Through the Flaming Sword

As a follow-up to my previous post on Supporting Quaker Ministry, I offer the model that my meeting (Central Philadelphia Meeting) uses for supporting ministry.

A page with other resources—click the link to go to a new page of Resources for Quaker Ministry.

The Central Philadelphia Meeting model

My meeting (Central Philadelphia) has a Gifts and Leadings Committee set up to supply this ministry of eldership. So Friends who feel they may have a leading or a call to some ministry have a place to go where Friends are waiting and ready to provide discernment, support, and oversight. Between their occasional appeals for financial support of the handful of ministries under their care, their occasional reports to the meetings for business in worship, and adult religious education programs on Quaker ministry by our ARE committee, I think the members have a fairly good idea that such support is available and they know where to go with their own leadings.

The meeting has a clear process for taking a ministry under its care, which includes a clearness committee for discernment, which reports back to the Committee, which then sends a recommendation to the meeting for business in worship. Once a ministry has been taken under the meeting’s care, a spiritual accountability group is formed to support the minister. This can be either a Dedicated Spiritual Accountability Group (SAG), as the one I serve on is, or a Mutual SAG in which two or more ministers meet together with the group, when the ministries are similar in nature and/or the ministers feel ready to hold one another’s work in their care.

The Gifts and Leadings Committee has also set out guidelines for this eldership work in documents available on the meeting’s website and from the Committee:

• Nurturing Faithfulness to the Leadings of the Spirit in Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, which describes how the members of the meeting try to “support one another in faithfulness in every phase of the life of our community.” It’s akin to the faith part of the meeting’s faith and practice of supporting ministry.