Tag Archives ⇒ revelation

Steven Davison: Prophecy and Continuing Revelation

September 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Where does new min­istry come from?

It is through prophe­cy, through con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion, that the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends moves for­ward into God’s next work for us. And we very often get our first inkling of that new truth from someone’s vocal min­istry, in a meet­ing for wor­ship, or a meet­ing for wor­ship with atten­tion to the life of the meet­ing, or in a con­sul­ta­tion or Tri­en­ni­al or world gath­er­ing or FGC Gathering,

The Impor­tance of Vocal Min­istry: Prophe­cy and Con­tin­u­ing Revelation

Spirit-led Structures for Quaker Meetings

September 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son urges us to rethink annover-reliance on committees:

This dynam­ic tends to quench the spir­it behind new lead­ings. All of our tes­ti­monies, and con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion in gen­er­al, start out as new — that is, prophet­ic; that is, Spirit-led — con­cerns and lead­ings. They deserve Spirit-led atten­tion and elder­ship, not a buck­et of cold water. 

http://​www​.nyym​.org/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​s​p​i​r​i​t​-​l​e​d​-​s​t​r​u​c​t​u​r​e​s​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​m​e​e​t​i​ngs

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.


Selling Quakerism - Friends Journal

Sell­ing Quak­erism — Friends Journal 

The Mis­sion – Mar­ket Ten­sion Inher­ent in Quak­er Values

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Trust, direct revelation and church teachings

March 15, 2011
· Martin Kelley

A response to  a post by Jess East­er on Quak­erQuak­er, “My Quak­er Rela­tion­ship with Jesus”:

It’s not anti-Christian to say you have doubts about your rela­tion­ship with Jesus. It’s per­fect­ly human. Most of us would get bogged down in the intel­lec­tu­al­ism if we tried to map out a pre­cise God/Christ rela­tion­ship. One thing I’ve always liked about Friends is our rad­i­cal hon­esty in this regards. A priest in a strict­ly ortho­dox litur­gi­cal tra­di­tion is expect­ed to preach on top­ics on which they have no direct divine expe­ri­ence and to base their words on church teach­ings. When a Friend ris­es in min­istry they are expect­ed to be speak from a moment of direct revelation.

We also have church teach­ings of course. Robert Bar­clay is our go-to guy on many the­o­log­i­cal mat­ters, and cer­tain jour­nals have become all-but-canonized on the way we under­stand our­selves and our tra­di­tion. It’s just that this second-hand knowl­edge needs to be pre­sent­ed as such and kept out of the actu­al wor­ship time. As my Quak­er jour­ney has pro­gressed, I’ve direct­ly expe­ri­enced more and more open­ings that con­firm the tenets of tra­di­tion­al Quak­er Chris­tian­i­ty. That’s built my trust.

I’m now will­ing to give the ben­e­fit of the doubt to beliefs that I haven’t myself expe­ri­enced. If some­one like William Penn says he’s had a direct rev­e­la­tion about a par­tic­u­lar issue, I’ll trust his account. I know that in those cas­es where we had sim­i­lar open­ings, our spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences have matched. I won’t min­is­ter about what he’s said. I won’t get defen­sive about a point of doc­trine. I’ll just let myself open to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that even the more intel­lec­tu­al­ly out­landish parts of ortho­dox Chris­t­ian doc­trine just might be true.

blankIt’s tempt­ing to go to “holy” sites to expect some spe­cial rev­e­la­tion. In her post, Jess reports feel­ing a sense of feel­ing “bored and indif­fer­ent” when vis­it­ing the West­ern Wall and the Gar­den of Geth­se­mane. I think this is per­fect­ly nor­mal. There’s the sto­ry of the Quak­er min­is­ter trav­el­ing through the Amer­i­can colonies with a local Friend as guide. They come to a cross­roads and the local Friend points to tree stump and proud­ly pro­claims that George Fox him­self tied his horse to that tree when it was alive. The trav­el­ing min­is­ter dis­mounts his horse and walks to the stump. He stands there silent­ly for awhile and walks back to his trav­el­ing com­pan­ion with a sober look. The local is excit­ed and asks him what he saw. The trav­el­ing min­is­ter replied: I looked into the face of idolatry.

The Holy Spir­it is not con­fined or enshrined in any place – be it the West­ern Wall, the gild­ed steepled church or the tree George Fox sat under. Jesus’ death tore the Tem­ple shroud in two and His spir­it is with us always, even when it’s hard to feel or see. I think the bore­dom we expe­ri­ence in “holy” sites or with “holy” peo­ple is often  a teach­ing gift – a guid­ance to look else­where for Spir­i­tu­al truth.