would be a mistake, as they remind us of the long line of faithful servants who have kept this special community going in the past.

“A Membership That Is Ever Flowing”

I even give a shoutout to the red-shouldered hawk family living in one of our sycamore trees.

Looking back in the archives, we’ve been putting out an issue on membership every four years: Membership and the Generation Gap in 2012, Almost Quaker in 2016, Membership and Friends in 2020. I’m actually surprised at the clockwork precision of our issues, but there’s a good reason we keep coming back to it. The definition of who “we” are is an essential part of our self-identification as Friends. Pretty much everything we do (or fail to do) reflects our implicit assumptions about who’s in and who’s out. Many, perhaps most, of the debates that roil Friends have membership as an element.

Reading Robert Barclay, where much of this language comes from, I’m not sure he would agree: 

By this Seed, Grace, and Word of God, and Light, wherewith we say every man is enlightened, and hath a measure of it, which strives with them in order to save them, and which may, by the stubbornness and wickedness of man’s will, be quenched, bruised, wounded, pressed down, slain and crucified; we understand not the proper essence and nature of God, precisely taken, which is not divisible into parts and measures, as being a most pure, simple being, void of all composition or division, and therefore can neither be resisted, hurt, wounded, crucified, or slain by all the efforts and strength of men.

An Apology for the True Christian Divinity. Robert Barclay, 1678

He’s pretty clear that the light is indivisible so I don’t see how it could be more or less within any of us or change over time (though certainly our awareness of it can be strengthened as we progress spiritually). And for him, and all early Quakers, the Light was very definitely God working within us. Nowadays it’s more common for Liberal Friends to think of it as a kind of spiritual conscience.

I myself wouldn’t want to get into deciding who has what ability. Maybe talents is a better way of thinking about it. Like, in my humanness I may get jealous that someone gives really good ministry in worship. But maybe that’s not my gift. There are some people I’ve met who are always extremely thoughtful of others. And others who are really good at centering a group down in worship. I have friends who are always great about getting to know everyone in their lives. We can aspire to be better in all these things but there are people who seem more naturally suited to this. So we should try to live up to our measure in our spiritual lives but not feel bad about ourselves if others are able to do certain things effortlessly.

The number to call is 317-QUAKERS (+1 outside U.S.)

Wilcox began the discussion with a question of whether or not the Guilford community should seek out prophets and prophecies. Wilcox sought to relate this question to the Quaker tradition.

“This talk is about prophets and prophecy,” Wilcox said. “So the first question is, ‘What does it mean to be a prophet?’ I don’t think Jeremiah would recommend it.”

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.guilfordian.com/news/2019/04/12/wilcox-talks-quakerism-and-the-prophetic-tradition/&ct=ga&cd=CAIyGjk1NzUwOWM3NjZmNTA4MzU6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AFQjCNGr3hjx9Dxd8r_5amP0l6AQfRXDcg

My speculations, therefore, center around around what a Quaker Village might look like, understanding “village” to mean “small community” (hundreds or thousands, but not millions). How do these people live? How do they put their Christian values into practice?

Let’s say it’s a hundred years from now, when all of us are safely dead. Or maybe we’d like to accelerate the timeline?

For me, a hallmark of Quakerism is its egalitarianism and commitment to rotating roles. That’s not a feature of every branch I realize, and those who decry “outward forms” may consider Oversight, Property Management, Children’s Program etc., to be the opposite of “primitive” by definition. Perhaps such infrastructure seems too complicated, too much like everyday life. I realize we use our words differently.

I like the qualification to imagine this 100 years from now. It gives us a bit of time to sort out all of the inconvenient roadblocks of current apathy and resistance to change. One of the techniques Amazon is said to use is to start any new project ideas with a press release as a way to make sure the final product is focused on actual customer needs. Kirby’s piece reminds me of this. What would it look like to have a strong vision of the Quaker communities we’d like to live in someday?
http://www.quakerquaker.org/forum/topics/what-is-primitive-christianity

• 1937, 1957, 1967, 1977, 1987 from Quakers World Wide: A History of FWCC by Herbert Hadley in 1991 (many thanks to FWCC’s Robin Mohr for a scan of the relevant chart).
• 1972, 1992 from Earlham School of Religion’s The Present State of Quakerism, 1995, archived here.
• 2002 on from FWCC directly. Note: Current 2017 map.

Friends in the U.S. and Canada:

• 1937: 114,924
• 1957: 122,663
• 1967: 122,780
• 1972: 121,380
• 1977: 119,160
• 1987: 109,732
• 1992: 101,255
• 2002: 92,786
• 2012: 77,660
• 2017: 81,392

Friends in Americas (North, Middle South):

• 1937: 122,166
• 1957: 131,000
• 1967: 129,200
• 1977: 132,300
• 1987: 139,200
• 2017: 140,065

You could write a book about what these numbers do and don’t mean. The most glaring omission is that they don’t show the geographic or theological shifts that took place over time. Midwestern Friends have taken a disproportionate hit, for example, and many Philadelphia-area meetings are much smaller than they were a century ago, while independent meetings in the West and/or adjacent to colleges grew like wildflowers mid-century.

My hot take on this is that the reunification work of the early 20th century gave Quakers a solid identity and coherent structure. Howard Brinton’s Friends for 300 Years from 1952 is a remarkably confident document. In many areas, Friends became a socially-progressive, participatory religious movement that was attractive to people tired of more creedal formulations; mixed-religious parents came looking for First-day school community for their children. Quakers’ social justice work was very visible and attracted a number of new people during the antiwar 1960s¹ and the alternative community groundswell of the 1970s. These various newcomers offset the decline of what we might call “ethnic” Friends in rural meetings through this period.

That magic balance of Quaker culture matching the zeitgeist of religious seekers disappeared somewhere back in the 1980s. We aren’t on forefront of any current spiritual trends. While there are bright spots and exceptions ², we’ve largely struggled with retaining newcomers in recent years. We’re losing our elders more quickly than we’re bringing in new people, hence the forty percent drop since the high water of 1987. The small 2017 uptick might be a good sign³ or it may be a statistical phantom.⁴ I’ll be curious to see what the next census brings.

2023 Update: I seem to have mixed up some numbers in my original 2018 post and have corrected them above.

Connecting with nature is about more than just exercise or tranquility. As Quaker author Doug Gwyn shares, even in the 17th century, Quakers were concerned about our disconnection with the natural world and what it would mean for the future.

http://quakerspeak.com/what-does-quakerism-teach-about-connecting-to-nature/

We can often get very loyal to our meeting places, and I think that’s natural. We’ve often had some of our most profound personal experiences there. They are important places of community and worship, and they can and do work hard for us. But our loyalty to them doesn’t mean that they’re going to work for everyone, and if they’re not going to become ‘steeple houses’, then I think it’s important that we look at them every now and again and ask ourselves some questions.

http://www.quaker.org.uk/blog/5‑ways-to-make-quaker-meeting-houses-work-for-the-future