Tag Archives ⇒ starting

QuakerQuaker migration starting soon, can you help?

June 8, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Quak­erQuak­er fans, it’s time to start the migra­tion of Quak­erQuak­er to a new online plat­form. It start­ed on Ning in almost 15 years ago. That’s for­ev­er in inter­net years!

The first stage will be archiv­ing the con­ver­sa­tions cur­rent­ly on Quak­erQuak­er. There are many year’s worth of great blog posts and invalu­able dis­cus­sion threads. A recent tool built to exam­ine the source mate­r­i­al for all the new AI chat bots found that Quak­erQuak­er is the inter­net’s sec­ond largest online Quak­er archive. I want to try to keep that — not for the bots, but for Friends and seek­ers want­i­ng to learn about Quakerism.

I will need your help. Dona­tions are down this year. And there are new costs if we are to keep this work going: one-time costs for archiv­ing apps and dis­cus­sion plat­forms, and new ongo­ing bills for get­ting us all con­nect­ed by email again.

Back when Quak­erQuak­er start­ed I wrote a bit of a mis­sion state­ment. I’ll leave it here for you to re-read. If you think this work con­tin­ues to be impor­tant, please help. You can do so here: https://​www​.pay​pal​.com/​d​o​n​a​t​e​/​?​h​o​s​t​e​d​_​b​u​t​t​o​n​_​i​d​=​R​W​9​6​R​E​8​6​Y​E​FJA

Quak­erism is an expe­ri­en­tial reli­gion: we believe we should “let our lives speak” and we stay away from creeds and doc­tri­nal state­ments. The best way to learn what Quak­ers believe is through lis­ten­ing in on our conversations.

In the last few years, dozens of Quak­ers have begun shar­ing sto­ries, frus­tra­tions, hopes and dreams for our reli­gious soci­ety through blogs. The con­ver­sa­tions have been amaz­ing. There’s a pal­pa­ble sense of renew­al and excite­ment. Quak­erQuak­er is a dai­ly index to that conversation.

Evangelistic malpractice

February 8, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er on start­ing fresh in a cor­ner of the Quak­er world:

I was grate­ful that the “who” ques­tion was there — tes­ti­fy­ing that we are not cen­tered on our­selves, duti­ful­ly inven­to­ry­ing our Quak­er mark­ers. For me, evan­ge­lism (pay­ing urgent atten­tion to the “who”) puts all those oth­er tes­ti­monies in per­spec­tive. All those tes­ti­monies are “signs and won­ders,” qual­i­ties of the Light by which we as the Body of Christ par­tic­i­pate in mak­ing Jesus visible. 

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​9​/​0​2​/​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​t​i​c​-​m​a​l​p​r​a​c​t​i​c​e​.​h​tml

Nuturing ministers: Case studies

December 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Bri­an Dray­ton is start­ing a new series of his­tor­i­cal exam­ples of Quak­ers giv­ing min­is­te­r­i­al advice and training:

As I am work­ing on a revi­sion of my book on the Quak­er min­istry, I am revis­it­ing his­tor­i­cal accounts of times when a min­is­ter was giv­en guid­ance (elder­ing, over­sight, nur­ture, dis­ci­pline). As part of that work, I will from time to time post “case stud­ies” on this blog. 

Nutur­ing min­is­ters: Case stud­ies, Intro

2019 FGC Gathering workshops announced

December 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

It’s that time of year: FGC’s announced the work­shop list­ings for its annu­al Gath­er­ing, start­ing at the end of June at Grin­nell Col­lege in Iowa.

There are 48 work­shops to choose from this year, which is about the nor­mal num­ber for recent years. I used Archive​.org to look back and the biggest year I could dig up was 2006, when 73 work­shops were offered. Gath­er­ing atten­dance has dropped since then but I also sus­pect 73 selec­tions were a bit ambi­tious. The cur­rent nor­mal is more suit­ed to the Gath­er­ing size. There are lots of famil­iar work­shop lead­ers. Are there any that stand out for you? Fell free to drop rec­om­men­da­tions (or pro­mote your own work­shop if you’re doing one!) in the com­ment section.

https://​www​.fgc​quak​er​.org/​c​o​n​n​e​c​t​/​g​a​t​h​e​r​i​n​g​/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​s​-​a​n​d​-​e​v​e​n​t​s​/​w​o​r​k​s​h​ops

Origins of the Check-In (Quakers)

October 31, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Over on Medi­um, con­sul­tant Jim Ral­ley looks to Quak­ers for the ori­gins of the facil­i­ta­tor’s check-in:

The ‘check-in’ is a fun­da­men­tal ele­ment in the reper­toire of a facil­i­ta­tor. There’s no bet­ter way to start a ses­sion and get every­one present, and there’s no faster way to dis­cov­er what’s going on under the sur­face of a group. It’s such a sim­ple an effec­tive process tool that I fig­ured it must have a rich and well-documented his­to­ry. But it’s proved quite tricky to research, part­ly because its name is shared with the hotel and air­line indus­tries, but part­ly also, I sus­pect, because of its simplicity.

Where to start? With such a basic human process, the line through his­to­ry will sure­ly be tan­gled and con­fused. But, for the sake of start­ing some­where, I’ll start with the Quakers. 

I’ve left a com­ment on the post with miss­ing links. I’ll leave a ver­sion of it here. Reg­u­lar read­ers will pre­dict that I’ll start with Rachel Davis DuBois, the New Jersey-born Friend who put togeth­er racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion groups in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry. She lat­er turned some of the process into “Dia­logue Groups” in the mid-1960s and trav­eled the U.S. teach­ing them; these evolved into mod­ern Quak­er wor­ship shar­ing and clear­ness com­mit­tees.

Those late-60s process­es were picked up by the younger Friends, who (no sur­prise) were also into anti­war activism and com­mu­ni­tar­i­an pol­i­tics. They were cod­i­fied and sec­u­lar­ized by the Move­ment for a New Soci­ety, which start­ed in Philadel­phia in the ear­ly 70s but had com­mu­ni­ties all over the West­ern world. Much of their work was focused on train­ing peo­ple in their style of group process and a lot of our facil­i­ta­tor tools these days are dis­sem­i­nat­ed MNS tools. Many MNS’ers were involved with Quak­ers and many more fil­tered back into the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends in lat­er years.

A lot of this rel­a­tive­ly recent his­to­ry has been for­got­ten. Many Quak­ers will tell you these things all date from the very start of the Friends move­ment. There’s def­i­nite­ly through-lines and echos and inspi­ra­tions through our his­to­ry but I’d love to see us appre­ci­ate Rachel Davis DuBois and the peo­ple who made some very use­ful adap­ta­tions that have helped Quak­ers con­tin­ue to evolve and (almost) thrive.

What do Quaker believe anyway?

July 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Answer quick­ly: what are three things Quak­ers believe? Unless you’ve prac­ticed an answer to this ques­tion, chances are you’ll end up with a lot of umm’s and ahh’s and sen­tences so built up with dis­claimers that your lis­ten­er has to start sen­tence dia­gram­ming just to fig­ure out if you actu­al­ly answered. Arthur Larrabee got frus­trat­ed by the seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble task for explain­ing mod­ern Quak­er beliefs and decid­ed to do some­thing about it:

About 9 years ago I began to give voice to a life­long frus­tra­tion of mine. The frus­tra­tion was that I can­not answer the ques­tion “What do Quak­ers believe?” I would always answer the ques­tions some­what defen­sive­ly. I would say, “it’s kind of hard to know what Quak­ers believe, but let me tell you what I believe.” Or I would say, “well, it’s hard to know what Quak­ers believe today but let me tell you what Quak­ers believed at the begin­ning.” Or I would say what I thought Quak­ers believed and I would hope that no one else was lis­ten­ing because I did not want to be overcalled.

I think Arthur does a pret­ty good job tack­ling a very tough task. He bare­ly even men­tions Howard Brin­ton’s “SPICES.”

9 Core Quak­er Beliefs

Cast out by the Quakers, Abington’s abolitionist dwarf finally has his day

April 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A nice sto­ry on the belat­ed recog­ni­tion being giv­en abo­li­tion­ist stal­wart and polit­i­cal prankster Ben­jamin Lay up at Abing­ton Meet­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia (my first meeting!):

About 12 years ago, the Abing­ton meet­ing­house care­tak­er, Dave Wer­mel­ing, found an old sketch of Lay in a box. A short biog­ra­phy on worn brown paper was glued to back of the draw­ing. “I thought, ‘Who is this, and how can you not be talk­ing about him?’” Wer­mel­ing recalled.

I’ve long admired the sto­ry of Ben­jamin Lay. I’m not sure that the gen­er­al pub­lic read­ing these arti­cles is quite real­iz­ing that Quak­er dis­own­ment wasn’t a full shun­ning. As far as I know he con­tin­ued to be influ­en­tial with Quak­ers, for his pas­sion if not his strat­e­gy. Lay went far, far ahead of the Quak­ers of the time. His stunts were awe­some, but drench­ing year­ly meet­ing atten­ders with pig blood and pub­lish­ing books with­out per­mis­sion was going to get you unin­vit­ed from for­mal deci­sion mak­ing meetings.

I would very much hope that if any of us mod­erns were trans­port­ed back to that era, we would find the con­di­tions of human bondage so out­ra­geous that we would all go full Ben­jamin Lay: dis­rupt meet­ings, shat­ter norms, get dis­owned by our reli­gious bod­ies. If you read the his­to­ry of eighteen-century Quak­er activism in the Philadel­phia area you’ll see there were many tracts start­ing in the ear­li­est years of the Quak­er colonies. There were lots of Quak­ers who felt slav­ery was moral­ly wrong. But few felt the empow­er­ment to break from social con­ven­tions the way Lay did. But that’s kind of the nature of prophe­cy. I would be sus­pi­cious of any can­di­date for prophet that is liked by the admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies of their time. What kind of com­pla­cen­cy are we demon­strat­ing by our inac­tions today?

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​b​e​n​j​a​m​i​n​-​l​a​y​-​d​w​a​r​f​-​a​b​o​l​i​t​i​o​n​i​s​t​-​s​l​a​v​e​r​y​-​a​b​i​n​g​t​o​n​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​-​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​-​2​0​1​8​0​4​1​9​.​h​t​m​l​?​m​o​b​i​=​t​rue