Recording Gifts
July 6, 2019 § 5 Comments
My current yearly meeting (Philadelphia) stopped recording ministers one hundred years ago, in 1920. My previous yearly meeting (New York) still records gifts in ministry (the better way to understand it, I feel) because the 1955 reunion of its Orthodox and Hicksite yearly meetings brought in a number of programmed, pastoral meetings and the Orthodox yearly meeting’s practice of recording. But I think it’s safe to say that the vast majority of liberal Quaker meetings don’t record gifts and may even have a strong aversion to the practice, usually for reasons that, in my experience, misunderstand Quaker ministry and the meeting’s role in its discernment and support.
I’ve discussed this topic in a previous post that mostly raises questions and cites some resources, including an article I’ve written defending the practice. Here’s a link to that post. Here’s a link to that article. In this post, I want to offer a way to think about recording gifts that I hope speaks to Friends who aren’t comfortable with recording as generally understood.
We already record gifts in all our meetings. We write memorial minutes for deceased Friends. We just don’t necessarily think of memorial minutes as recording gifts or consider the implications of this practice for a richer engagement with those among us who have been called into service of the Spirit.
A good memorial minute records a Friend’s spiritual gifts. A weak memorial minute will even do so, but only by implication. By recounting all the things a Friend has contributed to her or his meetings and to society at large, we name the fruits of the spirit in her life—her ministries, if you will, though we may not call them that.
However, such a memorial minute is really just a secular obituary written by a religious community, in that it points only vaguely in the general direction of the deceased’s spiritual gifts and does not explicitly appreciate a signature insight of the Religious Society of Friends, that a spirit-led life bears fruits of all kinds, that the services we feel called to in life are ministries of divine origin, however we actually understand that to work.
In this way, weak memorial minutes resemble a lot of the witness minutes approved by our meetings: they might as well have been written by a secular social change nonprofit. They tend to use arguments from politics and the social sciences, rather than moral and religious ones. They almost never quote the Bible or even Quaker “saints”. Maybe they cite the modern liberal Quaker trope that there is that of God in everyone.
I am arguing for an approach to memorial minutes that is more faithful to our faith, that reflects our unique strengths as a religious society—that clearly and explicitly names gifts of the Spirit.
Then, as soon as we think of a dead Friend that way, why wouldn’t we think of her that way while she is still alive? At the very least, worship and ministry committees should begin recording gifts for its members all along, as their lives and their service in the meeting progresses, so that the committee is ready to assemble a meaningful memorial minute quickly upon their deaths.
But why would you stop there? Once you have “recorded” such gifts of living Friends, what could you do about it? How could you nurture those gifts and/or share them with the meeting? Just asking the questions internally as a committee would almost inevitably require you to become more engaged with the members you’re considering. For example, “We know you’re volunteering in a hospice once a month. Why are you doing that? Do you need any support when someone’s death affects you especially? What else are you doing? Do you think of this as a ministry, as Spirit-led? If so, why? If not, why not?” Etc.
If we already record spiritual gifts in our memorial minutes, if only unconsciously, without explicit religious attention or insight, why not use that practice for the living?
Through the Flaming Sword 
I agree with almost everything you’ve said, Howard. I don’t mean to say that I think all meetings should formally record all their members’ gifts in ministry, for many of the reasons you’ve cited. For another thing, the process would consume the energy of the meeting and its worship and ministry committee.
(On the other hand, meetings that find themselves led to record the gifts of some of their members should be free to, as is the case for some remnant Orthodox meetings in New York Yearly Meeting and New England Yearly Meeting. But even they should be rigorous in their process and careful with their treatment of recorded Friends while they retain their gifts.)
Though I wasn’t clear about this in my post, what I am arguing for is proactive attention to our members’ gifts and ministries. Yes, each of us has gifts of the spirit. Yes, these gifts vary among us. Yes, they can manifest in the moment rather than as a sustained force or gift in a Friend’s life.
But in most meetings I know of, our members’ gifts only receive real attention when we write their memorial minute, if then, or by nominating committee. Nominating committees are usually preoccupied with filling their positions and it’s not their charge to nurture a member’s gifts beyond offering them a chance to exercise them (which is really important).
I am arguing for a proactive culture of eldership in which someone is actively considering our members’ gifts and looking for ways to nurture them. To me, this is the very heart of what it means to be a member of a covenantal community, that we work together to deepen each other’s spiritual lives.
In my experience, very few meetings take active responsibility for their role as the channel for personal mutual spiritual enrichment. Some meetings are lucky when they have a member or two who are paying attention and occasionally offer something when they see the opportunity: Steve, I think you might find this book interesting. Steve, did you know that Pendle Hill is offering a weekend on “x” and that we have some funds to help you attend, if you need it—are you interested? Steve, we would like to have a religious education program about Alice Paul; would you be willing to do some research and facilitate something in, say, three months?
This is the kind of thing I’m envisioning.
Thanks for the clarification Steven. More intention and attention to our spiritual communities can only bring us all more in touch with the Light within.
Our meeting in Virginia has been on an enhanced egalitarian journey for ten years now. We have gradually cultivated an organic spiritual community that functions much like the primitive Quaker gatherings before George Fox and other London elders began centralizing control through the use of permanent elders, ministers, and hierarchical yearly and local meeting structures.
Our process to dismantle our structures has been slow by design, mainly because we have needed to change our culture as a spiritual community. We have been careful to use Quaker discernment processes with the whole meeting involved every step of the way. The changes have been numerous as we experimented with using ALL Friends at our meeting in shepherding each other in the way you describe in your clarification, rather than using a committee to do “eldering” (as we used to do). The same is true for pastoral care: we turned the care of Friends over to the whole meeting; making each of us responsible instead of a “care” committee. Several permanent committees are still functioning well such as “peace”, B&G, and Financial because they are dealing with discreet tasks that are not purely spiritual in nature – but it now seems odd to us to relegate actions of the heart such as caring for one another and spiritual support and encouragement for one another to committees. It feels too similar to relegating these to a pastor as churches and evangelical Friends often do. Our experiment with mature and organic egalitarianism has been very enlightening. We are now at the point of discerning whether or not to lay down three of our defunct committees: “Nominating”, “Ministry”, and “Care”.That discernment process has been underway for four months now. Those three committees have been essentially non-functioning for several years now – simply because they are not needed any more. Our whole spiritual community is handling all that these committees once did.
The above process and outcome has been so wonderful for our meeting spirituality. We are organically and naturally doing exactly what your clarification and your post outlines.
I just wanted to share with you this experiment that has been so spiritually meaningful to us.
This is another jewel of a contribution, Steve, to the general discussion among Friends about what needs to be changed about our mind-set and our ways if we as a society are to be relevant to the spiritual needs of today’s civilization and the souls caught up in it, and therefore, if our society is to be fit to survive.
In a posting of my own today (https://among.wordpress.com/2019/07/06/gimme-that-old-time-religion/ ) I draw attention to an old Quietist-Quaker phrase, “nothingness of self.” It occurs to me that if more Friends valued nothingness of self and tried to attain it and dwell in it, as Catherine Phillips’s mother claimed she did in 1754 and John Churchman a decade later, our memorial minutes might less celebrate the minister than the ministry, and we’d all be clearer that when we attempt to record a gift in ministry, we are honoring the ministry rather than the minister, so there is no compromise of our egalitarianism. Of course, if our meeting can no longer agree that there is a God, or that Christ, or the Holy Spirit, lives among us and speaks for God through us, then we can no longer agree on what ministry is, and the point is moot.
Recorded memorial minutes for deceased Friends are usually issued for ALL Friends in a meeting who have died. Although the recommended content of these minutes that you outline is commendable and of value, I have trouble likening these minutes to recorded “gifts” for selected Friends still living. Even if we did so for ALL living Friends we could inadvertently create a hierarchy of judging one another spiritually.
Most liberal Quaker meetings in the 21st century find the recording of ministers or gifts distasteful for good historical reasoning. Starting in the early-20th century the formerly-labeled Hicksite meetings (today labeled “liberal” meetings) started embracing spiritual egalitarianism because of the value placed on mysticism due to the influence of Rufus Jones (and others). Mysticism began to be viewed as the engine of liberal Quakerism. And today the degree of egalitarianism practiced by liberal Quakers varies from meeting to meeting. Nonetheless, this egalitarianism of liberal Friends makes them sensitive to not give the impression that some Friends are elevated as more gifted than others. This is because spiritual gifts come in all shapes and sizes that humans (who would be sitting in judgement of gifts) would often miss. A “club” of recorded ministers or “spiritually gifted” might hinder others from growing their own gifts as the Spirit guides them. Even if the intention is not to create a “club”, it would likely be perceived that way. Egalitarian spiritual groups mature to their full potential when such labeling is not practiced. And liberal Quakers seem to have grasped that.
An egalitarian spiritual community would be working against its own nature to start officially listing some members as gifted. A truly egalitarian spiritual community would understand that gifts of the Spirit might come from any one, at any time, in any situation. Just as there is ‘that of God’ in everyone, there are gifts in everyone, as well – waiting to be manifested whenever the Spirit calls them out – at just the right moment. A liberal Quaker meeting that understands this chooses to simply encourage its Friends to be deligient as individuals and as a community to always listen for spiritual wisdom from anyone among them, including themselves. Designating certain Friends as possessing gifts could cause Friends to miss the spiritual gifts (just when they need to be heard) that abound within and among ALL of us.
In summary, having the need to formally “recognize” certain individuals is an ego-mechanism that an egalitarian spiritual community would not want to embrace. Likewise, in an attempt to further enhance egalitarianism many liberal Quaker meetings no longer put weight to formally recording (regonizing) membership – for the same reasons. True membership, just like genuine spiritual gifts, are demonstrated humbly as we serve each other and the spiritual community that we are part of. There’s no need to tell Friends in a meeting who among them have gifts. They are well aware due to witnessing the manifestation of those gifts JUST when they have been needed.
Why do liberal arts colleges require their students to declare a major? Is it because French is “better” than German? Because chemistry is “better” than philosophy?
No. It’s because the preparation necessary to become a chemist and that necessary to become a scholar of literature differ widely. Yes, there are some shared aspects – good luck getting out of English composition! – but it would do a disservice to everyone to use the fact that “students come in all shapes and sizes” as a reason to neglect their specialized support and development.
I honestly doubt the average Friends – liberal or otherwise – has any real notion of the historical impact of recording gifts of ministry among Friends. But maybe you have information to the contrary?