Tag Archives ⇒ today

Retro Quaker Vocal Ministry Flowchart

June 16, 2022
· Martin Kelley
“Speaking into the Silence” from the August 1991 Friends Journal.
“Speak­ing into the Silence” from the August 1991 Friends Journal.

Peo­ple have been com­ment­ing a lot on this chart Friends Jour­nal shared on social media last week. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the August 1991 issue, what I love most about it is its 1990s-era flow­chart design. What would it be today — some punchy info­graph­ic per­haps? We dove into the archives because this mon­th’s issue is all about Quak­er vocal min­istry and at least two of the fea­ture arti­cles men­tion these kinds of charts.

From Paul Buck­ley:

There is a fre­quent­ly repro­duced dia­gram that graph­i­cal­ly guides poten­tial speak­ers through a series of ques­tions they are to con­sid­er when they feel an urge to rise and speak. These exam­ine whether a poten­tial mes­sage is divine­ly inspired; whether it is intend­ed for the speak­er alone or for oth­ers present; and whether this is the right time and place to deliv­er it. These resources are all use­ful, but they only address one half of the act of vocal min­istry: one that is, by far, the small­er and per­haps less impor­tant por­tion. The oth­er part is the min­istry of lis­ten­ing, and we are all called to be lis­ten­ing ministers.

From Edna Whit­ti­er:

Since the begin­ning of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, writ­ten advices have guid­ed Friends. Year­ly meet­ings’ faith and prac­tice books, Pen­dle Hill pam­phlets on vocal min­istry, and indi­vid­ual month­ly meet­ings’ “Wel­come to Quak­er Wor­ship” hand­outs have guide­lines for speak­ing or not speak­ing in meet­ing for wor­ship. In 2019, Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence even pub­lished a poster of a cir­cle flow chart with guide­lines for deliv­er­ing a mes­sage dur­ing worship.

Brent Bill has sub­se­quent­ly shared the graph­ic Whit­ti­er men­tions and yes, it is very 2020’s info­graph­i­cal in design!

But I link to the arti­cles because these kinds of when-to-speak kind of charts can always become prob­lem­at­ic. As Bet­sy Caz­den replied on Twit­ter: “The peo­ple who need it least will spend the full hour obsess­ing about the flow-chart and will nev­er speak. The peo­ple who need it most nev­er will.” Just a few weeks ago I was sit­ting on a bench in Crop­well (N.J.) Meet­ing test­ing and retest­ing my moti­va­tions and lead­ings to rise and give min­istry. I gave a final breath to stand up when I heard the “good morn­ing Friends” fol­lowed by the sounds of hands slap­ping on hands in rise-of-meeting hand­shakes. Over the years I have learned not spend my whole hour obsess­ing but had not real­ized this meet­ing’s wor­ship was only 45 minutes!

A more modern commission

March 7, 2019
· Martin Kelley

As an East Coast unpro­grammed Friend, Quak­er mis­sion work is still a bit exot­ic. We’re used to read­ing of well-meaning nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Friends whose atti­tudes shock us today. But here’s a sto­ry of some Mid­west mis­sion work with the Shawnee in the 1970s and 80s.

Their “mis­sion” work con­sists of farm­ing, teach­ing, music and wood­work­ing and lan­guage trans­lat­ing, lots of trans­port­ing chil­dren and teens. It also involves preach­ing each week, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in funer­als, wed­dings, and oth­er tra­di­tion­al pas­toral duties, all aimed at intro­duc­ing peo­ple to Jesus.

Their “mis­sion” work con­sists of farm­ing, teach­ing, music and wood­work­ing and lan­guage trans­lat­ing, lots of trans­port­ing chil­dren and teens. It also involves preach­ing each week, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in funer­als, wed­dings, and oth­er tra­di­tion­al pas­toral duties, all aimed at intro­duc­ing peo­ple to Jesus. 

http://​www​.lib​er​al​first​.com/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​o​u​r​-​g​r​e​a​t​-​c​o​m​m​i​s​s​ion

Kindertransport survivors call for routes to sanctuary for child refugees

November 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

At an 80th anniver­sary of the UK kinder­trans­port pro­gram (which we read about a few days ago), sur­vivors and Friends call for wider sup­port for today’s refugees and asy­lum seekers:

Helen Drew­ery, Head of Wit­ness and Wor­ship for Quak­ers in Britain, wel­com­ing all to Friends House, said, “We are pleased to be host­ing an event which hon­ours all those – includ­ing Quak­ers who put the Kinder­trans­port into effect. Their endeav­ours are being echoed today by near­ly 100 Quak­er meet­ings across Britain which have iden­ti­fied them­selves as Sanc­tu­ary Meet­ings and are sup­port­ing peo­ple who have fled from dan­ger in their home coun­tries. We are glad that these Meet­ings and the peo­ple they are sup­port­ing are rep­re­sent­ed at today’s event. We join them in press­ing for more safe passages.” 

http://​www​.ekkle​sia​.co​.uk/​n​o​d​e​/​2​7​200

Ministers, elders, and overseers

October 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Jnana Hod­son, a list­ing of three types of offices in tra­di­tion­al Quak­er meetings:

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, Quak­er meet­ings rec­og­nized and nur­tured indi­vid­u­als who had spir­i­tu­al gifts as min­is­ters, elders, or over­seers. These roles could be filled by men or women, and their ser­vice extend­ed over the entire congregation. 

Many Friends have dropped the term “over­seers” in recent years, out of con­cern for how the word is so asso­ci­at­ed with slav­ery. As I under­stand it, ear­ly Friends’ use of the word came from its use as an Eng­lish trans­la­tion for Episko­pos in the New Tes­ta­ment. They con­sid­ered them­selves to be re-establishing ear­ly Chris­t­ian mod­els. For exam­ple, Acts 20:28:

Take heed there­fore unto your­selves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you over­seers, to feed the church of God, which he hath pur­chased with his own blood. 

Bible trans­la­tions that were geared toward a Catholic audi­ence tend­ed to stick to Latinized words and went with “bish­op” over “over­seer.” Quak­ers wor­ried about the con­no­ta­tion of the word could pro­pose that we just start nam­ing bish­ops. It’s not as nut­ty as it might seem, as there are anabap­tist church­es who use the term to talk about roles with­in indi­vid­ual church­es. Of course, some­times name changes also mask changes in the­ol­o­gy and I noticed that some of the more lib­er­al Quak­er meet­ings dropped “over­seer” with a speed which they are not oth­er­wise known for. Friends today are a lot more indi­vid­u­al­is­tic than Friends were when our insti­tu­tions were set up — there are many good rea­sons for this in our his­to­ries. But I do hope we’re con­tin­u­ing to find ade­quate ways to notice and care for our members.
 
We need all three – and more

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

Isaac Smith: Good soil

August 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

An obser­va­tion on the soil of God’s work — us:

For many of us, our predica­ment today seems most like the soil with the thorns: We want to draw clos­er to God and walk in God’s ways, but there is so much bad news, so many oblig­a­tions, so many dis­trac­tions. We can be led astray, some­times with­out even know­ing it. The founder of our move­ment, George Fox, once said that “what­ev­er ye are addict­ed to, the Tempter will come in that thing; and when he can trou­ble you, then he gets advan­tage over you, and then ye are gone.” We can be addict­ed to many things: not just, say, alco­hol or gam­bling, but ideas, both about the world and about ourselves. 

Alone, none of us can do much to change the world. But we can allow our­selves to be instru­ments of peace, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, love. It’s easy to get stuck and tempt­ing in those times to get defen­sive or look toward oth­ers. I’ve found the old Quak­er take on “The Tempter” to be per­son­al­ly very use­ful. I’ve learned to ques­tion and go inward when­ev­er I feel too much pride in some­thing or find myself part of a group that seems self-satisfied with its work. 
Good soil

Creeds and stories

August 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith was going to write some­thing about creeds:

I had been kick­ing around writ­ing some­thing on the uses and abus­es of creeds in the Quak­er tra­di­tion, but then I dis­cov­ered that Ben Wood had writ­ten a fair­ly defin­i­tive ver­sion of that essay already. So read that instead.

Ben’s 2016 piece on Quak­ers and creeds is def­i­nite­ly worth a read. I checked my records and I must have missed it at the time, so I’ll share it now. He goes deep into the kinds of creeds that Penn and Bar­clay gave in their writ­ings but also what the ear­li­er Chris­t­ian creed-makers were com­ing from. He also comes to today. Here’s a taste:

we can­not be creed-makers before we are story-preservers and story-tellers. We can­not hope to resolve dif­fer­ences unless and until we dig down into our own Quak­er sto­ry; unless we come to terms with its pow­er and impli­ca­tions. At least part of our sense of spir­i­tu­al malaise is a ret­i­cence to engage with the depth of the Quak­er tale. Part­ly that ret­i­cence is about a lack of teach­ing min­istry among Friends. We haven’t giv­en each oth­er the tools to become skill­ful read­ers of our own nar­ra­tive. We have assumed that peo­ple can just ‘pick this stuff up’ through a mys­te­ri­ous process of osmo­sis. This has led to a frag­men­ta­tion of under­stand­ing about the mean­ing and impli­ca­tions of Quak­er grammar.

In my world, talk of creeds has sprung up recent­ly fol­low­ing the Quak­er­S­peak video of Arthur Larrabee’s nine core prin­ci­ples of unpro­grammed Friends. His prin­ci­ples seem fair­ly descrip­tive of main­stream Lib­er­al Friends to me, but pre­dictably enough the video’s com­ments have peo­ple wor­ried about any for­mu­la­tion: “Espous­ing core beliefs — no mat­ter how well inten­tioned — risks intro­duc­ing a creed.” One of my pet the­o­ries is that the mid-century truce over the­ol­o­gy talk that helped Quak­er branch­es reunite (at least on the U.S. East Coast) has stopped working.

Quak­ers and Creeds

Jeff Kisling: Resist not evil today

August 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

When look­ing back to Nazi Ger­many in the 1930s are we so sure God Could not have found a way?

Hen­ry Cad­bury believed the Jew­ish peo­ple should have appealed to the Ger­man sense of jus­tice and nation­al con­science. Then those Ger­mans would have stood up for the Jew­ish peo­ple, and pre­vent­ed the Nazis from acquir­ing pow­er. The death camps would not have happened.

Many prob­a­bly think that is naive and could not have worked. But that is what non­vi­o­lence is about, con­nect­ing with those you are hop­ing to change. Lis­ten­ing deeply and being will­ing to change your­self. This is also what faith is about, believ­ing in the pres­ence of God today. Believ­ing that as you lis­ten close­ly you will be guid­ed by the Inner Light. Believ­ing some­how God will find a way.

There’s a fine line between ide­al­is­tic naiveté and real­is­tic sol­i­dar­i­ty. I’m still of the mind that Cad­bury should have har­bored more cyn­i­cism of what was hap­pen­ing as the Nazi Par­ty grew in Ger­many but I can see Jef­f’s point: in 1934, was the future we know inevitable?

Resist not evil today

Cor­rec­tion: I got my Jeffs mixed up in the orig­i­nal ver­sion of this post. This was writ­ten by Jeff Kisling.