Tag Archives ⇒ ministry

Circling around, and surprising nudges toward renewed ministry and plainness

February 19, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From LizOpp, back on the blog:

I have come to believe that I live my life not in a straight line from birth to death but in a series of small and large cir­cles: from birth to learn­ing; from growth to for­get­ting; from remem­ber­ing to pride­ful liv­ing; from bro­ken­ness to humil­i­ty; from deep love and con­nec­tion to sep­a­rate­ness; from despair to faithfulness.

https://​the​goodraisedup​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​2​3​/​0​2​/​r​e​-​e​n​t​r​y​-​t​r​u​t​h​-​a​n​d​-​b​e​i​n​g​-​h​o​u​n​d​e​d​.​h​tml

I too have felt cir­cles com­ing back around. Liz attend­ed last week­end’s work­shop, the first multi-day retreat I’ve led since… check notes… 2014, when R. Scot Miller got me to Kala­ma­zoo, Michi­gan, for Green Pas­tures Quar­ter­ly Meet­ing. Last year I final­ly stopped my meet­ing wan­der­ing and have set­tled down at Crop­well Meet­ing, where I get to be involved in all the sil­ly, light­weight dra­mas that occur when­ev­er a group of peo­ple come together.

There, I’ve felt my spo­ken min­istry return. I was shocked a few months ago when I stood and was giv­en words that start­ed with reflect­ing of the sounds of the leaves blow­ing against the out­side walls, ref­er­enced an atten­der who had just been sweep­ing them, cir­cled to the his­to­ry of the peo­ple who have gath­ered with­in those walls and main­tained the build­ing for wor­ship, moved side­ways into a gen­tle les­son on min­istry in the qui­etist tra­di­tion, pulled it back to Jesus’s words in the Ser­mon on the Mount, and then tied it up in a bow with prayers of thanks to our faith­ful ances­tors and to those today who con­tin­ue to sweep away the ever-returned leaves. Read­ers, let me assure you I don’t think I’ve ever giv­en such coher­ent, bal­anced min­istry and I’m not sure where it came from. But faith­ful­ness is key.

I’ve also felt the nudge to bring back some iden­ti­fi­able plain dress. For years I’ve tend­ed toward what I used to call “Sears plain“1 and dur­ing the work-from-home life I’m some­times lucky if I get through the day with­out still wear­ing my paja­mas. Over the last few weeks I’ve been adding sus­penders to my reg­u­lar clothes. Of course I’ve gone through all the old famil­iar self-questioning: Am I doing this to stand out? Am I try­ing to puff myself up? Is this what faith­ful­ness leads me? But these ques­tions are part of the process and a tug toward plain­ness often pre­cedes out­ward min­istry; in his study Quak­er Jour­nals, Howard Brin­ton not­ed that future min­is­ters often record­ed inward nudges in their teen years and became plain­er in dress to the ridicule of their peers. I’m not a teen and I doubt any­one is going to make fun of me (at least to my face) but I do feel a cer­tain seri­ous­ness of intent come over me when I over­come my nat­ur­al desire for social anonymi­ty and put the sus­penders on.

The awfulness of ministry

February 4, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Bill Taber’s The The­ol­o­gy of the Inward Imper­a­tive: Min­istry of the Mid­dle Period

The “awful­ness” of becom­ing a min­is­ter lay part­ly in the high expec­ta­tions which the Friends placed on their min­is­ters, for they expect­ed every­thing and noth­ing all at the same time. Min­is­ters were to do every­thing which the Light, the Mas­ter, the Guide, the Heav­en­ly Father (to use some of the var­i­ous names) required of them; they were sup­posed to fol­low every inti­ma­tion and speak every word giv­en them in the light. Thus moth­ers or fathers might have to leave fam­i­ly, work, and friends for years while they trav­eled, not know­ing when the Spir­it would allow them to return. On the oth­er hand noth­ing was expect­ed of them if they felt no imme­di­ate lead­ing, not, of course, could they ever pre­pare for any ser­mon. Thus each new meet­ing, each new fam­i­ly vis­it was a fresh test of faith in which one might be called to rise with­out know­ing what was to be said, or what dif­fi­cult or per­plex­ing words might come forth; even worse, a well-known min­is­ter might be required to remain silent through­out a meet­ing called just for him…

Thus, as their jour­nals make very clear, they expe­ri­enced the body of Christ not as a metaphor but as a liv­ing cli­mate or organ­ism from which — as well as in which — they func­tioned. They saw them­selves not as sep­a­rate lead­ers but as exten­sions of the one Life and Pow­er. They dwelt togeth­er with the oth­er mem­bers in the same pool of the divine pres­ence which blend­ed all souls togeth­er in a won­der­ful uni­ty. Although Quak­er min­is­ters were expect­ed to be very good exam­ples of the Quak­er way of life, they were not required to be lead­ers all the time; they could sink back into the nur­ture and uni­ty of the body until such times as they were clear­ly called to stand forth for the Lord. They knew that if they were “faith­ful,” he would give them both words and pow­er, or the “mat­ter and the “life.” Yet even so, each new meet­ing was a renewed test of faith; as Han­nah Strat­ton (1825 – 1903) of Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive) put it near the end of her life, “it don’t get easy.”

Ever since I found Friends at age 20, I’ve been drawn to this rather seri­ous vision of min­istry, with its strict demand for a com­plete trust in the Holy Spirit’s prompt­ing in the moment. It’s not easy to square with mod­ern Quak­er prac­tices. I’m due to lead 5.5 hours of a work­shop next week; the top­ic and times are set. But maybe this dilem­ma is not so very new. Trav­el­ing min­is­ters in the qui­etist “mid­dle peri­od” that Tabor describes had itin­er­aries and meet­ings called for them (as for the min­is­ter of his sto­ry that was led to stay silent for a called worship). 

How do you pre­pare when you shouldn’t pre­pare? Per­haps by spend­ing part of a Sat­ur­day after­noon read­ing an old Bill Tabor pam­phlet that’s not on a top­ic you’re expect­ed to lead on the fol­low­ing week. 

I’m read­ing Tabor’s essay in Quak­er Reli­gious Thought num­ber 50, autumn 1980.

Quaker sing song ministry

January 4, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Over on Mastodon (yes you should be there), Aus­tralian Friend Evan start­ed an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about Quak­er sing song. This is a form of deliv­er­ing min­istry that seems to date back to the begin­nings of our reli­gious soci­ety but which bare­ly exists any­more. To my untrained ears it sounds more like some­thing you’d hear in a small Catholic or Ortho­dox church. Many years ago Haver­ford Col­lege Library excerpt­ed a field record­ing on a page ded­i­cat­ed to Music and the Ear­ly Quak­ers:

Evan posts to a pas­sage on it from nineteenth-century Quak­er chron­i­cler Thomas Clark­son:

The Quak­ers, on the oth­er hand, nei­ther pre­pare their dis­cours­es, nor vary their voic­es pur­pose­ly accord­ing to the rules of art. The tone which comes out, and which appears dis­agree­able to those who are not used to it, is nev­er­the­less not unnat­ur­al. It is rather the mode of speak­ing which na- ture impos­es in any vio­lent exer­tion of the voice, to save the lungs. Hence per­sons who have their wares to cry, and this almost every oth­er minute in the streets, are oblig­ed to adopt a tone. Hence per­sons, with dis­or­dered lungs, can sing words with more ease to them­selves than they can utter th6m with a sim­i­lar pitch of the voice. Hence Quaker- women, when they preach, have gen­er­al­ly more of this tone than the Quaker-men, for the lungs of the female are gen­er­al­ly weak­er than those of the oth­er
sex.

I’ve always won­dered if lat­er oppo­si­tion to sing song might have been par­tial­ly moti­vat­ed by the fact that it was favored by women or sound­ed a bit too Catholic for Angli­cans like Clark­son or Quak­ers lean­ing that direction.

There’s a great 2011 post from the now-dormant Quak­er His­tor­i­cal Lex­i­con blog by Illi­nois Friend Peter Laser­sohn. The com­ments are also great.

Where do we hear God’s voice?

January 3, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Angel­i­ca Brown on min­istry from unex­pect­ed sources:

I think about the peo­ple I’ve cared about who have need­ed to talk to them­selves and make nois­es. Who need to pace and say things we don’t under­stand. Spir­it is mov­ing through them, in this incar­na­tion­al way. Remind­ing them they still have bod­ies that can make nois­es, that they still can breath words into being. 

http://​www​.meet​ing​house​.xyz/​e​v​e​r​y​t​h​i​n​g​/​2​0​1​8​/​1​2​/​3​1​/​w​h​e​r​e​-​d​o​-​w​e​-​h​e​a​r​-​g​o​d​s​-​v​o​ice

Traveling in the ministry in the “old style”

November 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Wess Daniels on Lloyd Lee Wilson’s trav­el­ing style

Most folks can guess what it means to trav­el in the min­istry. You vis­it dif­fer­ent church­es and meet­ings and share gifts of min­istry with the com­mu­ni­ty there. “In the old style” is a ref­er­ence to how many ear­ly Friends would trav­el, by sens­ing a call to go and wor­ship with Friends in oth­er parts of the coun­try and world, with no clear out­come or goal, and only trust­ing that by show­ing up and wor­ship­ing with Friends “some­thing divine­ly good would happen.” 

On Trav­el­ing in the Ministry

Friendly Fire: The Making of a Charismatic Quaker

September 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A look at the Vine­yard Move­men­t’s Quak­er roots:

When it comes to Spirit-attentive wor­ship and min­istry, the Vine­yard man­i­fests Quak­er spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in a way that is faith­ful to the Evan­gel­i­cal tra­di­tion, but tru­ly mys­ti­cal, and of course deeply Quak­er. They live out a Quak­erism many of today’s Amer­i­can Quak­ers, both Lib­er­al and Ortho­dox, would find laugh­able, back­wards. George Fox, on the oth­er hand, may get it.

The Mak­ing of a Charis­mat­ic Quaker

Facebook superposters and the loss of our own narrative

August 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

In the NYTimes, a fas­ci­nat­ing piece on fil­ter bub­bles and the abil­i­ty of Face­book “super­posters” to dom­i­nate feeds, dis­tort real­i­ty, and pro­mote para­noia and violence.

Super­posters tend to be “more opin­ion­at­ed, more extreme, more engaged, more every­thing,” said Andrew Guess, a Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty social sci­en­tist. When more casu­al users open Face­book, often what they see is a world shaped by super­posters like Mr. Wasser­man. Their exag­ger­at­ed world­views play well on the algo­rithm, allow­ing them to col­lec­tive­ly — and often unknow­ing­ly — dom­i­nate news­feeds. “That’s some­thing spe­cial about Face­book,” Dr. Paluck said. “If you end up get­ting a lot of time on the feed, you are influ­en­tial. It’s a dif­fer­ence with real life.”

A great many general-interest Face­book groups that I see are dom­i­nat­ed by troll­ish peo­ple whose vis­i­bil­i­ty relies on how provoca­tive they can get with­out being banned. This is true in many Quaker-focused groups. Face­book pri­or­i­tizes engage­ment and noth­ing seems to get our fin­gers mad­ly tap­ping more than provo­ca­tion by some­one half-informed.

For­mal mem­ber­ship in a Quak­er meet­ing is a con­sid­ered process; for many Quak­er groups, pub­lic min­istry is also a delib­er­at­ed process, with clear­ness com­mit­tees, anchor com­mit­tees, etc. On Face­book, mem­ber­ship con­sists of click­ing a like but­ton; pub­lic min­istry, aka vis­i­bil­i­ty, is a mat­ter of hav­ing a lot of time to post com­ments. Pub­lic groups with min­i­mal mod­er­a­tion which run on Face­book’s engagement-inducing algo­rithms are the pub­lic face of Friends these days, far more vis­i­ble than any pub­li­ca­tion or rec­og­nized Quak­er body’s Face­book pres­ence. I writ­ten before of my long-term wor­ry that with the rise of social media gate­keep­ing sites, we’re not the ones writ­ing our sto­ry anymore.

I don’t have any answers. But the NYTimes piece helped give me some use­ful ways of think­ing about these phenomena.


Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests (Published 2018)

Face­book Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Ger­many, New Research Sug­gests (Pub­lished 2018) 

Towns where peo­ple use Face­book more also had more attacks on refugees, build­ing on sus­pi­cions that the platform…

www.nytimes.com www​.nytimes​.com

A New Creation Story

August 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A nice piece on Philadel­phia Friend O:

For O., a mem­ber of Cen­tral Philadel­phia Month­ly Meet­ing, car­ry­ing this query for pas­toral min­istry awak­ens joy in her heart. It rais­es impor­tant ques­tions: Are we trans­formed by the pow­er of love, dur­ing our bio­log­i­cal con­cep­tion as human beings? Might our lives be a mea­sure­less love sto­ry about creation?

It’s hard to cap­ture O’s per­son­al­i­ty in ASCII char­ac­ters. She’s been in a few Quak­er­S­peak videos.

A New Cre­ation Sto­ry: Embrac­ing Love