Public Ministry
December 3, 2023 § 3 Comments
Martin Kelley, editor of Friends Journal and author of the Quaker Ranter blog, recently posted about an article by Windy Cooler at FGC titled “What is a Public Minister?“. Windy Cooler’s article is the first in a series and I eagerly await the next posts, as I think this is a really important subject. In fact, I was led to reply to Martin’s post and would have done to Windy Cooler’s, but FGC’s site offered no such option. So here is what I would have said:
Like Martin, I, too, have been a “public minister” for decades, doing workshops, giving presentations, and especially, writing a lot. And for me, like Martin, the process has been “ranterish,” as he put it, pursued almost completely on my own without any institutional support or oversight.
The reason for this is this. In 1990, feeling led to write a book of Bible-based earth stewardship when I was at the time actively hostile to the Bible and Christianity, I sought oversight from my rather small meeting, knowing that I might get into trouble. At first, my meeting didn’t know what I was talking about. Then, after a second meeting, I was told to rely on my editor. They didn’t get that I needed spiritual support during the process, not editorial support afterwards. “We can’t tell you what to think,” they said.
I felt burned and bereft, and never went back to a meeting for support and oversight again, even though my sense of calling kept branching out into new areas, leading me into other ministries.
Then I moved to Philadelphia and joined Central Philadelphia Meeting. One of the reasons—the main reason, really—was that CPM has a Gifts and Leadings committee explicitly charged with supporting Quaker ministry. It is the only meeting I have ever heard of that has a settled and effective infrastructure for nurturing and overseeing ministry. And this committee anchors a broader culture of eldership in the meeting. The membership knows there’s such a thing as a leading into service and the meeting knows what to do about it when such callings arise.
And they can be proactive, not just responsive to requests for support from their ministers. I moderate a weekly Bible study online and a couple of our regular attenders serve on Gifts and Leadings. They brought this particular ministry to the committee and the committee has asked me whether I want support. I now have the informal support of a small group of Friends and a minute will come before the meeting for approval of more formal support. What a wonderful gift this is.
Quaker spirituality has two faces. One face looks inward with the personally transformative power of standing still in the Light, the spirituality of inward listening for God’s guidance, grace, forgiveness, healing, renewal, inspiration, and fulfillment. The other face looks outward. When we sink down in the Seed, when we abide in the Spirit’s love, this bears fruit in the form of ministry—service on behalf of the Holy Spirit to heal the hurts of others, to mend the world, to witness to Truth.
Nurturing these two faces of Quaker spirituality is, I believe, the primary mission of our meetings. Meetings that do not recognize and support calls to ministry/service leave at least half of their charge as meetings unfulfilled.
I know it’s not easy. Meetings have other things to do. And it takes a deeper knowledge of the Quaker way than some meetings possess, let alone members with the gifts of eldership that such support really needs. But I suspect that these gifts of eldership are there in very many meetings; they just lie dormant, only awaiting some will to service and experimentation. All that’s really needed is care, wanting to support each other. It will feel awkward at first, and mistakes will be made, but faith and practice will carry one through.
Fostering the knowledge of this aspect of Quaker spirituality and raising up these kinds of gifts is, in fact, one of my ministries. My calling is born out of my own experience, both the negative and the positive. It is why I’m writing this post and why I am so grateful for the article by Windy Cooler and Martin’s post. Thank you!
Through the Flaming Sword 
Thank you for this, Steve. I myself responded to Martin Kelley and Windy Cooler, privately, when I read Windy’s article.
During the past year, I turned eighty and lost my wife, my beloved Elizabeth, to Alzheimer’s dementia. I was also treated, successfully, for cancer of the tongue, by surgical excision of the tumor followed by radiation therapy. When I got my diagnosis I recognized it as an analogue of the prophet Isaiah’s dreadful realization (Isa 6:5) that he was “a man of unclean lips, dwelling in the midst of a people of unclean lips,” and that the treatment I was to undergo might be my analogue of Isaiah’s live coal from the altar fire, to purify my tongue to make it fit to carry Christ’s message to His people — which is everybody, for, as the Early Friends recognized, He is the Light that lightens everyone that cometh into the world, all moral agents on all habitable planets. And to serve as one of His prophetic spokespersons, I realized, I would have to maintain (by His power, with His help) an absolutely truthful and nonviolent tongue, cursing no one, not even in my heart.
During the year, I felt called to transfer my membership from a liberal Friends’ meeting (where worship of a God who was both good and almighty was an option that not everyone chose) to Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative), where there is agreement that we all worship such a God, the God of Abraham, the God of Jesus. I’ve never been recorded as carrying gifts in the ministry, and I’ve never asked for that; I’m more of a writer than a speaker, anyway.
But I may soon need to raise that question, for I’m feeling an increasing urgency to remind whoever has ears to hear that God, whose will is to save everyone (1 Timothy 2:4), also “now calls everyone, everywhere, to repent” (Acts 17:30) — that’s everyone, everywhere, and before we cook the life out of this planet with anthropogenic global warming, or nuke the life out of it with global war! — and repent of what? — of our selfishness and cowardice! Of reasoning, “Let us do evil, so that good may come,” as most of us do whenever we sell Roundup or cigarettes in order to keep our job; or vote for a legislator whose vote in Congress will, predictably, help authorize next year’s military budget; or tell “little white lies” on our tax returns or to our family members.
I hear of “nice God” mythologies from neighbors who watch TV shows about folks who have died, “passed through the tunnel” into Paradise, and come back; but I hear nothing of folks who have approached the Judgment of souls and fled from it, screaming in terror of having to face their own life-record, into “the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.” I don’t want anyone to fly screaming into that outer darkness because no one warned them, beforehand, not to step over some line of no return.
John, you do know the next step after the burning coal cleaned Isaiah’s lips? “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” “Here am I, send me.” The power of George Fox’s life’s work lies in his consciousness of “I was sent…” One who is commissioned and sent goes with an inner authority that is unknown by the one who takes the job upon himself. “Send me” comes with the power to act in obedience.
Thanks, John, for your comment.
Thank you for this post friend. My experience with such committees has many parallels with yours. My first such committee was an oversight committee named by a Baltimore YM meeting charged with supporting my work in prisons. The committee was very concerned with the practical until I asked the committee about laying down the work because I was not seeing the results. All the committee members from the BYM meeting supported this. Fortunately there was one member, sojourning from Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative), who asked that we slow down and the result was that I was encouraged to continue. I do feel this was in right order now.
Since then I have not gone to such committees for support but have operated as a ranter (as you put it). I have since transferred to Philadelphia Yearly meeting and have published from time to time, and taught Quakerism under its auspices but without any actual oversight. I appreciate you putting in words what I have felt and sought, for the past 30 or 40 years.
Gene Hillman, Quaker Curmudgeon 🙂