Meetings and Ministry, Part 3: Travel Minutes in the Digital Age
August 3, 2025 § 3 Comments
I have a minute of travel for the fostering of the gathered meeting among Friends, which was originally written by Central Philadelphia Meeting. But I have since then transferred my membership to Princeton Meeting in New Jersey. Both meetings are in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. PhYM’s Faith and Practice is not clear about how to deal with the transfer of such a minute as part of a transfer of membership, so both meetings have had to work much of it out on their own. Princeton Meeting has just approved a new draft of the minute, so now that ministry is under Princeton’s care.
I want to post about the issues that transferring a minute raises later. Here I want to talk about how we handle minutes of travel and service in a time when many meetings don’t really know the faith and practice of Quaker ministry very well, when our books of discipline are not necessarily much help, and especially, when we often “travel” and serve virtually rather than in person.
Let’s start with the traditional practice using a hard copy of the minute.
Using a hard copy
Presenting the minute. I’m not sure how a minute of travel was presented to the meeting being visited in the elder days. Did the clerk of the minister’s meeting send it ahead of the visit, or did the minister bring it with them and present it themselves? Did they bring a letter from the clerk also, or was the minute sufficient in itself. I suspect the latter, but I hope some of my readers might know for sure.
Endorsing the minute. As I understand it, in the elder days the clerk or someone representing the body being visited endorsed the minute afterward on the back of the minute. This would include:
- the name, location, and other relevant description of the body visited and the date of visitation,
- comments about how the ministry was received, and
- a signature with the date of signature.
In the Quakerism class I took with Bill Taber at Pendle Hill, if I remember correctly, he said that endorsement often was something quite minimal, such as, “Friend Steven Davison visited X Meeting in Y city, Z state on A of B month C year. His ministry was found acceptable. Signed Weighty Quaker, A’ of B’ month, C’ year.” Assuming, of course, that the ministry was acceptable. If there was some perceived problem, then the endorser said whatever seemed appropriate.
Using an electronic copy
Nowadays, however, we often “travel” to give our ministry virtually through Zoom or some other internet-based conferencing tool. I have done just this for an FGC program on the gathered meeting earlier this year and for a Pendle Hill program on the gathered meeting during the pandemic. Neither I nor the sponsors of either of those programs followed these formal steps, so the questions of how to present the minute and how to endorse it in this virtual situation didn’t come up. I did tell FGC about my minute, but neither one of us took the matter further. But I think we should have; I wasn’t paying good attention.
But if we had tried to follow tradition, how would I have presented a digiital minute and how would they have endorsed it? Should we have used a digital copy of the minute in the first place?
Hard copy or digital?
Mailing the hard copy back and forth would be a bit cumbersome but staying analog has its appeal. For one thing, the conventions of practice for this are more or less settled and pretty straightforward. But more important, endorsing a digital copy turns out to be awfully complicated. I’ve been experimenting with doing so with my own minute’s pdf file as a learning exercise, and whew—not easy. I’ve tried one thing after another before settling on something that is still cumbersome, but I hope it meets the need, since I suspect that some circumstances will require the use of a digital version of the minute.
Here are my thoughts.
Creating the minute. The minute’s original hard copy format will almost certainly be a printed Word file, but its ultimate format will be a pdf so that the minute can’t be overwritten by accident. Normally, the clerk of the meeting would sign the minute after printing it, but this complicates things: now, in order to create a pdf file that includes the signature, you have to scan it. You could just let the typed name of the clerk stand for the signature and just save the Word doc as a pdf. But that doesn’t solve the problem of how to endorse the pdf.
Preparing for endorsement. To solve that problem, I would add a couple of pages to the Word doc for the endorsements before you scan it, maybe with a heading at the top of each of these extra pages like “Endorsements”. Then scan it to create a multi-page pdf file.
So what do you call this digital file?
Filename. I think the filename needs four elements:
- the minister’s name;
- the minister’s meeting;
- a descriptive, like “minute of travel”; and
- the date it was approved.
For example: “Steven Davison – Minute of Travel – Princeton Meeting – Approved 07-12-2025”.
Presenting the minute. Whatever the traditional practice was, I think that the clerk of the meeting should send the minute along with an accompanying letter on behalf of the meeting and the minister. I don’t necessarily think it would be inappropriate for the minister to do it. But I prefer the clerk sending the minute for a number of reasons:
- This gives more weight to the ministry; it reflects and confirms that the meeting is behind the ministry.
- It unburdens the minister and relieves her or him from some potential awkwardness in presenting one’s self.
- It ensures that the meeting has a centralized record of all the doings around the ministry. At some point, the ministry will likely be laid down and/or the minister may no longer be around, and then all might be lost if she or he is the sole recorder of the minute’s travels.
I think the sender should bcc her or himself so that the sender has a copy of the email with the minute and accompanying letter or body of the email and they can store both in whatever virtual folder the meeting and/or the minister have created for such things. See the item on storage below.
Endorsement. Now—how do you endorse a pdf file of a travel minute? This is why you have to add those extra pages to the Word doc. Since most people will be using Adobe Reader to read the minute and Reader doesn’t let you write on a pdf file, the preparation for endorsement will have to take place on the Word file before the pdf is created. Here’s how I would provide for the endorsements:
In the accompanying letter, the sender asks the receiving clerk to do the following once the minister’s service is done:
- Print the multi-page pdf file of the minute;
- write by hand (legibly) the endorsement on the added page for endorsements, including the meeting or visited body and date of service, comments, signature and date of signature;
- re-scan the whole document, creating a new pdf file with the same filename; and
- return the rescanned pdf file to the the clerk of the minister’s meeting and /or the minister.
Process and storage. The final question is where do the Word file and pdf file live between visits? As I said above, I think the meeting itself should keep a record of all the travels of the minute, even if the minister is doing this also. These records should not be on a personal computer hard drive, but rather on a cloud drive, so that it’s not dependent on a member who may leave the meeting for some reason. The login information for this drive* should be shared between at least two people: the clerk of the meeting and the meeting’s treasurer, this latter because the meeting’s financial accounts presumably are also being kept in a central location that is independent of personnel changes. If the meeting has a physical filing system, I would create a file with this information to be stored in that filing cabinet, also. And maybe there are other people in the meeting to include, like the meeting’s recorder (the person responsible for the meeting’s membership statistics) and its secretary, if the meeting has these positions.
* I would keep all the meeting’s digital accounts in a central digital location: website hosting service login, its payment method and contract renewal settings; likewise for the same information for the Facebook account; and so on. I know of at least two meetings who lost their websites because the website’s management was in the hands of someone who either dropped the ball or left the meeting and the hosting service expired without anybody knowing
Meetings and Ministry, Part 2: My Story
July 28, 2025 § Leave a comment
A Leading Leads to Frustration, and to New Leading
In 1990, Buffalo Meeting in New York asked New York Yearly Meeting’s Friends in Unity with Nature Task Group to bring them an earthcare program on the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day. A f/Friend and I answered their call.
On Saturday night before the program on Sunday, I was sitting up praying over my notes for the following morning when an opening came to me that pushed its way in front of my preparations. It came out of nowhere—well, as it turns out, it came out of Spirit-where—and it would not go away. It was this: If Christ was the Word “through whom were all things were made and without whom nothing was made that was made,” as John 1:3 puts it, then destroying creation is re-crucifying Christ.
Now this was what Friends in the elder days called a cross to the will: my will and my intentions and expectations were being crucified. Because I was in those days actively hostile to Christ, Christianity, and the Bible.
But I had been raised in a pretty pious and active evangelical Lutheran family and I knew the Bible pretty well. And the more I thought about it, the more important this new idea seemed, and the more it ramified—the more I remembered and discovered that I could say to Buffalo Meeting. But I did not want to say it. And I was pretty sure that Buffalo Meeting wouldn’t want to hear it.
But the Holy Spirit had seized me by the scruff of the neck and would not let me go. I had to scrap my original notes and go with this crazy new thing. So I gave Buffalo Meeting a little Bible-based sermon and, as I remember it, they did in fact give it a rather cool reception.
It was weird. Or wyrd, in the Old Norse sense of the origins of the word, a situation that was so important the gods were involved. God was involved. And it didn’t stop there.
Over the next few weeks, the original opening expanded and ramified and it dug in. Eventually, I felt I was called to write a book of Bible-based earth stewardship theology—another cross to the will. I did not want to do this. First of all, I knew it meant probably years of research; I didn’t know nearly enough. I had read none of the earth stewardship theology that had been written up to that time, and I didn’t know the Bible well enough to treat it properly. But more importantly, I still felt hostile to Christianity and the Bible.
So I brought my leading to my meeting. I asked for an oversight committee. I knew that my prejudices threatened to thwart or distort my faithfulness and I wanted my meeting to help me stay faithful.
In my first meeting with ministry and counsel, they did not understand what I was asking for, even though some weighty and seasoned Friends served on that committee. I went away frustrated. But I still felt it was important to get some support. So I went back to them. This time, some of them understood just enough to actually misunderstand in a new way.
“We can’t tell you what to think,” they said. I didn’t want them to tell me what to think, I wanted them to tell me if I was going off the rails. “That’s for your editor to tell you,” they said. That would be way too late, I said. In the end, they said no again.
I was left to my own discernment and discipline. I hustled some financial support and went to Pendle Hill for two terms in 1991 to begin research on the book. There, I was mentored by Bill Taber and Doug Gwyn, who taught Quakerism and the Bible respectively. My time with them and at Pendle Hill confirmed my calling and gave me the support I needed. I reclaimed the love of the Bible I had had as a teenager. I stopped being Christ and Christianity’s adversary. And the course work with Doug and Bill deepened my knowledge of and commitment to the faith and practice of Quaker ministry. The experience deepened my love for and commitment to the Quaker way. It changed my life.
And: the leading to write that book and the frustrating experience I had with my meeting led to two new leadings, both of which I still carry as ministries. The first was—is—to foster in our meetings the recovery of our traditions regarding ministry, so that others with leadings would not be left bereft, as I had been. The second was a sustained and intensive study of, the Bible, such that I have for years now moderated a weekly online Bible study and written another (unpublished) book on the gospel of Jesus, which grew out of the things I learned writing the first one; and I have two more in my head and heart.
Meetings and Ministry, Part 1 : Introduction
July 28, 2025 § Leave a comment
I’m starting a new series of posts that looks at how our meetings recognize gifts in ministry, how we help emerging ministers discern their calling, and how we support their ministries.
I’ve been away from this blog more or less for quite a while, but I think I’m back. I have been paying attention to publishing my poetry and more recently, I’ve been working on a couple of submissions to Pendle Hill. One of these is on the meeting’s role in supporting vocal ministry. At the same time, while thinking and praying and writing in a deep and sustained way about vocal ministry for many months, my own ministries are in an exciting and exercising period of engagement and transition.
In the middle of all this, I became aware of the Friends Incubator for Public Ministry, which I mentioned in my last post, and I participated in the development of “The Public Friends Recording Process,” which the Incubator’s convener Windy Cooler shepherded
Back in 1992, I had been part of a three-person team that updated New York Yearly Meeting’s process for recording gifts in ministry and soon after that, I served on the first clearness committee convened under the new guidelines to consider the recording of a Friend’s gifts. We did recommend recording to the Yearly Meeting and they approved it. So I have been carrying a concern for the recognition, discernment, and support of gifts in ministry for a long time.
All this focus and activity around our meetings and their support of our ministers and their ministries has reactivated my own call to a ministry focused on fostering greater attention in our meetings on these concerns. It has produced new openings that I want to share with you my readers and raised questions that I hope my readers will be led to answer, here in this blog, but also in your own meetings.
Much of this exploration will be personal, as many of these issues are front and center for me and my meeting right now. But some of it will be about our tradition, our faith and practice, our history and our experience.
In the next post, I want to start with the story of my own first call to ministry and how it has led to this moment.
Friends Incubator for Public Ministry
July 27, 2025 § 1 Comment
I’m spreading the word here of a new Quaker ministry: Friends Incubator for Public Ministry. Here’s how it describes itself: It is “a bold, Spirit-led initiative to reweave the fabric of public ministry in the Religious Society of Friends.” And: “The Friends Incubator for Public Ministry empowers emerging Quaker leaders and their communities through spiritual formation, education, and collaboration, revitalizing public ministry to create a vibrant, modern Quakerism for today’s world.” Windy Cooler is the Incubator’s convener.
The Incubator website features a great blog, the Incubator sponsors events, and it is sponsoring a Fellowship for Public Ministry, which they describe as follows:
Our inaugural cohort learning experience is designed for those called to public ministry, their elders, and their worshipping communities. From April 6–12, 20026, we’ll gather at Pendle Hill for an in-person retreat to begin this journey together. Five participating meetings will explore how to faithfully discern, support, and hold public ministry accountable within their unique community contexts. This retreat marks the beginning of a two-year transformational process tailored to the needs and gifts of each meeting and minister involved.
The deadline for applying for the fellowship is September 1.
I am very impressed by Windy and by the Incubator—what it’s doing and the Spirit in which it’s doing it. I feel called to a ministry myself that is completely congruent with its mission: fostering the recovery and innovation of our traditions of ministry and especially, helping our meetings embrace this tradition.
I am right now in the middle of an exciting spiritual exercise in this area: I have a travel minute focused on fostering the gathered meeting originally written by Central Philadelphia Meeting and a support group nominally under its care. But I’ve transferred my membership to Princeton Meeting and now the two meetings, the support group, and I are working out how this transfer should take place, since our Faith and Practice isn’t clear or thorough on this matter.
In future posts, I will talk more about this process, which has been very enlivening.
A Prayer
March 9, 2025 § 2 Comments
I have found myself speaking quite often in meeting lately. Maybe it’s because I’m working on a submission on vocal ministry to Pendle Hill Pamphlets, so vocal ministry is not just on my mind, but really in my mind. It’s been making me nervous, speaking often like this, more consistently than I every have in the past—three times in four weeks, maybe four times in six weeks. Oy.
Furthermore, I’m relatively new to the meeting, so I’m worried about how it looks to have this newcomer loading up an early morning worship that not infrequently goes silent the whole hour, as it did this morning.
All these concerns are beside the point, of course. The only thing that really matters is whether I’ve been called. But this new trend has me worried about that, too. Am I really called to speak this consistently?
So I went to meeting this morning set on resisting, and so I did. And that resistance had me literally quaking for the last ten minutes. This was made both easier and more difficult, paradoxically, because the message was a prayer. I have only brought vocal prayer to meeting three times in 38 years, and one of them was an extremely harrowing experience. But I held on to my resolve and did not speak. Was I unfaithful? In the end, it felt okay, but . . . I relieved the pressure by sharing the prayer in “afterthoughts”, so I got it out after all.
I’ve always been uncomfortable with afterthoughts and I think it’s possible that I have not offered one afterthought in all my time as a Friend. I suspect, with no clear evidence, that afterthoughts have some kind of feedback effect on the vocal ministry—but what effect? Does it protect the worship from shallow ministry or lower the bar? I’ve been in meetings that have them and meetings that don’t, and I still can’t tell. But my instincts tell me that afterthoughts must have some kind of effect on the worship that precedes them.
Well, anyway, here is that prayer:
Our Father, who art in the mystery of transcendence;
Our Mother, who art in the earth in her immanence;
Our Holy Spirit, which art in each of us a holy presence;
hallow our hearts and minds to your guidance.
Please help us to bring divine love into the world.
Please give all of us who are in need the necessities of the day.
Please help us to treat others as we want to be treated.
Please help us to resist the temptation to do wrong,
and to have the wisdom and strength to do what is right.
And thank you, thank you, thank you.
The New Oratorio
December 3, 2024 § 2 Comments
We are a kind of do-it-yourself religion, in that we do not have paid religious professionals. So the job of knowing and passing on our tradition comes down to us.
If we wanted to become find players of the cello, we would seek out good teachers, study music theory, and practice, practice, practice. Likewise, to play The Messiah well, an orchestra and chorus must have a fine conductor, know its music, and practice, practice, practice.
Just so, if we want to become seasoned as individuals in the Quaker way, we must seek out teachers, study our history, faith, and practice, and practice. And, if as a meeting, we want to become a fine orchestra and chorus, we must provide opportunities for teaching and learning the Quaker way, and we must practice.
Now, while the outward forms of our tradition are important—they are the music that makes up our repertoire—the more important focus should be on the music that is being written right now, in our hearts and through our members’ ministries, in witness and action, in word both spoken and written. We must have ears that can hear the new Messiah that will pour forth from the Spirit in continuing revelation.
For the spirit of the christ is the true Composer and Conductor. That spirit is the Spirit that anoints us, that “christs” us, that “messiahs” us with healing, forgiveness, strength, guidance, and inspiration, just as it anointed/christed Jesus and the disciples at the Pentecost, and all the prophets and saints and harpists and singers since, who are seeking to do right by their new oratorio.
The Spirit of the Christ and Vocal Ministry
December 3, 2024 § Leave a comment
When we strive to be Spirit-led in our vocal ministry, what do we mean by that? What, or who, is the Spirit by which we hope to be led?
For centuries, the Quaker answer to that question has been pretty straightforward: it is Jesus Christ who gathers us in worship and who leads us in vocal ministry.
But in our liberal branch of the Quaker movement, since roughly the middle of the last century, we have become increasingly less Christ-centered in our understanding of that Spirit.
But even Jesus as the Christ was led by the Spirit.
As the gospel of Luke tells it, at his baptism a Spirit descended on Jesus, conferring upon him spiritual gifts of vision and mission. He then spent some time in the desert during which his vision was tested. And when he was clear in his discernment regarding his role in the kingdom of God, he went back home to Nazareth.
There, on the sabbath, the local rabbi invited him to read from the prophets. We can imagine that the rabbi was aware of Jesus’ claim to prophetic status, and wanted him to explain himself, to choose a passage that might provide a foundation for his claims, and some time to expound on the passage and explain why and how he was the messiah.
Jesus chose Isaiah 61, verses one and part of two: “The spirit of Yahweh God is upon me, because God has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the poor . . .” Isaiah, and Jesus in this passage in Luke, go on to unpack what good news to the poor meant. Then Jesus declared that Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled in him.
The spirit of God has anointed me, he proclaimed. The word “anointed” in Greek is the word “christ”; the word anointed in Hebrew is “messiah”. Jesus is saying, I have been anointed by God’s spirit, I have been christ-ed, I have been messiah-ed, by God’s spirit.
Several years later, shortly after his death, the same spirit of the christ anointed the disciples at the Pentecost, and led them into Spirit-led vocal ministry, jump-starting the post-crucifixion Christian movement.
And the spirit of the christing continued to anoint prophets and mystics for centuries after: Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, Jacob Boehme . . . George Fox.
When George Fox preached to the Seekers on Firbank Fell in 1652, he was anointed by the same spirit of the christ, and they were convinced, they were themselves anointed, christ-ed, in the Spirit, in a second Pentecost, and that anointing jump-started the Quaker movement.
And the spirit of the christing has been anointing us ever since: John Woolman, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Fry, Alice Paul, Sandra Cronk, Patricia Loring, Bill Taber.
And when we rise to speak, we too pray that we will be anointed by the same spirit that anointed Jesus and all these other prophets, mystics, and saints, one Spirit leading the faithful into vision and mission.
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!
Anthropocene Antihumanists
January 25, 2023 § 4 Comments
An article in the January/February 2023 issue of The Atlantic by Adam Kirsch titled “The People Cheering for Humanity’s End” has me returning to my apocalyptic theme. At one point Kirsch writes: “The revolt against humanity . . . is a spiritual development of the first order, a new way of making sense of the nature and purpose of human existence.”
I myself have met people who react to the various apocalypses that are bringing in this new Anthropocene age* with this kind of glib nihilism—well, we’ll be destroyed, but the earth won’t be; she’ll go on. I hear this especially among despairing environmentalists. This annoys me greatly.
It’s a postmodern mashup of, on the one hand, some dark emotions, mostly fear and guilt and a perverse kind of spiritual pride in the knowledge, a grandiosely condescending attitude that fallen humanity will finally get its come-uppance and we told you so. In this, they are in league with Christian apocalypticists, who also see both humanity and the world as fallen and deserving of its disastrous fate.
The other half of this mashup is a lack of compassion that verges on schadenfreude for the suffering of all the other beings we’re bringing down with us, not to mention the suffering of countless human beings. Among Christian apocalypticists, this schadenfreude, the sense of pleasure felt at the pain of another, is on full gloating display. Even the suffering of those left behind after the rapture will have glorious meaning; what’s a thousand years of suffering in the eyes of a just and jealous God?
Meanwhile, the apocalypses are piling up and ramping up. It’s natural to seek solace and meaning somewhere. Where will Friends look as things get worse, as they inevitably will? When climate migrants storm the southern border and lots of people, and not just fascists, demand its militarization? When melting ice caps flood our major coastal cities, including Washington, D.C., and virtually all of Florida? When water shortages reduce our food supply? When the federal government is no longer able to rebuild communities built in the face of annual hundred-year storms and wildfires? When we can’t make any more computers because China has decided it needs the world’s only supply of rare earths for itself?
We desperately need a testimony that speaks to these crises. That is, we need to sink down in the Seed in prayer and worship, as individuals and especially as meetings and yearly meetings, to see what God wants from us, to see what love can do.
* “Anthropocene” is the title that some are giving the new geological age that humans are bringing us into with climate change and species extinction. We’re currently in the Holocene, from the Greek holos, whole (as in holocaust, wholly burnt), and kainos, new—holocene means wholly new. The anthropocene is the age in which, as Thomas Berry puts it, humans take evolution off of auto-pilate and take over manual control. Never mind that we have only small parts of the operating manual, our instruments are unreliable, and we are flying blind.
Quaker Ministry Since the Cessation of Recording
January 1, 2023 § 13 Comments
I’m not sure how I came across this article, but its subject is right up my alley: “Our Quaker Ministry Since the Cessation of Recording,” by T. Edward Harvey, published in the British Friends Quarterly Examiner. It is apparently the transcript of an address to the Elders of London Yearly Meeting on May 22, 1946.
The author expresses a concern that is a recurring theme in this blog and my other writing: the collapse of meaningful, proactive eldering of vocal ministry after laying down the practice of recording ministers, or, as I prefer the usage that New York Yearly Meeting uses, recording gifts in ministry. Because its about the gifts and the ministry, not primarily the minister.
Anyway, here’s the section that spoke to me the most (page 188):
When Yearly Meeting made its decision to cease recording it was careful to say that recording was a matter of machinery, and that whether recording was discontinued or not, much more responsibility for the exercise of the ministry should be taken by the Monthly Meeting. Its recommendations are contained in Part III of our Book of Discipline, but unfortunately the great majority of our members do not read this—even Clerks of Monthly Meetings are sometimes lacking in knowledge of a good deal of it, and I would venture to say that there are a good many Elders who are not familiar with many of the passages in it dealing with the work which especially concerns them. [London Yearly Meeting apparently still had elders at this time.] There are in it extracts from the decisions of Yearly Meeting in 1924 which lay on our Meetings a definite duty with regard to the Ministry—and this duty we shall, I believe, have to admit has very largely not been carried out, though we may thankfully hope that the recommendation with regard to “a greater exercise of sympathetic eldership in our meeting, encouraging those who are beginning to speak” has been fulfilled in large measure. The section on Ministry continues thus:—
“The definite duty should be laid upon all Monthly Meetings of finding ways to show their interest in the Ministry and their sympathy with those called to this service. Though this is already the task of the Elders, it should also be shared by the meeting as a whole.
“It is not necessary that Monthly Meetings should adopt uniform methods of procedure in this respect, but in all cases they should be asked to find time for the consideration of questions affecting the Ministry and to endeavour in practical ways to express their fellowship with those who are called to undertake this service.”
How far has this been carried out? Do our Monthly Meetings regularly make it a part of their duty?
This was written twenty-two years after the yearly meeting laid down the practice of recording. Seventy-six years have passed since Friend Harvey addressed those elders, literally my entire lifetime. I think the situation is still the same here in America, at least.
Except for one all-important thing: In 1946, there were apparently still Friends who felt called to vocal ministry, though their meetings had fallen behind and were no longer ministering to their needs. How many Friends (who aren’t pastors in pastoral meetings) feel a calling to vocal ministry today? And how many meetings would recognize such a calling if it occurred or know what to do with such a person if they did?
Through the Flaming Sword 