Matthew 18:30 and the Gathered Meeting—Timeframes #1

August 11, 2026 § Leave a comment

I tend to read the Bible as though what I am reading is addressed to me. I suspect that we all tend to do this. But it never is addressed to us in the 21st century. Every passage in the Bible is always addressed to someone besides us, who lived in a completely different time and cultural milieu.

In fact there are at least three timeframes at work in Matthew 18:14–20:

  1. Jesus speaking to his disciples;
  2. Matthew writing for his audience; and
  3. us reading the passage for ourselves today.

Or put another way: What did Jesus mean by this passage? What was Matthew trying to say—why did he include it in his gospel? What does it mean to us for our attempts to apply the passage to our situation as readers today? In particular, how do we understand its value in fostering the gathered meeting?

So the timeframe questions are: Who is speaking, whom are they addressing, and why?

Jesus speaking to his disciples

In Matthew 18:20, on the face of it, as the sentence comes to us, Jesus is speaking to his disciples while he is still alive, during his living ministry. He is laying out a protocol for dealing with conflict between his disciples. Presumably the church he refers to in verse 17 is one of the household churches he had set up during his ministry, like the one in Bethany in the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.

So when he promises to the disciples that he will be “in their midst,” he doesn’t mean literally, physically, because he couldn’t be everywhere that such a conflict occurs when it occurs. So he must be promising to be present in some other way—some “metaphysical” way.

The key to the answer seems to be in whatever he means by gathering “in [his] name” in verse 20. What does “in my name” mean?

I see two sets of possibilities here (though we will return to this matter of the name in a later post). One set is “secular” in nature; the other is magico-religious.

One’s name is one’s reputation, especially in Jesus’s time; see Matthew 10:22 and 24:9, for instance. Or “in my name” could mean upon his authority—a “tell them I sent you” kind of authority; see John 14:13. Or “in my name” could mean “as I have taught you.” Jesus might have meant this promise in all of these ways.

But the fact that the second promise invokes the Father’s authority through the use of prayer suggests another dimension to this passage, a metaphysical one, if you will. Jesus repeatedly associates himself with the Father, even almost equates himself with the Father, especially in the gospel of John. In this regard he often speaks of being sent by the Father.

Meanwhile, ancient Israelite tradition has a rich and complex theology of the Name as God’s presence.

The writers of Deuteronomy, who had close ties to Jeremiah and Hosea, and who compiled the so-called Deuteronomic history—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings—considered Yahweh’s name as his presence on earth. A number of extra-canonical and inter-testamental Jewish texts went to town with this theology of divine presence in the Name. And Jesus seems to have adopted some version of this magico-religious understanding of the power of the divine name: “hallowed be thy name,” reads the Lord’s prayer, for instance. The name also has power to cast out unclean spirits in a number of accounts.

I think it is possible that Jesus’s promise in 18:20 ties the presence of the Father and his authority promised in verse 19 to the authority Jesus exercised on the Father’s behalf with this teaching regarding this protocol: through prayer during the proceedings of the protocol, the church invokes the presence of the Father, and also of his son by virtue of following his teaching, invoking Jesus’s name for authority—because, for these purposes, at least, the name/power/authority of the Father and of the son were one and the same, for, as his son, Jesus was his Father’s presence in the world. (Let’s put aside what being the “son of God” meant.)

I think Jesus was saying: conduct this matter as I have instructed you and pray to the Father as I have taught you, so that he will know that I sent you, and he / I—we—will answer your prayer; that is, your decision will have his / my—our—authority.

We will return to the theology of the Name in a later post.

Matthew 18:20 and the Gathered Meeting—The promise(s)

August 4, 2026 § 1 Comment

A promise more than a condition for gathering (and a thing with numbers)

I suspect that many of us tend to read Matthew 18:20 as a condition: If you gather in my name, then I will come. But he actually says wherever you gather in my name, there I am in your midst. He is making a promise, not necessarily establishing a condition for his presence, though I think it’s reasonable to think that he’s implying a condition. We will return to the role of his name and this possible condition for gathering in a later post.

The wider context for this promise is Matthew 18:15–20, which defines a 3-step process that Jesus prescribed for dealing with conflict in his household churches. The promise in 18:20 is the third in a series of three promises, and each promise relates to one of the three action steps in the reconciliation protocol.

The first promise confers on one person heavenly authority to “bind” or “loose”. “Binding” and “loosing”, which also appears in Matthew 16:19 in which Jesus gives Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven, represents the authority of the church and its leadership to settle matters of doctrine and of discipline. The second promise confers on two people (or three) the Father’s authority through an answer to prayer.

The third promise—the promise we’re looking at specifically—confers on the whole church Jesus’s own authority through his presence to expel the offender. Or at least, to treat them as a Gentile or tax collector, an outsider of some kind. The gospels give mixed messages about Jesus’s attitudes toward Gentiles, but from the stories of Zacchaeus and the call of Matthew, we know he had a special mission of conversion focused on tax collectors.

Furthermore, there’s a subtle number thing going on here. The action steps involve first one, then one or two more people, then two or three more people, and so do the promises. Here’s what that structure looks like:

If any member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.Whatever you (singular) bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth with be loosed in heaven.
But if you ae not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.If two of you agree on earth, about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.
If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you a Gentile and a tax collector.For wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst.

The three promises form a binding triangle of authority in which the disciple(s) derives authority from the Father through Jesus. Jesus somehow represents or mediates the Father’s ultimate authority through his presence.

We will discuss the nature of his presence and what his name has to do with it in later posts.

Matthew 18:20 and the Gathered Meeting—Introduction

August 4, 2026 § 1 Comment

Introduction

Friends get the phrase “gathered meeting” from Matthew 18:20: “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst.” I believe that the promise and experience of the gathered meeting—direct communion with God as a worshipping community—is what makes us a religious society and that it is one of the most distinctive and important gifts we offer to seekers and our members and attenders. As a result, this foundational Bible passage deserves our special attention.

The wider context for Matthew 18:20—verses 15–20—describe Jesus’s 3-step process for reconciling a conflict in his household churches. Early Friends adopted this protocol for their own practice, calling it “gospel order”—bringing gospel order to a situation. This wider context is key for understanding Matthew 18:20’s promise.

And as always with the sayings of Jesus, once we read below the surface, we uncover one nuance after another. This passage (Matthew 18:20) and its wider context are very rich in this regard.

So this introductory post begins a series of posts that seek to unpack what this passage means and how it can foster and deepen our experience of the gathered meeting. Each of the posts that follow offers a careful reading of the passage from a different angle.

Here are the headings for the posts in the series:

  • A promise (not a condition) of a gathered meeting, a culminating promise out of three promises corresponding to the three steps in Jesus’s protocol for resolving conflicts in the church.
  • Timeframes—We can read this passage in three different timeframes: Jesus speaking to his disciples; Matthew writing for his audience; us reading the passage for ourselves today; OR: what did Jesus mean by this passage? What did Matthew mean? And what do we mean?
  • Literary structure—what can the passage’s literary structure tell us?
  • “Name”—what does “name” mean in this context?
  • “The midst”—what are the ‘geographical’ metaphysics of Jesus’s presence?
  • Conclusions— How do we read the passage in the light of our own experience? How does all this foster and deepen the gathered meeting?

Meetings and Ministry, Part 4: Reviewing Faith and Practice

August 7, 2025 § Leave a comment

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.

Hurt by the Meeting

January 28, 2020 § 12 Comments

I know quite a few Friends who feel wounded or betrayed by their meetings. In the incidents in which this wounding occurred, it was individuals who hurt each other. Yet, whatever these Friends might feel towards the individuals involved, they still feel betrayed by the meeting, as well. This is the shadow side of the extraordinary corporate character of Quaker meeting life.

This transference of blame, hurt, and anger to the meeting calls for a special kind of pastoral care that we don’t seem to do very well or even talk about much. I am not at all clear about what’s called for myself, but I grieve for the people I know who have been hurt in this way and also for the meetings in which this pain and tension lives as a shadow on the fellowship. So I’m going to explore it here, in the hope that thinking and writing about it will bring some kind of opening and/or elicit some insights from my readers.

First, why do we transfer to the meeting hurts we suffer at the hands of individuals?

In some cases, I think we do so because a number of individuals were involved, and there seemed to be some kind of consensus among them about what they were doing. Some spirit was at work, some sense of the gathering.

Friends also have a perverse tendency sometimes to minister to the perpetrator in a fraught situation, rather than the victim. I’m not sure where this comes from. Maybe it comes from a perverse desire not to take sides, as though siding with the perp isn’t taking sides, but providing some kind of balance instead. I don’t know. But I want to name it, and I know it figures in some of these situations.

Very often, I know the hurt stems from the fact that other Friends let it happen, that a group or the meeting as a whole stood by while the wounding took place. These witnesses may not have agreed with what was going on, but they were paralyzed by fear, awkwardness, or indecision, or a failure of insight into what to do and/or courage to do it. This is a large part of why so many Catholics who have been abused by priests are so angry at the church: the church did nothing to stop it.

Very often, we’re not talking about just one incident, but rather an ongoing situation in which the principals seem stuck in their patterns and the meeting as a whole either doesn’t know what’s going on until it’s too late or doesn’t know what to do. Here, our culture of silence is our enemy: we tend not to talk to each other forthrightly about such things (though we may do so behind cupped hands in the parking lot), and our passive quietist tendencies suppress active involvement.

Also, in the Catholic case, the institution was more important to those in power than the people who were being victimized. We Quakers don’t have an imperial institution with that kind of embedded power, but we can still favor the institution over the individual. For us, the “institution” is “Quaker process.” I have seen Friends insist on Quaker process when the process was clearly hurting someone. Usually, this manifests as delay: it takes so long for the meeting to come to clarity and decision that those involved feel betrayed; their needs or concerns seem to have no value in the face of the slowly moving machine.

I have a phrase for this: To hell with Quaker process when hell is where it takes you. I feel quite strongly that people are more important than principles and institutions most of the time. My signature example of this is the way conservatives want to protect “the institution” of marriage rather than protect same-gender couples. On the other hand, I’m not sure what we can do about this. Our process for corporate discernment sometimes takes a while.

I’m not sure what we can do in any of these cases. We have the “gospel order” of Matthew 18:15–20 to guide us when things go bad between individuals: speak to the one who has sinned against you, then take one or two others with you, then take it to the meeting. Early Friends adopted this framework explicitly. I’m not sure how long the practice continued, but modern-day Friends hardly even know it exists. I hear it talked about (there’s even a Pendle Hill Pamphlet), but I’ve never seen it done. For one thing, this process lays the impetus for action on the wounded one, whose vulnerability makes it hard to do. And it doesn’t work at all when you feel betrayed by the community.

Very often, Friends who were not part of the incidents and groups originally involved in the situation sense the tension and go to the aggrieved people to express their sympathy and to invite them to come back (for these Friends often leave us when they see nothing is being done to address their concerns). But the aggrieved want to hear from the principals, not from third parties. And I think they want something from the meeting, too, which the meeting does not know how to give, even if the meeting is inclined to do something collectively.

I have seen individuals who caused some such hurt speak publicly to the meeting of their error and their anguish at having made such a mistake, and this does help the meeting some; but it rarely helps the aggrieved, because they usually weren’t there to witness the contrition and feel some answering movement of forgiveness within themselves.

Perhaps a minute of exercise from the meeting would help, in which the meeting admits its failure to act, or whatever.

Or perhaps the meeting could have some kind of called meeting for atonement whose goal is to become clear about what happened and then to decide what to do. It might urge those involved to speak to each other, especially those who had caused the hurt or had not intervened, rather than the other way around.

This is a level of corporate self discipline that I have rarely seen among us. When I have, it’s been a spontaneous emergence of grace in a gathered meeting for business that resolved a conflict in the moment, but I don’t know how those who felt aggrieved going into the meeting felt when they left those meetings. The body might have felt better while the individuals did not.

Perhaps meetings could have a called meeting for speaking whose purpose is just to create as safe a space as possible for everyone to name their pain and grievances. I would model this on Quaker dialogue, known to some as Claremont dialogue, after the California meeting that published a pamphlet outlining how it works. It’s simple: It’s like a worship sharing—Friends speak what’s on their mind when they feel ready. No one interrupts or answers or debates what has been said, or tries to correct it. Everyone gets to speak their own truth and then everyone goes home. No discussion. No decision. No sympathizing or reassurances. Just honest speaking and deep listening.

I would love to hear from my readers what they think. I know that this is a widespread, even universal experience among us. Perhaps you have some insights or experience that the rest of us might find helpful.

Gospel Order Packet — Preface section

March 5, 2016 § 1 Comment

New York Yearly Meeting’s Gospel Order Packet was a loose leaf binder with eight pocket dividers packed with resource materials for nurturing gospel order in seven areas of meeting life. In the next posts, I plan to publish these materials as pdf files section by section. I have made no effort to edit them yet; that would delay the project too much.

The first section, published here, is a preface section with introductory materials. The other seven sections are:

  1. Individual Spiritual Development within the Community
  2. Meeting for Worship as Central to Community Life
  3. Recognizing God in All Community Members—Building the Faith Community
  4. Discernment of Leadings among Members
  5. Pastoral Care of Community Members
  6. Worship as the Basis for Quaker Business and Following Gospel Order in the Meeting Structure
  7. Fruits of the Spirit: Friends Social Testimonies

The Preface section

The Preface section includes the following materials:

Pamphlets included in the Packet included:

  • Spiritual Discernment—the context and goal of clearness committees, by Patricia Loring, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #305.
  • Guide to Quaker Practice, by Howard H. Brinton, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #20.

Gospel Order—Setting Limits

March 4, 2016 § 2 Comments

A checklist of questionable behaviors in meeting

A guide intended to help clarify the role of eldership in the meeting.

Meeting for worship

  •        Consistently arriving late
  •        Speaking too early in the meeting
  •        Leaving too little silence between messages
  •        Bringing a prepared message
  •        Dialog, or answering another’s message
  •        Speaking too long, “running past the guide”
  •        Speaking too often
  •        Speaking more than once
  •        Harangues, threats and other assaults on the worship
  •        Eldering a speaker without the inward or outward authority to do so
  •         Conversation, moving about, and other disturbances to the silence; reading and cell phone activity

Fellowship

  •        Inappropriate unauthorized eldering of others
  •        Quenching of the spirit of Christian or biblical (or any other) vocal ministry
  •        Sexual harassment; assault and/or battery
  •        Deceit and theft
  •        Refusal to work in good faith toward resolution of conflicts
  •        Tale bearing, backbiting, and rumormongering; “sense of the parking lot”
  •         Civil suit between members

Quaker process and meeting for business in worship

  •        Knowingly and consistently violating Quaker process
  •        Holding the meeting hostage: “if you do “x,” I will do “y”, withholding financial contributions in protest
  •        Forming political alliances
  •        Blackballing or stacking nominations
  •        Biased or forceful clerking; ignorant clerking
  •        Secret or improperly publicized meetings
  •        Failing to record minutes or changing the minutes without meeting approval
  •         Presuming to speak or act for the meeting on weighty matters without the approval of the meeting

The testimonies

  •        Civil suit between members
  •        Joining the armed forces
  •        Gambling
  •        The use of dangerous or addictive drugs
  •        Improper sexual conduct
  •        Unrepentant prejudice

 

 

Gospel Order—Signals and Actions

March 4, 2016 § 2 Comments

A Practical Guide to Eldering

Signals: Things that happen in the process of an unfolding, difficult situation that might call for action on the part of an authorized committee in the meeting.

Actions: Some suggestions about options in such circumstances.

Introduction to the Sequence of Signals and Actions

This “Sequence of Signals and Actions” has two purposes: to help meetings identify problems and conflicts with some clarity and in a timely fashion, and to provide some options for action. Experience with conflicts in the yearly meeting and the testimony of the state of the meeting reports in 1994 to the queries on conflict indicate that many meetings regret having waited until too late to address their problems and that meetings sometimes are not clear about an order of response to problems. We seek on the one hand, to protect other Friends and the worship and fellowship of the meeting from disturbance and conflict; on the other hand, we want to express compassion for all parties involved. We offer this sequence as a place to start.

It is only a place to start. We recognize that this is a very sensitive issue for Friends and we offer it as a set of suggestions only. We encourage and expect meetings to make their own connections and to revise them as their experience indicates. We do, however, strongly recommend that you decide ahead of time on some guidelines for when you will begin to act in response to a perceived problem; experience has made the value of such preparation very clear.

We use the phrase “bringing gospel order” several times. It may feel archaic or technical to some Friends; it may be uncomfortable to Friends for whom the “gospel” has no relevance or even has negative associations. We use it out of an interest in recovering our tradition, because it may contribute to deeper understanding of the term, but mostly because we believe it is rich in meaning; it would be difficult to say as much as this phrase does with so few words. We refer Friends to the brief information sheet on definitions of gospel order in the Preface Section of the Resource Packet on Gospel Order for a fuller understanding of the phrase. For the purposes of this resource, we would clarify our meaning of gospel order with this concise description:

‘Gospel order’ is used here to denote a process in which a person or persons bring their concerns directly to the person with whom they have a difficulty, in a spirit of love, with the intention of

  1. a) listening to the other person’s needs, feelings and concerns in the situation,
  2. b) sharing their own needs, feelings and concerns, and
  3. c) seeking some agreement as to how the conflict might be resolved. In some cases, those bringing gospel order may be authorized to speak for M & C or for the meeting.

A note about Ministry & Counsel’s log. Friends may feel uncomfortable with the prospect of someone keeping a record of who said what in the meeting. We recommend such a practice because we have seen repeatedly in actual conflict situations that Friends contradict each other in their claims and great confusion arises because no one knows what has really happened. Eventually, meetings often seek to recover and even to document for themselves some agreed-upon description of what has happened so that the meeting can make decisions in clarity and understanding. It is also useful to see how long a problem is lasting, how big it is getting over time, and what measures have and have not worked. To this end we recommend that the clerk of Ministry & Counsel keep a strictly confidential, dated record of complaints brought specifically to M & C and a record of whatever actions the body has taken and other informal notes which might be useful should confusion about events arise, and that this log be deleted of material which is no longer current.

We realize that some Friends will consider such a practice to be very unFriendly, even if it remains in the hands of the most trustworthy clerk and is kept in the strictest confidence. We hope that you can find some alternative method of retaining perspective and corporate memory in the midst of long-standing, complex difficulties.

 

Signals Actions
When someone on M&C hears of trouble informally Confer informally with other members of M&C
When the first person brings a concern to the clerk or someone on M&C Make a note in an elder’s log
Consider bringing the matter to M&C
Ask whether s/he has spoken directly to the persons concerned (gospel order*)
When the 2nd or 3rd person brings a concern to the clerk or someone on M&C Bring the matter to M&C
Ask whether s/he has brought gospel order.
Consider conferring with the meeting’s clerk.
When all members of M&C agree that there is a problem. Confer with the meeting’s clerk.
Prayerfully determine what is to be done and then appoint someone to bring gospel order to the situation.
If the initial attempt at gospel order fails. Try again with two or three people.
Consider holding a meeting for reconciliation.
If the second attempt fails and/or the idea of a meeting for reconciliation is rejected. Consider asking for outside help.
Consider bringing the matter to the meeting.
Consider some stronger intermediate action.
When the first person leaves meeting because of a difficult person. Minister to the person who has left.
Consider seeking outside help.
Take some strong intermediate action.
Firmly elder the difficult person, requiring an apology and a change in behavior (you may as well have lost them instead of the person who has left).
Consider bringing the matter before the meeting.
Eldering fails.
When the second person leaves the meeting because of a difficult person.
When the problem has persisted a long time (say, one year).		 Consider asking the person to leave the meeting.
Consider terminating membership.

 

* As described elsewhere in the Gospel Order Packet, “gospel order” means several different things in different contexts. Here it refers to the traditional process for eldering someone in meeting that is based on Jesus’ instructions to his community in Matthew 18:15-20 for dealing with conflict within the meeting. This is a kind of “three-warning” process that includes 1) meeting alone with the other party in conflict to work toward resolution; 2) bringing one or two others to speak to the other party; 3) bringing the matter before the church/meeting. Finally, if no resolution can be reached, the meeting disowns the recalcitrant Friend. The passage in Matthew ends with the famous words: “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I also.”

 

Gospel Order—Some Guidelines for Eldering Discipline

March 4, 2016 § Leave a comment

While serving in the early 1990s on New York Yearly Meeting’s Ministry & Counsel Coordinating Committee, as it was then called, which had oversight for the yearly meeting committees concerned with worship, ministry, and pastoral care, and for the support of worship, ministry, and pastoral care in the local meetings, I participated in a few “interventions” with meetings that were experiencing conflict or difficulties of some kind with members.

In that service, I noticed some themes that were common to all these cases:

  • Meetings inevitably wished that they had acted more decisively and sooner than they did.
  • They wished that they had talked with each other more about what was going on; a culture of silence had masked unacceptable behavior.
  • They were not clear collectively as a ministry or pastoral care committee or as a meeting about what exactly was not acceptable behavior.
  • They had experienced some denial, considerable confusion about how to act, and a deep hesitancy to act in a way that might harm someone, even when that someone was harming others or the fellowship or the worship.
  • They lost members, and some who did not leave still felt deeply betrayed or hurt by the meeting’s actions and/or inactions.

When we set out to create the Gospel Order Packet, I developed two documents intended as aids to a meeting’s efforts to protect the worship and protect the fellowship of the meeting. One was a tentative list of unacceptable behavior and the other was a set of “triggers” and response to those triggers, a list of behaviors or incidents that should attract the meeting or committee’s attention, and some tentative general suggestions about what to do when these things happened.

I have converted these to pdf files, which you can download using the links below, and I have also entered them as their own blog posts.

Gospel Order—Four Types of Clearness Committees

March 3, 2016 § 7 Comments

The gospel order packet committee of New York Yearly Meeting wanted to include resources on clearness committees, but as we looked into them, we discovered a bit of confusion and heard accounts of Friends being mishandled in their conduct. So we did some research and some thinking and came up with this handout on Four Types of Clearness Committees, which I have revised very slightly for this publication.

Introduction

Clearness committees are an ancient tradition among Friends, originating with clearness committees for marriage in our earliest days. In a letter written in 1653, George Fox refers to some process in which, “when all things [are] found clear,” the faithful “might appoint a meeting on purpose for the taking of each other” in marriage.

In our own time, this tradition has enjoyed a renaissance, with new forms emerging spontaneously as meetings creatively adapt the basic format to new situations and needs. In this process, some confusion has resulted about what a clearness committee is, how it is appointed and conducted, and what it can be used for. With this short paper, we hope to clarify very briefly the various purposes and formats for clearness committees that we have encountered. It is also a resource guide, citing pamphlets that provide useful information on the variations described.

We have identified four kinds of clearness committees in use among us so far. These include:

  1. The traditional clearness committees for marriage and meeting membership.
  2. The more recent but widely used committees for helping a Friend reach clearness in making a decision or solving a personal problem.
  3. Clearness committees for discerning a leading.
  4. Clearness committees used for conflict resolution.

Some comments: In our experience, the last two uses just mentioned are much less well defined than the first two. For one thing, there are fewer support materials available, especially of the ‘how-to’ kind that would be useful to conveners. Consequently, in discussing them we have gone past description of present experience and practice and have provided some general suggestions for the purpose of clarity. Nevertheless, questions about their actual practice remain unanswered. We hope that more research and experimentation will produce more useful materials in the future. As we explore these new forms, we recommend that meetings use some caution. We know of circumstances in which the wrong format was used and Friends were hurt. We hope that the clarifications we offer below will help prevent accidental misuse.

Some suggestions: Experience with clearness committees suggests several things. It’s important to have some seasoned Friends on any clearness committee, folks who can guide the process when it needs it, and leave it to the Spirit when it is gathered. It’s useful to have some connection to Ministry & Counsel in the meeting, so that someone has an overview of what’s going on in the meeting and can help with resources, if necessary. We also recommend thinking out which kind of clearness committee is called for in those cases that are not for marriage or membership, to help provide good order for the committee’s conduct.

The role of worship: Finally, a word about the role of worship in the clearness process. The more worshipful a clearness committee is, the better it works. As in meeting for worship and meeting for business in worship—and especially like worship sharing, with which clearness committees have many affinities—it is God who leads us into clarity of mind and singleness of heart. It is the faith of Friends that in silent attention to the Inner Guide, the Spirit of truth of whom John speaks (John 14:17) will come to us and guide our work. One key to such worshipfulness is humility. The more we come to the work of the committee as servants of the Friends involved and lay ourselves in God’s hands, the better the process seems to work. Many Friends have had the experience of surprising openings in the process of the committee session and of unlooked-for answers afterwards, even when the session itself has seemed at first unfruitful. Worship, cultivated in all aspects of the clearness committee’s process, nurtures this rising up of God’s leading light, in which we are enabled to answer that of God in each other.

Four types of clearness committee

Clearness committees for marriage and membership

The meeting chooses the committee. The committee has a specific goal: whether the meeting and the applicant(s) are clear to go forward with either the marriage or the membership application.

Resources:

  • The NYYM pamphlet on Marrying Under the Care of Friends.
  • Peter Woodrow, Clearness: Processes For Supporting Individuals And Groups In Decision-Making, Movement for a New Society, 1985. Part Two covers clearness committees for membership in a Movement for a New Society household; developed from the Quaker process for membership.

Clearness committees for discerning a leading

The committee might be chosen in consultation between the meeting and the member. The goal is to determine whether a specific leading is of God and/or how the meeting might support the ministry that arises from the leading; in this sense, the form is close to that for membership and marriage.

Resources:

  • Patricia Loring, Spiritual Discernment: the context and goal of clearness committees, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #305.
  • Paul A. Lacey, Leading And Being Led, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #264. What Quakers mean by a “leading.”

Clearness committees to help a Friend make a decision or understand a personal problem

The committee is chosen mostly by the applicant. The process is one of simply asking good questions designed to clarify the situation for the ‘focus person’; there is no specific goal or corporate decision to be sought.

Resources:

  • Jan Hoffman, “Clearness Committees and their use in Personal Discernment.” A short piece widely reprinted.
  • Peter Woodrow, Clearness: Processes For Supporting Individuals And Groups In Decision-Making, Movement for a New Society, 1985. Part One covers clearness committees for decision making and seeking greater clarity about ones directions in life and work.

Clearness committees for conflict resolution.

This is a new and as yet somewhat undefined use for clearness committees for which there are no set format or guidelines currently in use among Friends. Meetings seem to be doing whatever makes sense to them in an attempt to resolve a conflict and calling the process a clearness committee. Here we offer some suggestions to help clarify things.

Both the meeting and those in conflict might choose the people on the committee. The ideal, long-term goal is reconciliation or a new agreement between the parties in conflict; the practical, short-term goal is a safe environment in which those in conflict can speak and be heard and achieve enough clarity about the situation for the meeting (including the parties in the conflict) to choose a course of action. The form can have two parts.

The first part uses Quaker dialog, a process in which the parties in the conflict respond directly and in turn to questions out of worship, as in worship sharing, addressing themselves to the questions rather than to each other’s offerings, and with no discussion, responses, or rebuttals, but rather silence between the sharings. This is not really a dialog.

It seems to work well if the questions stay focused on a single thread until some clarity is reached about that thread. Two such threads—about what actually happened, and about how we feel about the events—often get tangled and it’s useful to keep them separate, exploring first the factual or “events” thread, and then the other “emotional” thread, if possible: one thread tries to clarify what has actually happened; the other explores how each party to the conflict feels as a result.

We have seen that the parties in the conflict often have different stories about events, that neither story is fully accurate, and that misunderstandings have colored the perception of events. It can be very difficult to arrive at a single narrative that all agree on, but it’s one way to structure the questions. So one person tells their story without interruption, then the other. Then follow questions to clarify the discrepancies.

Feelings come up in the process of telling the story. They are part of the story. But they can derail the session. Experienced, spirit-led facilitation and worship are the key to sorting this out.

A second part might follow the listening session if it seems that some progress has been made or it seems it’s safe to reach a little deeper. If not, then the clerk should just end the session and let the simple act of having listened to each other do some work. At some later time, it might be useful to convene a more open dialog between the parties in the conflict.

Whichever way it’s done—immediately after a listening session or some other time—this second session consists of facilitated question-asking by a clerk or other participants, to which each party in the conflict responds, trying to maintain a spirit of worship and using periods of silence to return the participants to this spirit when necessary. But, in contrast to the earlier session, here the parties in the conflict are really in dialog, speaking their point of view in answer to the other party’s statements.

It is useful to have someone trained in mediation clerking this session, if possible, as the stated tentative goal of the session is to arrive at a new agreement between the parties in the conflict about how things will go in the future. At some point, if things seem to be opening up and if the parties in the conflict express readiness to do so and an agreement seems achievable, then the parties to the conflict and the other participants can try to zero in on what that agreement might be. This might be treated as a third stage in the process—trying to fashion an agreement about behavior in the future.

We want to stress that these guidelines are experimental. Some of them we’ve seen in action; others are just suggestions based on experience. Meetings will want to think the process through carefully and then adapt these suggestions and/or come up with new elements that they think will work in their situation.

Resources:

  • Fellowship; in Depth and Spiritual Renewal through QUAKER DIALOGUE “CREATIVE LISTENING, Suggestions for Leaders of Group Dialogues Derived from the Experience of Claremont, California Friends, Library Committee, Claremont Monthly Meeting, 727 West Harrison Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. A pamphlet on the so-called Claremont Dialog, also called Quaker Dialog.
  • Margaret S. Gibbons, Encounter Through Worship Sharing, FWCC 1506 Race St., Phila. PA 19102.

 

« Older Entries

Where Am I?

You are currently browsing the Gospel order category at Through the Flaming Sword.