Tag Archives ⇒ outreach

Lifting up the vocabulary

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This week’s fea­tured Friends Jour­nal arti­cle is Sell­ing Hope by Tom Hoopes. Hoopes is a teacher at George School, one of the two promi­nent Quak­er board­ing schools in the Philadel­phia area, and he talks about the brand­ing chal­lenges of “Quak­er val­ues” which his­toric Quak­er schools so often fall back on when describ­ing their mis­sion. We often describe these with the sim­plis­tic “SPICES” foru­mu­la­tion (Eric Moon wrote about the prob­lems over-emphasizing these). Hoopes encour­ages us to expand our language:

We can use any num­ber of descrip­tors that do not sound so haughty and near­sight­ed. I think we should con­tin­u­al­ly lift up some key pieces of vocab­u­lary that real­ly do make the Quak­er way dis­tinc­tive. Here is a brief list, to which I am sure Friends can add oth­ers: “that of God in every per­son”; “the Inner Light”; “con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion”; “dis­cern­ment”; “sense of the meet­ing”; “right­ly led and right­ly ordered”; “Friend speaks my mind”; “the still, small voice with­in”; “way open­ing”; “clerk­ing”; “query”; “wor­ship shar­ing”; “expec­tant wait­ing”; “cen­ter­ing down”; “Quak­er deci­sion mak­ing”; “Quak­er tra­di­tion”; “faith and prac­tice”; “seek­ing clear­ness”; “Quak­er tes­ti­monies”; and of course, “meet­ing for worship.”

Long­time FJ read­ers will remem­ber a much-discussed 2008 arti­cle by Hoopes, “Young Fam­i­lies and Quak­erism: Will the Cen­ter Hold?” It cer­tain spoke to my con­di­tion as a par­ent strug­gling with fam­i­ly life among Friends:

Let’s look at some hard real­i­ties fac­ing many Quak­er par­ents of young chil­dren today. They are fre­quent­ly exhaust­ed and fraz­zled from attend­ing to their children’s needs in addi­tion to their own all week long. They des­per­ate­ly need a break from their own chil­dren, and they may feel guilty about that fact. They are often asked — or expect­ed — to serve as First-day school teach­ers or child­care providers. Hence, their expe­ri­ence of meet­ing is not one of replen­ish­ment, but of fur­ther depletion.

I wish I could report that Philadel­phia Friends took the 2008 arti­cle to heart.


Just a moment...

Just a moment… 

www.friendsjournal.org www​.friend​sjour​nal​.org

Could Quakerism be the radical faith?

April 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith won­ders whether the title of Chris Ven­ables’s recent piece, “Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for?,” is fol­low­ing Betteridge’s Law of Headlines.

I’d put the dilem­ma of Quak­erism in the 21st cen­tu­ry this way: It’s not just that our trea­sures are in jars of clay, it’s that no one would even know the trea­sures were there, and it seems like they’re eas­i­er to find else­where. And how do we know that what we have are even treasures?

I gave my own skep­ti­cal take on Ven­ables’s arti­cle yes­ter­day. Smith hits on part of what wor­ries me when he says cur­rent reli­gious dis­en­gage­ment is of a kind to be immune to “bet­ter social media game or a more stream­lined church bureau­cra­cy.” These are the easy, value-free answers insti­tu­tions like to turn to.

I’m think­ing about these issues not only because of this arti­cle but also because Friends Jour­nal is seek­ing sub­mis­sions for thr August issue “Going Viral with Quak­erism.” A few weeks ago I wrote a post that referred back to Quak­er inter­net out­reach 25 years ago.

Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for?

Whassup Quaker Internet?

April 4, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The August issue of Friends Jour­nal will look at “Going Viral with Quak­erism.” I wrote an Editor’s Desk post with some ideas of top­ics I’d love to see and some queries:

  • Do we have a vision of what kind of Quak­erism we’re invit­ing peo­ple into?
  • Does grow­ing neces­si­tate cast­ing off or re-embracing var­i­ous Quak­er practices?
  • Can we point to spe­cif­ic and repro­ducible tasks that meet­ings have done that have led to growth?
  • Are there mod­els from oth­er church­es or social change move­ments that we could learn from?
  • What are the dan­gers of over-focusing on growth?
  • Is there real­ly a pos­si­bil­i­ty that Quak­erism could become a mass movement?
  • What would our Quak­er expe­ri­ences look like if our num­bers rose even ten-fold?

One thing that’s miss­ing there is the inter­net. Yet one of the most com­mon things peo­ple want to talk about when we talk about grow­ing Friends is the inter­net. I think we’ve got­ten to the point at which we can’t just pin our hopes for future vital­i­ty of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends on the inter­net. It’s not a build-it-and-they-will come phe­nom­e­non, espe­cial­ly now that so much of the inter­net’s atten­tion mech­a­nisms are dom­i­nat­ed by billion-dollar companies.

I went into the Friends Jour­nal archives to get a lit­tle per­spec­tive on Friends’ evolv­ing rela­tion­ship with elec­tron­ic media. The word “inter­net” first showed up near the end of 1992, in a short announce­ment of a new Quaker-themed list­serv. In 1993 there was a fan­tas­tic arti­cle on elec­tron­ic net­works, The Invis­i­ble Meet­ing­house. Writ­ten by Joel GAzis-SAx, it describes the Quak­er Elec­tron­ic Project as

an ongo­ing year­ly meet­ing that Friends around the world can join any time. It is, at once, a library, a meet­ing­house, a social cen­ter, and a bul­letin board. W e have cre­at­ed both a com­mu­ni­ty and a resource center…

Amaz­ing­ly, many of the peo­ple men­tioned in this arti­cle from 25 years ago are still active online.

The first “http” web address was pub­lished in Friends Jour­nal in a 1995 issue. In June 2001 the mag­a­zine announced its own web­site; the word “blog” debuted in 2004, “Face­book” in 2007, “Twit­ter” in 2011. Obvi­ous­ly, the inter­net is great for out­reach. But time check: we’ve been col­lec­tive­ly reach­ing out online for a quar­ter cen­tu­ry. Every orga­ni­za­tion has a web­site. Blogs and social media have become a set­tled tool in outreach.

Intro­duc­tions to the web and tech­niques and how-to’s have been done. But how do these var­i­ous media work togeth­er to advance our vis­i­bil­i­ty? What kind of expand­ed out­reach could hap­pen with a lit­tle more focus? How does any online project inte­grate with real-world activ­i­ty. I’m not naysay­ing the inter­net; obvi­ous­ly, I could give my answers to these ques­tions. But I’d like to know what oth­ers think about our Quak­er elec­tron­ic projects a quar­ter cen­tu­ry later?


Just a moment...

Just a moment… 

www.friendsjournal.org www​.friend​sjour​nal​.org

What Do You Teach the Kids, Nones?

March 18, 2015
· Martin Kelley
blank
 From Reli­gion in the News, an inter­est­ing study on what “spir­i­tu­al but not reli­gious” par­ents (the “nones”) are look­ing for:
Many of [the nones] are nonethe­less reluc­tant to impose their skep­ti­cism on their chil­dren, and will often out­source reli­gious edu­ca­tion by send­ing their chil­dren to a Protes­tant Sun­day school or Catholic CCD or Jew­ish Hebrew School. But while, like oth­er Amer­i­cans, Nones “agree that every­body should be able to choose,” Man­ning said, “Nones won’t allow chil­dren to choose just anything.”
What I find inter­est­ing is par­ents’ will­ing­ness to out­source reli­gious edu­ca­tion to local insti­tu­tions that have stronger beliefs that they them­selves do — as long as the school pro­gram is rel­a­tive­ly non-judgemental.
This actu­al­ly rings true for me per­son­al­ly. Although I’m Quak­er and my wife Catholic, the most reg­u­lar outside-the-home reli­gious ed my kids get is from the Pres­by­ter­ian Sun­day School in our town. We’ve picked it because it’s hyper-local, the teach­ers are nice and down to earth, and — well, they only focus on cross-denominational Bible sto­ries and crafts.
In the Philadel­phia area, Quak­er schools are known as the go-to place for par­ents that want (and can afford) a pro­gres­sive, eth­i­cal edu­ca­tion that has a spir­i­tu­al com­po­nent but isn’t reli­gious. If “nones” are look­ing for safe reli­gious edu­ca­tion on Sun­day morn­ing, it seems like it would be the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble to extend that known “Quak­er school” brand and rep­u­ta­tion over to our First-day schools. It would be a treme­nous out­reach tool.
Alas, this is just idle spec­u­la­tion. I don’t see many local meet­ings that are able (will­ing?) to take on a big project like this. Some meet­ings would get con­sumed over inter­nal dis­agree­ments on what to even teach. And then, well, I won­der if we have a deep enough bench of expe­ri­ence. A few years ago Philadel­phia Year­ly Meeting’s ses­sions over­lapped with the Vaca­tion Bible School at my local Pres­by­ter­ian church. This is one small church in one small town and yet their VBS atten­dance was not that much less than the elementary/middle-school youth pro­gram at PhYM ses­sions. It was sober­ing to real­ize just how small we Friends some­times are.

Quaker Folkways and Being Patterns on the Interwebs

October 25, 2013
· Martin Kelley

Last Sun­day I have a pre­sen­ta­tion to Had­don­field (N.J.) Meeting’s adult First-day school class about “Shar­ing the Good News with Social Media.” As I pre­pared I found I was less and less inter­est­ed in the tech­niques of Face­book, etc., than I was in how out­reach has his­tor­i­cal­ly worked for Friends.

For an ear­ly, short, peri­od Quak­ers were so in-your-face and noto­ri­ous that they could draw a crowd just by walk­ing a few miles up the road to the next town. More recent­ly, we’ve attract­ed new­com­ers as much by the exam­ple of our lives than by any out­reach cam­paign. When I talk to adult new­com­ers, they often cite some Quak­er exam­ple in their lives – a favorite teacher or delight­ful­ly eccen­tric aunt.

Peo­ple can sense when there’s some­thing of greater life in the way we approach our work, friend­ships, and fam­i­lies. Let me be the first in line to say I’m hor­ri­bly imper­fect. But there are Quak­er tech­niques and val­ues and folk­ways that are guides to gen­uine­ly good ways to live in the world. There’s noth­ing exclu­sive­ly Quak­er about them (indeed, most come from care­ful read­ing of the Gospels and Paul’s let­ters), but they are tools our reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty has empha­sized and into which we’ve helped each oth­er live more fully.

In the last fif­teen years, the ways Friends are known has under­gone a rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion. The Inter­net has made us incred­i­bly easy to find and research. This is a mixed bless­ing as it means oth­ers are defin­ing who we are. Care­ful cor­po­rate dis­cern­ment con­duct­ed through long-developed tech­niques of Quak­er process are no match for the “edit” but­ton in Wikipedia or some com­mer­cial site with good page rank.

That said, I think peo­ple still are dis­cov­er­ing Friends through per­son­al exam­ples. George Fox told us to be pat­terns and exam­ples in the world and to answer that of God in every­one. A lot of our exam­pling and answer­ing today is going to be on the thread­ed com­ments of Face­book and Twit­ter. What will they find? Do we use Face­book like every­one else, trolling, spam­ming, engag­ing in flame wars, focus­ing on our­selves? Or do Quak­er folk­ways still apply. Here are some ques­tions that I reg­u­lar­ly wres­tle with:

  • When I use social media, am I being open, pub­lic, and transparent?
  • Am I care­ful to share that which is good and eter­nal rather than tit­il­lat­ing for its own sake?
  • Do I remem­ber that the Good News is sim­ply some­thing we bor­row to share and that the Inward Christ needs to do the final deliv­ery into hearts?
  • Do I pray for those I dis­agree with? Do I prac­tice hold­ing my tongue when my moti­va­tion is anger or jealousy?

What strug­gles do oth­ers face? What might be our online folkways?

Outreach as Retention

April 9, 2012
· Martin Kelley

From Cal­lid Keefe-Perry, a vlog entry on the appar­ent dis­crep­ancy between what Friends think they want to be doing (out­reach) ver­sus what they think makes for a healthy meet­ing (deep wor­ship), as indi­cat­ed by a just-released sur­vey from Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence, the umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion for many of North Amer­i­ca’s Lib­er­al Friends.


Cal­lid says:

there’s a dis­con­nect between deep wor­ship as a mark of health, and out­reach as the most impor­tant thing to do. We try as peo­ple to make things hap­pen that are beyond our con­trol. If we real­ly attend­ed to deep wor­ship, if we attend­ed to root­ing our com­mu­nies in a sense of dis­ci­ple­ship and dis­ci­pline, then out­reach and care for com­mu­ni­ty, and lead­ing by exam­ple would come from that. Those things are fruits; their root is liv­ing in the pres­ence, liv­ing in gospel order. I’m con­cerned that in the hus­tle and bus­tle of out­reach and mak­ing things work we might miss that still small voice. [Loose tran­script, light­ly edited]

There is much we can do to pro­mote com­mu­ni­ty aware­ness of Friends (aka “out­reach”), but I sus­pect the great­est effect of our efforts is inter­nal – rais­ing our own con­scious­ness about how to be vis­i­ble and wel­com­ing. Friends are always get­ting free pub­lic­i­ty (just this morn­ing I fin­ished Jef­frey Eugenides’s The Mar­riage Plot, whose final pages are prac­ti­cal­ly an ad for our reli­gious soci­ety, and there’s the seeker-producing mill of the Belief-o-Matic Quiz). What if vis­i­bil­i­ty isn’t our biggest prob­lem? Cal­lid’s post reminds me of some­thing that Robin Mohr said when I inter­viewed her “Eight Ques­tions on Con­ver­gent Friends” for Friends Jour­nal:

Though it may be dif­fer­ent in oth­er places, San Fran­cis­co always had peo­ple vis­it­ing; there was no short­age of new vis­i­tors. The key was get­ting them to come back… I don’t think the Con­ver­gent Friends move­ment is nec­es­sar­i­ly going to solve our out­reach issues, but it can absolute­ly change the reten­tion rate.

What if we thought of out­reach as a reten­tion issue? How would it relate to the “deep wor­ship” the survey-takers lift­ed up?

Communities vs Religious Societies

June 15, 2010
· Martin Kelley

Over on Tape Flags and First Thoughts, Su Penn has a great post called “Still Think­ing About My Quak­er Meet­ing & Me.” She writes about a process of self-identity that her meet­ing recent­ly went through it and the dif­fi­cul­ties she had with the process.

communitysocietyI won­dered whether this dif­fi­cul­ty has become one of our modern-day stages of devel­op­ing in the min­istry. Both Samuel Bow­nas (read/buy) and Howard Brin­ton (buy) iden­ti­fied typ­i­cal stages that Friends grow­ing in the min­istry typ­i­cal­ly go through. Not every­one expe­ri­ences Su’s rift between their meet­ing’s iden­ti­ty and a desire for a God-grounded meet­ing com­mu­ni­ty, but enough of us have that I don’t think it’s the foibles of par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­u­als or month­ly meet­ings. Let me tease out one piece: that of indi­vid­ual and group iden­ti­ties. Much of the dis­cus­sion in the com­ments of Su’s post have swirled around rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent con­cep­tions of this. 

Many mod­ern Friends have become pret­ty strict indi­vid­u­al­ists. We spend a lot of time talk­ing about “com­mu­ni­ty” but we aren’t prac­tic­ing it in the way that Friends have under­stood it – as a “reli­gious soci­ety.” The indi­vid­u­al­ism of our age sees it as rude to state a vision of Friends that leaves out any of our mem­bers – even the most het­ero­dox. We are only as unit­ed as our most far-flung believ­er (and every decade the sweep gets larg­er). The myth of our age is that all reli­gious expe­ri­ences are equal, both with­in and out­side of par­tic­u­lar reli­gious soci­eties, and that it’s intol­er­ant to think of dif­fer­ences as any­thing more than language.

This is why I cast Su’s issues as being those of a min­is­ter. There has always been the need for some­one to call us back to the faith. Con­trary to modern-day pop­u­lar opin­ion, this can be done with great love. It is in fact great love (Quak­er Jane) to share the good news of the directly-accessible lov­ing Christ, who loves us so much He wants to show us the way to right­eous liv­ing. This Quak­er idea of right­eous­ness has noth­ing to do with who you sleep with, the gas mileage of your car or even the “cor­rect­ness” of your the­ol­o­gy. Jesus boiled faith­ful­ness down into two com­mands: love God with all your might (how­ev­er much that might be) and love your neigh­bor as yourself.

A “reli­gious soci­ety” is not just a “com­mu­ni­ty.” As a reli­gious soci­ety we are called to have a vision that is stronger and bold­er than the lan­guage or under­stand­ing of indi­vid­ual mem­bers. We are not a per­fect com­mu­ni­ty, but we can be made more per­fect if we return to God to the full­ness we’ve been giv­en. That is why we’ve come togeth­er into a reli­gious society.

“What makes us Friends?” Just fol­low­ing the mod­ern tes­ti­monies does­n’t put us very square­ly in the Friends tra­di­tion – SPICE is just a recipe for respect­ful liv­ing. “What makes us Friends?” Just set­ting the stop­watch to an hour and sit­ting qui­et­ly does­n’t do it – a wor­ship style is a con­tain­er at best and false idol at worst. “How do we love God?” “How do we love our neigh­bor?” “What makes us Friends?” These are the ques­tions of min­istry. These are the build­ing blocks of outreach.

I’ve seen nascent min­is­ters (“infant min­is­ters” in the phras­ing of Samual Bow­nas) start ask­ing these ques­tions, flare up on inspired blog posts and then tail­dive as they meet up with the cold-water real­i­ty of a local meet­ing that is unsup­port­ive or inat­ten­tive. Many of them have left our reli­gious soci­ety. How do we sup­port them? How do we keep them? Our answers will deter­mine whether our meet­ing are reli­gious soci­eties or communities.

New Monastics & Convergent Friends update

April 28, 2010
· Martin Kelley

blankMy work­shop part­ner Wess Daniels just post­ed an update about the upcom­ing work­shop at Pen­dle Hill. Here’s the start. Click through to the full post to get a taste of what we’re preparing.

Mar­tin Kel­ley and I will be
lead­ing a
week­end retreat at Pen­dle Hill in just a cou­ple weeks (May 14 – 16)
and I’m start­ing to get real­ly excit­ed about it! Mar­tin and I have been
col­lab­o­rat­ing a lot togeth­er over the past few months in prepa­ra­tion for
this week­end and I want­ed to share a lit­tle more of what we have
planned for those of you who are inter­est­ed in com­ing (or still on the
fence). Dur­ing the week­end we will be encour­ag­ing con­ver­sa­tions around
build­ing com­mu­ni­ties, con­ver­gent Friends and how this looks in our local
meet­ings. I want­ed to give the descrip­tion of the week­end, some of the
queries we’ll be touch­ing on, and the out­line for the week­end. And of
course, I want to invite all of you inter­est­ed par­ties to join us!

Read the full post on Wess’s blog