Through the Flaming Sword

Yearly meetings should review their books of Faith and Practice to ensure that they treat minutes of travel and service fully, including what to do with such minutes when a member transfers membership. The recommendations below are based on Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s entry on minutes of travel and service, which is rather brief but it covers the essentials pretty well.

The F&P entry on minutes of travel should:

• Process. Lay out the process for clearness regarding the leading—to whom a Friend with a leading should go and what the clearness for discerning a leading should be. Lay out the process for writing the minute, and for its approval.
• Minute’s content. Provide guidelines for the content of the minute—nature, scope, and duration of the proposed service, affirmation of the meeting’s support, room for endorsements.
• Support. Consider forming a spiritual support committee of some kind for the minister while pursuing their ministry.
• Release. Recommend that the meeting consider ways to help release the minister from obstacles to their service, if there are any.
• Companionship. Recommend traveling with an elder or companion, if possible.
• Meeting endorsement. Recommend endorsement by the regional meeting and the yearly meeting if the travel will extend beyond the region or the yearly meeting.
• Visitation endorsement. Recommend asking that the bodies being visited endorse the minute, on its back or on an attached page, giving the name of the body visited, its location, and the date of service, comments on the character and quality of the service, and a signature and date of signature by the person(s) presiding in the visited body.
• Reporting. Provide guidelines for reporting back to the meeting, perhaps annually.
• Laying down. Provide guidelines for discernment and the laying down of the minute with final reporting when the minister and the meeting are clear that the minister has been released from their leading by the Holy Spirit.
• Transfer of membership. Provide guidelines for both the transferring meeting and a member’s new meeting regarding the transfer of the minute and of care for any spiritual support that the transferring meeting may have convened for the minister.

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