Through the Flaming Sword

I recently discovered in my papers a lecture on vocal ministry that William Taber delivered on October 28, 1996 as part of Pendle Hill’s Monday Night Lecture series. It spoke so powerfully to my condition that I want to share parts of it here. I do not feel comfortable sharing the whole thing because a note appears at the top saying, “(please do not copy for publication without the author’s permission)”. Bill Taber is no long with us, so I can’t ask his permission. I’m a little nervous about sharing any of it, but have decided to do so because it was, after all, a public lecture, and because it is so good, and because I would like to think that, as the most nurturing elder of my own ministry that I’ve ever had, he would be okay with it.

In this post, I want to focus on the call to vocal ministry. Here’s Bill:

“. . . ministry among Friends has traditionally been understood to be evoked by a “call” from God, so that ministry becomes a “calling” or, to use the Latin form, a “vocation.” . . . Hopefully, this immediate sense of calling takes place each time a person speaks in meeting.

But there is a deeper and more persistent sense of calling to the ministry which has occurred to some Friends throughout Quaker history—and it is still occurring today. . . . Modern unprogrammed Friends who experience this traditional calling and longing to be about the work of God often experience great frustration because there seems to be little or no place for ministry as a vocation in the modern Society of Friends. . . .

Part of their frustration lies in the fact that we modern Friends value expertise and genius in virtually every field except the spiritual, so that we don’t know how to recognize and encourage a person who is spiritually gifted and called to this work. Every generation of Friends, including this one, has had its quota of people who in other cultures might be called budding shamans or seers or medicine men or medicine women. In earlier Quaker eras these budding Quaker shamans were watched over and nurtured and in subtle ways encouraged so that many of them were able to respond to the ever beaconing Call to become a sanctified instrument of the Divine Will.

. . .

Hopefully members of Worship and Ministry committees will be attentive to those who speak in meeting, and be quick to sense such people’s yearning for more fellowship and accountability in relation to spoken ministry. Since most contemporary unprogrammed meetings no longer follow the old Quaker practice of recognizing and “recording” the gift of ministry, those who speak in our meetings are much more on their own, in an individualistic sense, than was true in classic Quakerism. Thus, it could be possible that a contemporary Friend could be a frequent speaker in Friends meetings for many years without ever experiencing any of the continuing education and accountability which was once the case when every recorded minister was expected to meet with the local meeting of ministers at least four times a year, as well as with the quarterly and yearly meeting sessions of ministers and elders. It may be neither appropriate nor wise to go back to the old system, but perhaps way might be found so that our contemporary “public Friends”—that is, those who speak frequently in our meetings—can be given occasional opportunities to meet with their peers, so that they can explore the difficulties of the art or the technology or the craft of following the inward motion while walking the razor’s edge*. It might also be helpful, at such occasional gatherings, to read and ponder together the old advices and queries for ministers and elders (or some modern equivalent).

•  I think “The Razor’s Edge” may have been the title of this lecture. The document I have does not have a title. By the razor’s edge, Bill is referring to the delicate balance between speaking with authority and yet with humility, between waiting and boldness, between being self-led and Spirit-led.

Based on my own vocal ministry last Sunday, January 28.

Friends practice what we call silent waiting worship. Why do we worship in silence and what are we waiting for?

We worship in silence in order to make room for the Spirit, in order that we may hear the Divine Voice, which often is quite faint and easy to drown out. And we are waiting, first, for a sense of the Presence in our midst, and also, for the truth, for Spirit-led vocal ministry.

With the silence, we strip away the outward accoutrements that characterize conventional worship services so that we may hear the “still, small voice.” But we also seek something deeper than this lack of liturgical busy-ness; we seek what early Friends called the silence of all flesh, seeking to let go of the surface thoughts and concerns that we bring with us into the meeting room, so that we may sink down in the Seed that has been planted in each one of us, and there, to water that Seed with worship, with our attention.

It is as though, with this silence, we have raked away the stones that lie on the surface of our garden soil/soul, so that when the Seed sprouts and reaches for the Light, no obstacles stand in its way.

And when it finds the Light, then it flowers, and our nostrils are filled with the sweet scent of God’s presence, within us and among us.

And sometimes the Seed bears fruit and the Presence raises one of us up with vocal ministry that carries the truth and power of its Source.

An awful lot of messages in the meetings for worship I attend (I won’t call them vocal ministry, for reasons I’m about to get into) start with the pronoun “I”, often combined with a statement that pegs the time. There then inevitably follows one of two things, either an announcement and/or an anecdote. “I read in the New York Times this morning . . .” A few days ago, I heard . . .” “I’ve been thinking lately . . .”

These introductory announcements and vignettes sometimes are quite charming in themselves, but they almost always lead up to a point, so they are in essence, secondary to the message. Often the route to the point is rather slow, oblique, or peppered with side-trips, but eventually we get to a point. The point is the message the speaker wants to bring to us.

I must confess that every time I hear such an opening, I cringe. Very rarely, I think, does a truly spirit-led message start with “I” and an announcement or vignette.  Or at least, I usually feel that we would have been better off with just hearing the point.

When I find myself thinking along these lines, I stop myself and force myself to go deeper. In my mind, I strip away the introduction and listen to the point on its own. If it stands on its own, then maybe I have some ministry to share. Time, then, to go deeper yet and sit with the point some more to see how it feels. Is the point something valuable I have learned for myself from that moment or experience? Or do I also feel led to go public with it? If so, why? Do I get something out of it, or does it truly feel like service? Does it still point back to me, or am I seeking to answer that of God in others?

The problem with these self-centered introductions is that, first of all, they pull the speaker toward his or her self, toward ego, rather than toward service and one’s center. In the process of telling the story your mind runs through the details and these details tempt you to share them, too. You start making connections with other things, and now you’re tempted to run off on a tangent.

Meanwhile, you’re pulling the listeners up to the surface, also. Now they are imagining the scene along with you. Their minds are activated, pulling them up from the alpha brain wave meditative state that they may have descended to in their deepening process toward the beta wave region of active, conscious, everyday thought. Then the point comes like a fly landing on the surface of the lake, and like a bass surfacing to catch the fly, we break the water line and swallow. Now the point has been made, but everybody has to start deepening all over again. Two or three (or more) such messages, and one is just treading water at the surface catching flies.

Introductory personal pronouns, announcements, and anecdotes disturb the dynamics of meeting for worship and tend to waste the point on an audience lured to the surface, away from the depths—even if the point was one worth sharing in the first place. But the point, delivered as prophetic utterance, might have pulled us all deeper into the cool still water of true worship.

A small ad hoc group of Friends in my meeting recently met to consider what kinds of programs and efforts we might sponsor that would nurture the meeting’s vocal ministry. We had representatives from three committees: Worship and Ministry, Religious Education, and Attenders. In preparation for the meeting, I tried to identify what the goals might be for these programs. The notes below represent an expanded version of my notes.

Primary goal

To nurture deeper, more Spirit-led ministry.

I deliberately capitalize Spirit. I think we all know intuitively what deeper means, but I wonder whether we know what Spirit means in this context. Are we able to articulate where Spirit-led vocal ministry comes from, to newcomers, to our children, to each other? This should be one of our secondary goals, I think, to be able to do so with confidence as a meeting.

History, faith, and practice

Knowledge of the history of the faith and practice of vocal ministry in our tradition.

Knowledge of the practices that have over time proven effective at fostering deep worship and ministry—giving time after someone’s message before speaking ourselves, not addressing another person’s ministry, etc.

Programs in this area might fall to either Adult Religious Education or Ministry & Worship Committees. Since such programs will never reach a certain considerable percentage of the meeting members and attenders, especially those new to the meeting, I think some short handout should be distributed on the benches periodically that lays out the conventions governing our practice of worship and vocal ministry. My meeting just produced such a handout and I think it’s quite good. You can download it here.

Centering

Knowledge of and experience with various centering methods to nurture the vocal ministry’s roots in the Spirit.

Programs in this area might fall to an ad hoc group of Friends with experience in meditation, centering prayer, breath work, Experiment with Light, etc. This gets to the “deeper” part of the over-arching goal. There are lots of Quaker-friendly techniques for centering, by which I mean they are inward, simple, and effective. I believe that a deeper state of consciousness does foster religious experience. Simply turning inwardly and consciously “toward the Light” within, however one does that, seems to me a uniquely Quaker form of centering.

Calling to ministry

Support for those who feel called to the ministry.

Discernment and support for those who speak often in meeting, to the degree that they welcome such attention: Do they think of their speaking as a calling? Do they feel a need for support?

Programs in this area might fall to Worship & Ministry Committee or, if the meeting has one, as mine does, to a Gifts and Leadings Committee, or some such. Ever since we laid down the centuries-old culture of eldership with which we used to nurture vocal ministry, we have left ourselves without any way to support those who feel called to what used to be called gospel ministry. I suspect that many meetings no longer even think that such a calling exists among us anymore, or that it should. But here and there, it does. Such Friends should not be left bereft of our meetings’ support in what is for them a divine calling.

And some of our frequent speakers may have such a calling but not think of it that way. Thinking of it that way could deepen their ministry. And just bringing the possibility up could deepen both the meeting’s worship and the Friend’s own life in the Spirit.

At the very least, meetings should be more attentive and proactive regarding vocal ministry, starting with those Friends who speak often.

Sharing

To know each other better with regard to our ministry—opportunities to share our feelings about our own vocal ministry, the tests and processes we use for discerning whether to speak, our feelings and concerns about the quality of the meeting’s ministry in general.

Programs in this area might fall to Ministry & Worship Committee.

Sharing of this kind deepens the bonds between us and gives us deeper respect for one another’s messages.

Unity on the issues

Knowledge about what the members and attenders feel about the current state of our vocal ministry. A sense of the meeting regarding vocal ministry as a calling, whether we consider such callings real and legitimate and deserving of corporate support and oversight. Knowledge of who considers themselves so called and whether they want support and/or oversight. I have created a blind survey that tries to elicit this kind of information. If we find that many Friends are unhappy with some aspect of our worship, then we are more likely to do something about it. Here is a link to a Word document version of such a survey.

Meeting-wide agreement about our goals vis a vis vocal ministry, and specifically about whether the meeting wants to address whatever comes up in the discovery process mentioned above.

Trust on the part of the meeting in Worship & Ministry Committee’s authority and judgment regarding vocal ministry, especially in terms of its eldering role. Unity within the committee itself about its authority and roles—are the Committee’s members clear and in unity about how proactive they should be in nurturing vocal ministry, about when, how, and why the Committee should speak to someone about their ministry, either in support or with gentle eldering, and about who should do it?

The committee that has the care of the meeting’s worship and ministry should be confident in its charge and have the support of the meeting, it should be unified in its approach, and proactive, not just reactive.

Download this page as a pdf document.

Prompted by recent experience in my own meeting with vocal ministry, I want to share a concise guide to the practice of vocal ministry among Friends, as I understand it. I have ordered these “conventions” chronologically, that is, as they apply during the progress in time of the meeting for worship. These are not hard and fast rules, but rather practices that Friends have found over the centuries to foster a deeper worship experience.

1. Preparation. Ideally, Friends spend the morning before going to meeting for worship in quietude, rather than exposing themselves to the news, mass media, or anything else that might activate the busybrain. Even better if you can spend some time in spiritual preparation, in meditation, prayer, scripture or spiritual reading, fasting, walking in the woods, listening to music, playing an instrument, or whatever.
2. The worship starts. We understand the meeting for worship to start when the first person sits in the meeting room and settles in to worship. At this time, conversations or other activities in the meeting room should move out of the meeting room or cease. Very often, these early Friends are spiritually preparing, not only themselves, but also the meeting space, so that others who enter the space immediately feel drawn into the worship.
3. Arrive on time. Each person entering the meeting space causes at least a little ripple in the energy of the worship. The coming of Friends into the meeting space before the appointed time for worship adds a spirit of welcoming and warmth to those who are already gathered. This spirit continues for a while after the appointed time, too, but eventually this tardiness becomes a disturbance. Latecomers delay the time when those gathered can begin their deepening without this disturbance. If you do arrive late, be as inobtrusive as possible; do not traipse across the whole meeting room to some distant spot. Do not enter during someone’s vocal ministry.
4. Time before the first vocal ministry. The convention is to leave about twenty minutes before the first vocal ministry. This is even more valuable if tardy Friends have been entering the meeting room during this time. Many traditions agree on twenty minutes as the minimum amount of time it takes for the circulatory and other systems of the body to adjust to deep stillness and for the mind to slow the busybrain enough to find the path into the spiritual depths. In the elder days, Friends called this spiritual space “the silence of all flesh”, understanding “flesh” as the Apostle Paul did in his letters to include, not just the body, but all of the world’s distractions.
5. Time between messages. Allowing a meaningful time between messages allows those gathered in worship enough time to truly hear a message, to let the Holy Spirit do the inner work that is the Spirit’s intention in the ministry. It also allows anyone who might be feeling some prompting to speak to return their attention from the message to their own discernment, time to settle in with the inspiration, to know it and test it.
6. We do not speak twice.
7. Content. We rely on the Holy Spirit to inspire and shape the message. We do not come prepared to give a certain message, or to read a specific text, for instance. We do not enter into dialogue with previous messages or refer to specific previous speakers. This does not mean that themes do not develop in the course of the worship; they often do, and this often brings the meeting into a deep feeling of satisfaction. But direct response to a previous message tends to ignite or reinforce what we call a “popcorn” meeting, in which one message leads, often very quickly, to another and to another in a cascade of dialogue that keeps the messages on the surface of the meeting’s spirit.

Introduction

A commenter on my most recent post about supporting Friends that feel called into a spoken ministry in their meetings’ worship has shared how he had sought this kind of support and was told he was trying to feed his ego. As I said in my reply, this is exactly the opposite of what the faithful called vocal minister wants from her meeting. We want help in keeping our ego out of our ministry!

However, another commenter expressed some concern that paying this kind of attention to the members’ vocal ministry would drive some Friends away, and I suspect that he is right. It would probably cause conflict in the meeting, even if it didn’t drive people out, because some Friends (many Friends, I suspect) neither understand the religious life in terms of calling and as a path that requires both self-discipline and collective eldership, nor understand the meeting as properly serving in such an eldership role.

This obviously is how I approach the life of the Spirit. I am writing these blog entries because I’m groping for a way to serve both approaches. Or, more accurately, because the hands-off culture of eldership around vocal ministry is virtually the universal default position in our meetings, I want to make some room for those of us who feel called. I want to open the conversation and offer some reasons why meetings should try to minister to their called ministers, to their members who feel led into vocal ministry in particular, but into any ministry—witness, service, pastoral care, administration, whatever.

My own meeting (Central Philadelphia) has in place the kind of infrastructure for eldership that I am talking about, a Gifts and Leadings Committee that “nurtures gifts of the Spirit, supports efforts to discern one’s ministries”. I don’t know my meeting very well yet; I’m too new. Even though my meeting has a committee that is apparently committed to doing just what I’m talking about, nevertheless I sense that there may be the same anxieties about these matter similar to those I’ve encountered in other meetings and that have been expressed by commenters to my blogs on this concern.

So I want to address these objections here. Below is a list of such concerns that I developed initially for an article published in an issue of New York Yearly Meeting’s newsletter Spark whose theme was Recognizing Spiritual Gifts, an article defending the practice of recording gifts in ministry. I have expanded that original list of objections, and I am applying them more broadly to the eldership of vocal ministry, understood in both of its nurture and discipline aspects, not just recording gifts in ministry. Because addressing each of these has made this post extremely long and some readers may not want to deal with the whole thing at once, I made it into a pdf file and offer links to its various sections.
Download Objections-SupportingCallstoVocalMinistry.pdf

Outline of Objections

Here are the objections I’ve heard to proactive and focused attention to those called into vocal ministry:

• Egotism—You’re just trying to feed your ego.
• We are all ministers. Some Friends cite the belief that all Friends are ministers (that we “laid down the laity, not the ministry”), so it’s not right to single out individuals for a status that all of us possess.
• Testimony of equality. Many cite the testimony of equality, fearing that special support for called ministers would confer an exalted status on the person who is called.
• Fear of hierarchy. In a similar vein, many fear that the practice will lead to a subtle but dangerous form of hierarchy among us.
• Personal freedom and discipline. Many Friends expect to do more or less whatever they want in their religious lives, as one of the unique gifts of the Quaker way. Often, in fact, they see their meeting as a safe harbor from the kind of wounding they have suffered in their past that took the form of coercion or other outward discipline, and this practice feels the same to them.
• What good is it? Many Friends, I think, do not see what benefits this kind of support could bring to either the minister or the meeting.
• Ignorance due to the erosion of tradition. When no one sees a robust culture of eldership around vocal ministry at work, it is easier to fear the unknown than to imagine the blessings.
• It will drive people away. This kind of practice will feel intrusive to some Friends and they will leave, and some newcomers will go away.
• What to do. Finally, this post ends with some ideas about what to do in the face of such predictable if not inevitable conflict.

 

Egotism

As I said above, the Friends I know who would seek more support from their meeting for their vocal ministry feel that, yes, ego is the problem—exactly. But they want their meeting to help them manage the temptation to egotism, not to feed it.

When you have such a calling, faithful service to the Caller could not be more important to you, or more fraught with personal spiritual risk, as I said in my previous post. When your calling and your fears are not important to your meeting—when your meeting fails to understand both its own traditions and its pastoral responsibilities—your meeting has failed you and failed itself—and failed the Holy Spirit. By “Holy Spirit” I mean whatever Mystery Reality calls forth ministers and ministry and gathers the meeting into holy unity, call it whatever you like.

 

We are all ministers

Friends are fond of saying that we are all ministers, that we laid down the laity, not the clergy. They then move from this principle to a stand against singling individuals out for special attention to their ministry. If we are all ministers, then why would you do that?

But this does not quite get our tradition right. Yes, we laid down the laity, but, in fact, we are NOT all ministers; we are all POTENTIAL ministers. We are ministers in waiting. We become ministers when we faithfully answer a call to service. Ministry is service—but service to what? In the Quaker tradition, you cannot separate ministry from its call without destroying the very meaning of ministry.

We all experience the Caller differently. For some it is Jesus Christ. For most of us, it is something much less identifiable. Some say ministry comes from within, from “that of God” within us. But the experience of the call, the prompting to rise and speak in meeting for worship, for instance, whatever we call it, comes from something deeper within us than our own egos.

But not necessarily. Much vocal ministry, in fact, seems to come from a rather shallow place. But even that doesn’t mean it isn’t Spirit-led. We know true vocal ministry by its fruits: Does it serve the inner life of even one attender at meeting? (Usually, we can’t know.) Does it serve the collective religious life of the meeting? Does it deepen the silence, the meeting’s sense of gathering in the Spirit, or does it pull us back up toward the surface of our thoughts and feelings?

I am not here concerned with how the meeting might judge these things. I am addressing how the meeting relates to those for whom seeking to come from deeper and deeper depths with their spoken ministry is of utmost importance, and who want help with being as faithful in their service as possible.

 

The testimony of equality

We are each of us endowed with certain spiritual gifts that comprise for each of us a unique constellation of gifts, which then manifest as ministries that also take unique forms for each of us. So we are are all equal in the fact of our endowment, but the idea of “equality” is irrelevant to our individual needs for the nurture of our unique gifts and the support of our individual ministries.

Every member of the meeting deserves careful spiritual attention, but that attention should be more or less unique, appropriate to our individual callings. The testimony of equality does not demand, as some kind of outward rule, that everyone gets lowest-common-denominator, no-size-fits-anybody treatment because we are all the same. Rather, the testimony of equality requires that our support structures give each minister the support that we each deserve—and out of love, as a sacred collective responsibility, not as an outward rule.

Some Friends need support for their vocal ministry; denying them that support is a form of inequality, unless you deny all Friends support—with their witness callings, and pastoral care callings, and hospitality callings, and teaching callings, and property management callings, etc.—as well. Which is exactly what many meetings do—no call to service gets proper support. This is not the testimony of equality in action, nor is it love for our ministers or for the One Who Calls—whatever you call G*d in your own experience.

 

Fear of hierarchy

The testimony of equality argument against focused support of any ministry is really a fear of hierarchy dressed up in tradition’s clothing. That’s really what people mean, I think, when they use the equality testimony as an obstacle. Friends tend to fear leadership, and this sometimes drives a passive undermining of our leaders. Many Friends just don’t think we have leaders, even though we all recognize the contributions of Friends that we think of as “weighty”.

Quakerism has gone a long way toward eliminating hierarchies in our structures of governance. This is one of our strengths, one of our more valuable contributions to religious culture and history—and, for that matter, to the wider culture. Having servant clerks rather than presidents, making decisions collectively under the guidance of the Holy Spirit rather than by majority rule, meeting for worship in circles (and eliminating those facing benches) rather than all of us facing an elevated dais with an elevated person on it, recognizing that each of us is a potential minister—all these profound reforms of religious practice arise organically from essential principles of Quakerism: that each of us can commune directly with the Divine and that the worshiping community also can find unity, peace, and guidance in the leadership of the Spirit.

We certainly do not want to undermine this genius by elevating someone to a position of power. But giving a vocal minister the support they need does not elevate them to a position of power. To the contrary; ministering to our ministers helps to ensure that G*d remains the source of guidance for our ministers, and it helps to ensure that the meeting retains enough authority over its own worship and fellowship to faithfully nurture it and protect it from such power plays.

Meanwhile, Friends are notoriously bad at dealing with “soft” power, with passive aggressive behavior, with Friends who hold the meeting hostage, saying, if you do “x”, I’ll do (or won’t do) “y”. Human societies can never get rid of the temptation to power. We can only build a fellowship that knows how to deal with it effectively.

Most liberal Quaker meetings I know have to a large degree abrogated the responsibility to protect the fellowship and the worship from destructive behavior. When it happens, they flounder. And we have dismantled the eldership structures we used to use for this.

So it’s ironic that Friends resist providing just such a system of balances for vocal ministry, believing that providing them would foster power plays. This is a weird kind of denial that affirms what we claim to deny—we won’t protect ourselves from you, the called minister, because we’re afraid you might hurt us. That’s nuts. If you’re afraid of people seizing power, take measures to prevent it.

 

Personal freedom and discipline

Now we are getting close to the core problem, I think. Liberal Quakerism has evolved to the point where many of our members define the Quaker religious space as one in which they can do whatever they want. Many of us come to Friends as refugees from other religious environments in which we were told what to do by religious authorities and we didn’t like what we were being told, and we didn’t like being bossed around, in the first place. Many of us are not so wounded, but we still came here seeking freedom, and we found it.

One Friend I know once described Quakerism as a do-it-yourself religion, by which he meant, not that we each had to do our part because we have no paid professionals, but that each of us is free to believe whatever we want and to craft the kind of religious life we want, independently of any other authority, including the authority of the meeting. Predictably, that Friend consistently ignored some of our traditional, if tacit, agreements as Friends and did what he liked.

Thus some Friends can’t imagine ceding their autonomy over their own vocal ministry to some committee or even to the meeting. And thus we don’t understand why other people would seek to do that. And these Friends would not want to worship in a community that would try to exercise that kind of control.

But this misunderstands the desire of the minister who feels a call, the nature of the call itself, and the true locus of authority in the faith and practice of Quaker ministry. It misunderstands the character of “authority” in the traditional Quaker approach to the life of the Spirit.

In our tradition, the Quaker minister does not cede authority over her or his ministry to some committee or to the meeting, but rather we seek to follow the Holy Spirit! In our tradition of Spirit-led ministry, the minister is but a channel, not a source, of the words spoken in meeting for worship. (By this I do not necessarily mean some kind of spiritualist channeling in which you are taken over by the message—though that does happen sometimes—but rather a kind of inner discipline of surrender in which we seek to get our ego out of the way and let the prompting we are feeling take us where it wants us to go.)

In our tradition of vocal ministry, the meeting and its worship and ministry committee do not seek authority for themselves, either. Rather, they recognize the same authority as the minister—G*d, Christ, the Spirit. . . . The committee sees its role, not as an organ of control, but rather as an organ of listening for G*d’s guidance akin to the listening exercised by the minister, but done at the level of the collective community.

We all know the feeling of fulfillment that comes from faithful service in vocal ministry. And most of us know, I hope, the thrilling sense of communion that comes in a covered meeting for worship, when we feel gathered in the Spirit. This is not ego at work. This is not corporate control. The faces of this authority are joy, and peace, and love.

This kind of practice is much more difficult than just listening to some appointed preacher or kneeling at a rail while a man places wafers in your mouth. Like anything else, to get good at this kind of practice—you have to practice. And it helps to have resources, teachers, mentors, and discipline in that practice. So many Friends recognize that a successful athlete must train and practice, a lot, and yet think the life of the Spirit can be deeply fulfilling and transforming just by sitting quietly in a group for an hour a week.

 

What good is it?

Friends who do not feel a calling to vocal ministry in the way I have been describing can easily imagine the dangers involved, but have a hard time imagining the benefits. Certainly, it won’t benefit them. They are likely to feel that, if they don’t need this kind of attention, then why would someone else? And for the meeting it would just mean more work and potentially, a slippery slope toward authoritarianism.

But I feel that it most certainly would benefit all the meeting’s worshippers, whether they think of their own vocal ministry as a calling or not, because it should deepen the quality of the vocal ministry they receive from their called ministers. That’s why the “called” minister seeks such support—to strengthen their faithfulness, deepen their ministry, and guide them away from such pitfalls as egotism.

Here it’s worth mentioning the very important role that vocal ministry plays in outreach. I think there are three main factors at work in determining whether newcomers come back to a meeting after their first couple of visits: the depth of the silence, an intangible, “transcendental” quality to the worship; the warmth and welcoming atmosphere of the meeting’s fellowship; and the quality of the vocal ministry. Not only is profound vocal ministry more likely to attract newcomers, but it is also more likely to attract a certain kind of newcomer—people who are seeking profound religious experience themselves.

Supporting the people who are speaking in meeting should nurture a virtuous cycle: deeper ministry calls in deeper people who then in turn bring deeper ministry—among other blessings to the meeting.

As for adding work to the handful of Friends who in every meeting are doing more than their share of the work, yes, that’s going to happen if meetings were to take up the practices I’m suggesting. But what are meetings for? Are we not here precisely to support each other in our spiritual lives? And if religious calling—to any form of ministry—is an important part of some Friends’ spiritual lives, as it most certainly is, then how could we deny them, especially when our tradition is especially strong and unique in this very regard? What could be more important than that?

 

Lack of exposure

I believe that the rather catastrophic erosion of our traditions around leadings and ministry in many of our meetings has created a slippery slope toward weaker meetings, shallower worship, and fear of practices that once made us stronger and deeper.

Friends approach their meetings with their leadings so infrequently now that these Friends now stand out, they attract attention. If it were happening to all of us all the time, we wouldn’t get nervous, we would get to work. If the meeting was practiced in its practice of eldership in both its nurturing of ministry and its protection of the worship, it would feel natural and good to see it happening.

Meanwhile, we don’t really know what to do when someone does have a leading because we have lost the practices that used to be commonplace among us. We don’t know how to form and conduct clearness committees for discerning leadings, we don’t record gifts in ministry, we don’t do much of anything to nurture each other’s gifts and ministries, we often don’t know how to write minutes of travel or service, and when we do, we often don’t know how to treat them. So we fall back into the world’s reactions as shaped by our liberal Quaker culture: Who are they to claim the Spirit’s leading when nobody else is doing it?

Or, more to the point, when I am not having that experience? They are no better a Friend than me!

This, I believe, is a common root of opposition to focused attention on some Friend’s ministry: that many Friends are not having this kind of experience themselves. So it’s easy to wonder whether such experiences might be either bogus self-delusion or a projection of ego; or at least, irrelevant to the wider life of the meeting.

But this lack of experience stands in front of hundreds of years of experience in our movement. I’m not sure when we began to lose this experience of calling to vocal ministry. I would guess that the trend started with the emergence of liberal Quaker culture around the turn of the twentieth century and really gained momentum after World War II.

But a decisive stroke would have fallen when a yearly meeting stopped recording ministers. The only yearly meeting I know well is New York, which still does record ministers—it still has meetings in the programmed, pastoral tradition following the reunion of the Orthodox and Hicksite yearly meetings in 1955. But even in New York Yearly Meeting, only the traditionally Orthodox meetings still record ministers; the liberal meetings do not and many, I think, would never; they just don’t think that way. And many Friends in NYYM bristle quite agitatedly when the practice comes up. So even in a yearly meeting that retains a tradition of recognizing the call to ministry, many Friends feel quite alienated from that experience.

 

It will drive people away

Friends who feel alienated from the claim to be called into vocal ministry, who are uncomfortable with the prospect of the meeting paying “undue” attention to the meeting’s vocal ministry and to the Friends who claim to be called, these Friends will naturally be concerned about how other Friends will feel. Friends who feel excluded in some way might naturally fear that others will feel that way, also, and they will be right. They also might fear that these practices will make newcomers nervous and drive them away, too—and they probably will be correct in this, also.

Just bringing the subject up causes conflict in a meeting that has Friends who are opposed to the practice, and I would guess that virtually every liberal Quaker meeting does have such Friends, so some level of conflict seems virtually inevitable. Why would you deliberately cause friction in your meeting?

This is a very compelling argument. In my experience, these fears are well grounded. I have seen these conflicts myself. I have seen Friends come to the point of standing in the way over them. It’s easy to imagine some very sensitive or opinionated Friends withdrawing from meeting life if they feel some kind of vocal ministry police state has been established. I suspect also that some newcomers would, in fact, be nervous about such a practice and seek some other religious community, especially since it would be easy to misunderstand what’s going on. Our practice of Spirit-led ministry is subtle, complex, and very different from the practice of most other churches, so it’s hard to explain well and it’s not that easy to understand, in the first place. Many seasoned Friends seem not to understand it.

So why would a meeting try to do such a thing?

 

The basic question

This gets to our core understanding of the Quaker faith itself. What are we here for?

For me, the essential question is what we mean by G*d or Spirit or the Divine—whatever you want to call it. Is “Spirit-led” just an idea to which we give lip service, or do we actually believe—because we have experienced it ourselves—that Something calls us into service, that Something can lead us, both as individuals through leadings and as a worshiping community in the covered meeting for worship.

If the answer is yes, I have felt the promptings of something that feels like not-myself, that feels bigger or deeper than my self, that somehow transcends my self; and yes, I have experienced a covered meeting in which as a meeting we were gathered into a profound communion of unity and joy in worship—if the answer is yes, then that is what we are trying to be faithful to. That is the Presence we seek. That is the experience that we seek to nurture and protect.

And do we imagine that this will be easy? That it will just come by itself all the time—or any time—without us paying any attention to it at all, either as individuals or as meetings?

The counter-argument is that most Friends who speak in meeting would say they are Spirit-led, and who’s to gainsay them? They might say to me, what you seek is already happening, so why get all complicated and intrusive about it.

Well, I certainly won’t claim that these Friends are not Spirit-led. All I can do is testify to my own experience, that I feel called and I want support, and I don’t want my experience to be gainsaid any more than Friends do who don’t feel called to vocal ministry want me to gainsay their experience.

 

Where to from here?

This feels like an impasse to me. It’s not very clear how to go forward. I see two things to do.

First, lets start a conversation. Yes, even that will bring conflict. But I refuse to let the fear of conflict quench the spirit of such an important question for our Religious Society. At the very least, we should be able to talk about it in gatherings that do not expect to take any action. Informal gatherings for conversation, gatherings in which we share our personal experience of vocal ministry, religious education programs on our traditions of vocal ministry, all without the expectation of action or change on anybody’s part—these, at least, should be possible. Or have we no courage at all?

Second, those who, like myself, have a concern for their own vocal ministry could meet informally, outside of any established meeting structures, just to think together about what we can do for each other. This would have to be “advertised”, so some Friends might get nervous when they hear that some cabal is forming, but in reality, this would be no different than a group of Friends concerned about fracking or racism or gun violence getting together to see what love could do about those concerns.

Care for vocal ministry is an extremely important part of our shared Quaker tradition, inherently, historically, “theologically”, and experientially. I for one would not deny or abandon such an essential aspect of our faith and practice without at least having some conversations.

If our meetings and their worship and ministry committees feel that they have no responsibility or role to play in the religious lives of Friends who feel called into vocal ministry, even though these Friends bring their ministry to the meeting regularly, what does that mean? What does it mean if a meeting has so abandoned its traditions as to leave its vocal ministers with no help at all, even when they have a calling that to them is a profound religious responsibility and might be fraught with a sense of great personal spiritual risk?

Recently in meeting for worship, my meeting had quite a bit of vocal ministry, and I myself felt a prompting, but my discernment process took longer than the time for worship allowed.

Two friends spoke who speak fairly often, and I speak fairly often, too, so there might have been three of us frequent speakers if time had allowed. My potential ministry started as a concern about this fact, that I speak fairly often, and so do some others, but also from the fact that I experience my vocal ministry as a calling. Thinking about this situation and my calling, then and since, has prompted this post and some queries.

The essential principle of the Quaker way, which we know from direct experience, is that each one of us can commune directly with the Divine. Flowing organically from this experience is our understanding and practice of Quaker ministry: we know—also experientially—that any one of us may be called into G*d’s service. The quintessential manifestation of Spirit-led service for Friends is our vocal ministry—that any one of us may be prompted by the Spirit to rise and speak in meeting for worship.

For several hundred years, Friends experienced vocal ministry as a calling—not as a series of individual and unrelated events in a person’s worship life, but as a relationship with both Christ and meeting that occupied and transformed one’s whole religious life—and thus one’s relationship with one’s meeting—in profound ways. The ministry that one offered on any given First Day was no isolated event in a random series, but rather a manifestation of these relationships with God and meeting, organically bound to one’s other vocal ministry by the sense of calling, by one’s practice of faithfulness to the call, and by the attention of the meeting.

This is why we had elders—vocal ministers needed ministering to. This is why some older meetinghouses have facing benches—so that the ministers could sit—and stand—where they faced the body so that Christ’s Word could be heard more easily.  Some meetinghouses even have a canopy over the facing benches, often with a plastered curve at the upper corner, to better reflect sound. This is why we have ministry and worship committees.

But most meetings no longer have elders, and leave their vocal ministers to struggle on their own with whatever sense of calling they might have. Most meetings no longer record gifts in ministry, and therefore have lost any direct relationship they might have with emerging ministers and their gifts. Most modern meetinghouses have no facing benches, and the meetings that do usually allow anyone to sit in them, while those who feel led to speak fairly often might be sitting anywhere in the meeting room. Most meetings no longer think of vocal ministry as being prompted by Jesus Christ or even by the Holy Spirit of the Trinity, so vocal ministry is no longer thought of as arising from relationship with either God or even with the meeting, and “faithfulness”, if it figures at all for the minister, is a matter mostly between one’s self and one’s self, not with some “Higher Power”. And most Friends and most meetings no longer think of vocal ministry as a calling.

Meanwhile, some of us find that we are led to speak fairly often. And some of us who are frequent speakers do feel that vocal ministry is for us a calling, and we are left to pursue this calling on our own, without any culture of eldership that could nurture and support our gifts and call.

I feel such a calling, and this raises for me a number of really important questions or concerns, not just for myself, but also for those others in my meeting who feel such a call, for the other frequent speakers who perhaps do not think of their ministry this way, and for the meeting itself as a worshipping body.

I think every meeting—and those Friends who have a concern for their own vocal ministry and/or for the vocal ministry in their meeting in general, especially members of our ministry and worship committees—should ask themselves these questions. These are my questions, in a kind of cascading logic tree:

1. Is the ministry and worship committee of the meeting—or anybody else, for that matter—paying attention proactively to the meeting’s vocal ministry, so that they notice Friends like myself who are speaking fairly often? By proactive attention I mean that someone on the committee might say, Steven Davison seems to be speaking fairly frequently in meeting for worship—I wonder whether he feels a calling to vocal ministry? And then the committee would discuss the matter.
   1. If the committee is paying this kind of attention, would they then approach me with something like the same question: We notice that you speak fairly often in meeting and we wonder whether you feel a calling to vocal ministry?
      1. If my answer is yes, do they then ask: Is there any way we can support your call? Is there any way that we can help you be faithful to it?
         1. If they offer support, I accept it. And then what forms might this support take? I personally would be interested in participating in a small, informal mutual support/discussion group with a concern for our vocal ministry, a group that would find its own direction as we were led. I might also be interested in a vocal ministry/spiritual journey friend—some individual person to be in touch with more intimately, as the two of us feel led. But another minister with a calling might have other needs or ideas.
         2. If I don’t accept their offer of support, well then, that settles that. The only role the committee might play in the future in my vocal ministry might be to act to protect the worship if my vocal ministry became some kind of obstacle to gathered worship.
      2. Suppose I answered no, I never have thought about my speaking as a calling. I imagine that many of our frequent speakers might say this. Would the committee then ask: Do you think it’s possible that you do have a call? Would you want any help with discerning a possible call—say, a clearness committee, or just someone to talk to about it?
         1. If I said yes, then we’re on to # 1.1.1.1.
         2. If I said no, I don’t want any of your attention, then we’re back to 1.1.1.2.
      3. If it appears that none of the frequent speakers in the meeting have a sense of calling, but the committee feels that this is a meaningful way to approach vocal ministry, would the committee then begin a program of religious education that would introduce the practice and help prepare a religious ecosystem in the meeting that would begin to foster and support callings to vocal ministry?
   2. If the committee is not paying this kind of proactive attention to the meeting’s experience of vocal ministry, then why not?
      1. Is it because no one on the committee considers the possibility that one might be called into vocal ministry (or any other ministry for that matter)? Has the committee ever discussed the matter?
      2. If someone on the committee does feel, as I do, that in fact some of us are called into vocal ministry as a calling, would such a committee member feel free to bring such a practice up to the committee? If not, why not?
      3. Do you imagine that there would there be resistance somewhere in the meeting to the ministry and worship committee proactively practicing this kind of attention and/or providing some eldership to those with a sense of calling?
      4. Has the meeting discussed vocal ministry enough as a body to give the committee some sense of what their practice should or at least could be?
      5. If the committee does not feel free on behalf of the meeting to serve the members who do feel a call to vocal ministry, could they still facilitate or support some more informal form of support?

If the answer to all of these questions is no, the committee and the meeting have no responsibility or role to play in the religious lives of Friends called into vocal ministry, even though they bring that ministry to the meeting regularly, what does that mean? What does it mean if a meeting has so abandoned its traditions as to leave its vocal ministers with no help at all, even when they have a calling that to them is a profound responsibility and is fraught, potentially, with great personal spiritual risk?