Through the Flaming Sword

Pendle Hill has just released my new pamphlet Nurturing Vocal Ministry: Toward a Vital Culture of Eldership.

In this essay, I explore ways to deepen our meetings’ vocal ministry, to support our ministers, and foster deeper worship and the gathered meeting through what I call a vital culture of eldership. By this I mean the faith and practices, the attitudes and agreements through which we nurture the spiritual lives of our members and attenders.

I worry that since we laid down the practice of recording ministers and elders in many of our yearly meetings, and even in those that still retain the practice, we’ve stopped paying proactive attention to vocal ministry and stopped offering support to emerging ministers. I lay out some reasons for why nurturing vocal ministry more attentively is so important to our spiritual lives, as worshippers, as ministers, and as meetings.

I discuss some ways that our meetings and our worship and ministry committees could do more to nurture Spirit-led ministry and deepen the worship. I answer some of the hesitations that Friends have regarding a more attentive culture of eldership and lay out the many benefits to both our meetings and our members of such a culture.

I point out that we are already there when it comes to nurturing other kinds of ministry, especially witness ministry—we are more likely to recognize when someone is called to service, we treat their leading as an essential aspect of Quaker faith, and we are much more likely to know how to support them in practice.

Meanwhile, however, vocal ministry is the signature form of ministry in the Quaker way. Why would we not support spoken ministry in worship with the same focus and care that we give to other forms of ministry, especially since virtually all forms of Quaker ministry involve Spirit-led spoken word, anyway?

For vocal ministry in worship is the classroom and laboratory of the school of the Spirit. Through spoken ministry in worship we can learn to listen for the call to service, discern what that service is and whether it is of God, and learn how to be faithful while we serve.

And I explore the role that faith plays in our vocal ministry. By what “Spirit” am I being led when I rise to speak?

My answer is that I am led by the spirit of the christ, little “c”, the Spirit that anointed Jesus as the Christ for his ministries of leading, healing, forgiving, and teaching—his vocal ministry; that anointed his first followers for vocal ministry at the Pentecost; that anointed George Fox when he convinced the Seekers on Firbank Fell in 1652 and jump-started the Quaker movement, and that anointed them all in that moment in a second Pentecost.

That same anointing/christing Spirit (for the Greek word christos means anointed) that has been anointing Quaker ministers ever since, including those who will rise to speak this coming First Day in our own meetings—in theory. Or so I am suggesting.

What can we do to nurture this essential blessing of Quaker worship and the Quaker way? This pamphlet tries to answer that question.