Quaker Ministry
November 21, 2017 § 3 Comments
Brian Drayton’s blog Amor Vincat is one of the best Quaker blogs I know of. I find it consistently thoughtful, edifying, and most important, Spirit-led. His latest post offers a wonderful resource and raises important questions about our meetings’ nurture of vocal ministry. The post is Library: Harvey “Our Quaker ministry since the cessation of recording”.
Harvey’s little essay was written in the mid-1940s, some twenty years after London Yearly Meeting had laid down the practice of recording ministers. Harvey had approved of the laying down, even though he himself had been recorded. In this article he looks back to consider what had been lost and gained in the intervening decades.
Harvey’s main concern is my own, as well. Though the yearly meeting’s book of discipline had strongly encouraged meetings to support vocal ministry and especially newly rising ministers, both within the meeting and through minutes of travel and service outside the meeting, very few meetings knew this injunction even existed, let alone taken responsibility for such nurture. That is, just because the practice of recording had been discontinued, the need for nurturing Quaker ministry remained, and most meetings were not meeting that need.
New York Yearly Meeting still does record gifts in ministry, though many Friends and many meetings in the yearly meeting don’t like it. I have written an “apology” for the practice (On Recording Gifts in Ministry) and feel very strongly that, even if a meeting would never record the gifts of someone in their meeting, they should be paying attention to those who speak in meeting often. Worship and ministry committees should offer their ministers support and yes, oversight. They should nurture the meeting’s vocal ministry with programs that discuss the conventions governing our practice of ministry and its history. Meetings should provide opportunities for its regular speakers to consider whether they have a calling to ministry and be prepared to offer support, if only through continued meetings for mutual sharing. And meetings should provide opportunities for all members and attenders to share their own experience and practice regarding vocal ministry.
Vocal ministry is one of the most important aspects of the Quaker way and a key element in our outreach. Newcomers to our meetings have only the quality of our silence, the quality of our vocal ministry, and the quality of our fellowship by which to feel inspired to make us their religious home. Weak vocal ministry, which is all too common in our meetings I fear, not only fails to inspire the deeply yearning souls who come to us, but sets a low bar for expectations of everyone, newcomers and oldtimers alike.
Through the Flaming Sword 
Steven,
I have tried emailing you at this blog and from another email address to no avail. I thought I would leave a message here in the comments. I always enjoy reading your posts and would like to invite you to participate in a PYM gathering on Ministry & Care in Feb. 2018, if you are willing and available. What is the best way to reach you?
Thank you for sharing this, Steven. It touches a place of deep grief in me. Many North American Friends’ meetings today many not share enough common understandings to be able to join in the encouragement of sound ministry, because any one Friend’s message is likely to offend multiple others present. Why? Perhaps not so much because of our theological diversity as because we’re such self-willed people. Getting a meeting of unsurrendered egos to affirm support for a minister who preached the need to die to ego (expressed by Jesus in various ways in the various gospels) would be like asking livestock to pay tithes to the butcher.
Don’t forget the whole elder thing that is integral to this dynamic. In NYYM, the organizational section whose existence is justified by The Yearly Meeting of Ministers and Elders is no longer even close to such a body. There was similarly regional meetings for this oversight and religious discipline. These Meetings were exclusive bodies. Or, ministers have been running wild for quite awhile. It’s been enough generations that a memory of what an elder is and how to name the same is gone; all but unimaginable. The $64 question is when did greed-as-go[]d CapitalismFail succeed in mentoring this in the wider society such that NYYM was also clear to forget?
!END
sNAILmALEnotHAIL …but pace’n myself
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCeDkezgoyyZAlN7nW1tlfeA
life is for learning so all my failures must mean that I’m wicked smart
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