Vocal Ministry: A Garden, a School of the Spirit

October 6, 2025 § 1 Comment

Vocal ministry is the signature form of ministry in the Quaker way. As such, it is the classroom and laboratory in the school of the Spirit for Quaker ministry of all kinds. In our practice of vocal ministry, we can learn and experiment with all of the spiritual elements that make up the faith and practice of Quaker ministry more generally.

Listening for the Voice. The spiritual foundation of ministry is listening for the Voice that is calling us into service, an expectant attention to a possible anointing by the Spirit within us for service. Something there is within us that can hear that call, that can see that light, that can feel that prompt as a seed sprouting, pushing aside the soil of our soul and unfurling into the light of consciousness.

Nurturing the plant. Once you feel that baptism, then the attention changes into a form of waiting to see how the plant grows, combined with however we water such emerging shoots with deep contemplation. We nurture it, give it the fertilizer of this new kind of attention, until it matures and perhaps a flower blooms, a message, or a mission, that is taking more definite form.

Expectant waiting. Once the shoot, now a plant, has produced a blossom, a possible message, attention shifts again. We remain attentive and open, trying to hold onto the opening but not obstructing its development. Will we see it pollenated? Will new thoughts and feelings enter our regard and enrich it, so that some fruit begins to form? Or will the ministry of others bring some truth to the body ahead of our own that settles us back into silence? Or perhaps just the mystery of the deep silence itself will bring the fruit to maturity. If so, eventually a beam of Light shines upon it with clarity, a wind of the Spirit shakes the branch, and it falls ripe into your hand.

Discerning the Spirit. But we are not done yet. Another form of attention is required. Has it truly been pollenated by God? Is this fruit the fruit of the Spirit or of ego, or of a mind engaged but without a true spiritual transmission? Is it just for my own nourishment, or has it been given to me to serve to the meeting? If so, then, we become clear and out to the diners at the messianic banquet it goes.

Serving faithfully. Now, more deep listening even while speaking is required. If it has been given for the meeting, do I keep my ego off the plate in its delivery? Is my ministry truly service and savory in itself, or have I over-seasoned it? And do I know when the plate has been cleared, and I can sit down, having fulfilled my service?

Eldering. Once I’ve sat down, how do I feel—deeply at peace or quite energized, not in the satisfaction of self, but in some transcending sense of relief or of satisfaction? How does my Guide, the spirit of the christ, of the anointing, feel about my service? This inner reflection is just as subtle and delicate as all the other forms of spiritual attention we’ve exercised, just as reliant on experiment and practice. But we are not alone. What does the meeting think of my service? Is our meeting paying attention, deeply listening not just to the message but also to the Seed from which it grew? Is our meeting passing on the faith and tools for listening spirituality and ways to enter the depths of our being and listen? Is the meeting looking for opportunities to nurture those who are being called into service?

All of these forms of attention are versions of our listening spirituality, ways to attune ourselves to the movement of the Spirit within us and among us, to hear its message for us, as individuals and as meetings. Do we have teachers in this classroom? Have we given our ministers the tools they need to find their own faith and practices, so that they may grow in their service? And is the soil of our meeting’s garden fertile and ready to receive the new seeds that our ministry brings to us?

Worship in Spirit and Truth

October 3, 2025 § 2 Comments

In the weekly Bible study that I moderate (Thursdays, 3:30, via Zoom), we’ve been looking at the wonderful story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well in John chapter four. It includes a passage that is one of the scriptural foundations for worship in the manner of Friends, John 4:23–24, and, as very often happens, our exploration brought to me some openings. Here is that passage: 

The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

The structure of this saying suggests to me an identity or deep correspondence between spirit and truth. And I think a key to that relationship can be found in the word for truth in Greek, and also in another passage in John, John 14:15–17.

“Truth” in New Testament Greek is aletheia, in which the “a-“ is a prefix which we might render in English as “un-“. Lanthano, the Greek root word for aletheia means to hide. So “truth” is an un-covering, a revealing. Truth is revelation. A revelation of the Spirit of Truth, our Advocate, as in John 14:15–17:

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you [or among you].

So to “worship in spirit and truth” is to worship in the Spirit-Advocate whom God sends to us for revelation—continuing revelation, because that spirit is “forever”. The vehicle for revelation in our worship is our vocal ministry. So true worship is manifest in truly Spirit-led ministry.

This Spirit of Revelation is within us, and it is among us. It arises from within us as love, as vocal ministry, and as our presence in worship. It arises among us as it brings us into the Presence in our midst in worship that is gathered and covered by the Spirit. True worship is the gathered meeting.

To “worship in spirit and truth” is also to follow Jesus’s commandments, and “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12) So true fellowship in the Spirit is also a form of worship. It is worship in action, worship that continues after we have left the meeting room at close of formal worship, a continuing revealing of divine love.

The Murmuring of the Spirit Within

September 15, 2025 § Leave a comment

In my previous post, I talked about what it’s been like for feel a calling to vocal ministry, which is for me a new experience. I had originally planned to share the ministry I had brought to meeting the previous Sunday, and ended up talking about the experience instead.

So here is that vocal ministry for 14 Ninth Month, 2025:

Listen!

The voice of the Spirit within us is often just a murmur barely audible over the noise in our brains. 

It is calling out our true name, as Jesus did to Mary Magdalen in the garden; it is calling us back to the Garden with words of healing;

with words that can strengthen us in our troubles and comfort us in our sorrows;

with words to awaken us to the truth within us and to the beauty around us;

with words to guide us as we walk in the world, and correct us when we step off the path, and forgive us when we have stepped off the path;

with words to inspire us to acts of creative expression and to acts of courage;

with words to bring us into love, love of God, love of each other, love even of our enemies;

with words that lead us into fulfillment and joy.:

Vocal Ministry as a Calling

September 15, 2025 § 1 Comment

For years—for decades—I have been thinking and writing about and believing in the potential for vocal ministry as an ongoing calling rather than as an episodic prompting to speak that arises in the moment, and the kinds of support that such a calling should receive. Friends seem to have experienced vocal ministry this way, as a calling, for centuries until Friends in some quarters began laying down the practice of recording ministers in the early twentieth century.

In the meetings that no longer record gifts in ministry, and even in some that do, this sense of calling to vocal ministry seems to have left us, even though we recognize callings to other forms of ministry, like witness ministry for example, and even though vocal ministry is the signature form of ministry in the Quaker tradition. This is one of the most significant changes in all the history of Quaker religious culture, and it seems to have gone oddly unnoticed, at least in the Quaker circles I move in.

Meanwhile, although I’ve been basically obsessed with this matter for a long time, I have not felt such a calling myself—until recently. Now I do, and I want to share some of what that’s been like. 

I think I see a couple of reasons for my new sense of calling.

First, I have been working for months on a Pendle Hill Pamphlet submission on the meeting’s role in supporting vocal ministry and on what I call a culture of eldership more broadly. It’s now in Pendle Hill’s hands. So I’ve been steeping myself in our faith and practice of vocal ministry for quite a while and, more importantly, I’ve been diving deep into my own belief and experience of ministry in general, and vocal ministry in particular. It’s been a classic case of how Friend Richard Foster describes study as a spiritual discipline: Spirit-led study can awaken, deepen, and transform your faith and practice. 

Second, I’ve changed meetings, from Central Philadelphia Meeting, which is a large urban meeting with vocal ministry of varying degrees of “Spirit-led-ness”, to Princeton Meeting, a much smaller meeting with two meetings for worship. Friends in the earlier meeting, which I regularly attend, have often self-selected for more silence and less ministry than the later meeting often provides; completely silent meetings are not too uncommon. As for me, however, lately, for the first time in forty years as a Friend, I find myself speaking fairly often. I am usually one of only two or three ministers, as was the case last Sunday, for instance.

The discernment I’ve put into writing that essay on vocal ministry and its nurture has worked somehow, I think, with this surprising arising of my own ministry in practice, and awakened in me a sense of calling. I now do feel called to vocal ministry in the way I imagine ministers were in the elder days.

For a long time, I have felt a calling to a vocal ministry of teaching, keeping an ear open for opportunities to pass on our tradition. But this feels different. I do teach a bit in these new messages sometimes. But, even when that’s happening, it’s been secondary to messages of spiritual nurture. I can’t help but ladle out from our tradition or from the Bible, but I find myself trying primarily to quench spiritual thirst, rather than to pass on an element of our faith, practice, and experience.

How does this feel? It feels like I’m navigating a prophetic stream that is flowing inside of me, or through me. There is a sense of an abiding presence, of a continual inner river  of movement or momentum, prompting these messages, rather than a sense of a discreet personal Presence, like Jesus Christ, say, of a specific point source, let alone one with a name, as I imagine ministers experienced it in the elder days. But this presence does not feel vague or amorphous. It feels palpable and immediate. 

And it’s continuous. By that I mean that some mysterious underlying stream of influence seems to connect my messages over the weeks that separate them. It’s not a thematic connection or about the content; it’s not a feeling either; it’s something else, which I’m calling the spirit of the christ, by which I mean a spirit of anointing. For the Greek word christos means anointed. But I’ll leave that part of it for another post. 

Last Sunday, all this was especially palpable. I am nervous about how often I’m speaking, nervous on my own behalf, since the experience is still very new and feels fraught with spiritual risk. But I’m also nervous on behalf of the meeting and the other worshippers. I worry that I’m developing a reputation, and that others might be getting nervous, too, about where this is going and what I’m up to, especially as I am a relative newcomer bringing a new sensibility to the meeting in other ways besides this vocal ministry. And this frequent speaker Steven Davison is the only me they’ve known; they don’t know that I used to be a much more infrequent speaker. So I’ve been trying to be especially diligent in my discernment and even schooling myself not to speak, though I know I’m not supposed to do that either.

But right away last Sunday, I could feel that stream moving in me. I renewed my resolve to say in the boat and not look for a landing, and that was going quite well until fairly close to the end of the hour. Then a Friend spoke who I believe also has a calling to vocal ministry, though I’m not sure she feels that way. And as has happened several times in recent weeks, her message triggered something, and I found myself crafting a message that grew directly out of hers and the images she used. The Stream would not let me coast past that dock. So I landed and spoke.

And I do craft; my messages aren’t spontaneous speaking. Last Sunday, all my study and consideration came up and out and through into my words. I am a writer and a crafter and a student, and all that feels natural and correct to me; all that is a spiritual discipline for me. My “craftiness” is another source of worry for me, true, but these are the pipes I’ve been given. So an odd feeling of confidence or grounded-ness shares space with my worry in this boat.

And the meeting? I think our meeting—at least the earlier meeting for worship—has at least two other Friends who have what looks to me like a calling. I’ve spoken to one of them about this, and she seems willing to entertain the idea, at least. It feels to me like she’s experimenting with it.

But the wider meeting? I serve on Worship and Ministry committee and I’ve brought the idea of a calling to vocal ministry up somewhat obliquely, and my sense is that some members of the committee were a little unsure what I was talking about and others were ready to consider it more. I’m only just getting used to it myself as a personal reality rather than just as a subject for more abstract or impersonal study, thought, and sharing. So I guess we’ll all grow into this together.

Meanwhile, I started writing this post because I wanted to share the ministry I brought last Sunday, and I ended trying to articulate my experience instead. So in the next post, I want to share the actual ministry I brought last Sunday.

Stand Still in the Light

September 3, 2025 § 2 Comments

George Fox and early Friends had a phrase that defined a spiritual practice: Stand still in the Light. If we turn inward toward the Light of Christ within us, it will reveal to us our sins, our faults, our shadow side. If we stand still in the Light, it will burn away that shadow, it will bring forgiveness, moral strength, and peace. Rex Ambler has developed a more fully defined practice from his understanding of this usage among early Friends.

But the Light’s illumination also has a positive side, an outward looking and forward looking and expressive side that is companion to the inward looking, soul searching side. For the Light is also always trying to heal us, to inspire us, to renew us, to strengthen us, to guide us in our walking through life and lead us into fulfillment and joy. Standing still in the Light opens the doors of the heart and mind and soul so that God’s anointing spirit, the spirit of the christ, may enter, but also, after we have supped, we may walk out singing into the world.

Meetings and Ministry, Part 6: Some Queries

August 26, 2025 § Leave a comment

One of the things I like about the Friends Incubator for Public Ministry, which I posted about on July 27, is its focus on the relationship between the minister and her or his meeting.  In particular, both the minister and  her or his meeting participate in the fellowship program they are sponsoring.

As an aid for applicants to prepare for their interviews, the Incubator has put together a great set of queries.

I found them very well thought out and extremely useful in helping me reflect on my own ministries. I’ve listed them below, with omissions and revisions to make them more general in scope, more useful to ministers and whatever committee in their meeting has care of ministry (if there is one), and less specific to the Incubator’s needs in the fellowship discernment process. (A few days ago, they already had forty applicants for five fellowships.)

I offer these queries in the hope that others will find them useful, too, and that meetings will feel led to consider how they support their ministers:

Discernment & Leadings

  • What is your sense of leading or call?
  • How do you know when something is truly a spiritual leading? 
  • Are there specific ministries, concerns, or experiments that are newly unfolding for you?

Support & Accountability

  • Has your meeting helped to test or support your leading or call ? If so, how? If not, do you know why?
  • Who has offered you eldering or accompaniment in recent years? What has that looked like?
  • What kinds of support do you hope for in your meeting?
  • What is the spiritual and relational climate in your meeting right now?
  • How do dynamics like conflict, trauma, or trust (or lack of it) shape your ability to move forward in ministry—personally or communally?

World Quaker Day of Witness

August 14, 2025 § Leave a comment

Dear Readers

In the last couple of days, “a deep exercise hath attended my mind,” as John Woolman wrote in his Journal, and I am hoping that you my readers will share this leading with your meetings and with other Friends, if you feel so led yourself.

This is my leading: to invite all Friends and all Quaker meetings and institutions in North America to discern whether they might be led, as individuals, or groups, or meetings, to raise their voices in action against the anti-democratic movement that is rising in America and around the world, to do this on October 5, which is World Quaker Day. I imagine a host of local actions in whatever manner local meetings and Friends feel led.

World Quaker Day is an effort being organized by Friends World Committee for Consultation, which I think they do more or less annually. This year’s theme for World Quaker Day is Love Your Neighbor, which seems a very apt handle to me, and FWCC is already focused on these issues.

Here are my ideas for what to do and how to do it. This is just my personal statement of exercise and of my own intentions for your consideration:

  1. Let’s gather, if we feel so led, on October 5 in the largest numbers we can, in the most public places we can manage, preferably in front of a local office of one of the anti-democratic organizations, like your county or state Republican Party headquarters, or an ICE detention facility, or an Avela airport. And bring along your families and whatever friends and fellow-travelers are willing to join you,
  2. Contact other Friends. Contact at least all the meetings in your region and whoever handles meeting and media communications in your yearly meeting to invite them to this worldwide witness.
  3. Send public notices of your intended action to
    1. as many relevant media sources as possible, and 
    2. using whatever social media networks you are active in, and 
    3. to your representatives in local, state, and federal government.
  4. Coordinate with as many other resistance movement groups as you can identify, especially those in your regions and neighborhoods, to let them know what you’re up to, to invite them to join you, and to help broadcast your intended actions in their own networks.
  5. Challenge any specific organizations and political leaders in your region who support this turn toward tyranny to meet with you and then challenge their policies and actions on religious and moral grounds; see below.
  6. Minutes of conscience. Encourage your meeting to write and approve a minute of conscience. I realize that time for that is very short and Quaker discernment of this kind often takes a good while. But this is a classic form of Quaker discernment and witness, and it might be worth a try. It will at least start a conversation. And it can still be publicized after October 5, whenever it is approved. You can download a minute that I have drafted here, which says what I would say in such a message.
  7. But act! For God’s sake—and I mean that literally—don’t wait to get approval from the meeting before you act; you don’t need a minute from the meeting to act as individual Friends; you don’t even need a minute to act as a group of Friends. The meeting itself will need a sense of the meeting to act as a meeting. But the meeting doesn’t need to fuss over the wording of a specific minute of conscience in order to act collectively. It could simply minute support for any members and attenders who choose to show up that day. Or it could just spread the word. And for God’s sake, also, don’t write a minute that any progressive social change nonprofit could have written. Rather . . .
  8. Use the unique Quaker understanding of the testimonial life in your minute, in your communications, on your placards, etc. We are mystics and activists. We are practical and witness-oriented mystics who know that the Holy Spirit calls us to address the sufferings of the least of us and to speak truth to power, as individuals and as a people of God. We do not witness to the truth because we have some testimony to which we should adhere or at least aspire. We witness because we are led to do so by the Holy Spirit. Therefore . . .
  9. Use explicitly religious and moral language and arguments to challenge the irreligious and immoral acts of the emerging American anti-democratic project and leave to the secular social change nonprofits the secular worldview, arguments, and vocabularies that they already do so well, and which we so often borrow from them, while we so often abandon our own rich religious tradition. Let them borrow a moral argument from us for a change. Also . . .
  10. Please quote the Bible in the hope that your language will appeal directly to the faith and moral compass of the oppressors to whom we’re speaking, assuming that they do have a faith and a moral compass; most of them probably do, somewhere in a closet of their heart. Also, a very large number of them are Christian nationalists who have abandoned the gospel of Jesus. They deserve to hear the gospel truth and they need to repent, to turn their actions around. We should not be afraid to challenge the religious oppressors and their churches and institutions in their own language and on their own ground, as we did in the 1650s. We are the ones who know God’s true message of love in this time, are we not? So most important: 
  11. Live the gospel of love yourselves. Do not be afraid to be in their face with the truth, but speak, write, and act in love to the degree that you are able, and in an invitational mode of engagement. 

This is the most important thing. I want us to be everywhere. I want us to be loud and unavoidable, and on the evening news. I want to be on Rachel Maddow’s show; she has been reviewing resistance efforts around the country every week for weeks. I want these people to see us and hear us and either answer us or reveal their cowardice and shame. But this is our third way: not their way of oppression through force; not the revolutionary’s way of resistance to oppression through force. but a third way of resistance in love and truth.

I want the World Quaker Day of Witness to be a witness to truth and divine love, not just in our message, but more importantly, in our demeanor. I want to appeal to those whom we address, and to the people who might see us on the evening news. I want all of them to know our righteous anger, but also to feel our love and concern—the two can exist side by side. And I want them to hear our truth, a truth that we believe comes from the Holy Spirit, from God’s love. I want them to hear it loud and clear, clear to the Light in their conscience. I want to answer that of God within them.

Meetings and Ministry, Part 5: Transferring Travel Minutes and Ministry Support Groups

August 7, 2025 § 1 Comment

As I said in a previous post, I have a minute of travel for the fostering of the gathered meeting among Friends, originally adopted by Central Philadelphia Meeting (CPM), and a spiritual support group that is nominally under the care of CPM’s Gifts and Leadings Committee. When I transferred my membership to Princeton Meeting in New Jersey, it wasn’t clear to anybody what to do with the minute or the support group. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice offers no help, so the two meetings have had to work it out on their own. Having just been through that process, I have some ideas about how to handle the transfer of minutes of travel and service and of care for the minister.

Review of discernment. Before writing a letter of transfer, I feel that the transferring member’s meeting should consider whether the Friend they are writing the letter for is still under the leading that originally led to the minute and whether she or he has been faithful in its service. If so, the meeting should recommend in its letter of transfer that the new meeting conduct some kind of discernment itself regarding the minute and any spiritual support group that the transferring member’s meeting has convened. 

The minute. Regarding the minute, the new meeting could do one of three things: 

  • adopt the minute as it is on the recommendation of the transferring meeting; 
  • invite the new member to meet with worship and ministry or some committee to determine next steps; or 
  • convene its own clearness committee for discernment of a leading, along the lines laid out in Patricia Loring’s Pendle Hill Pamphlet Spiritual Discernment, #305.

In my case, we followed the second option, which worked fine. I met with Princeton Meeting’s Care and Concerns Committee (its pastoral care committee), and they crafted a revised version of the minute and recommended it to the meeting, which then approved it. This process was simple and it worked well.

The spiritual support group. Regarding any spiritual support group or anchor committee that may have been formed by the transferring meeting to support the minister and her or his ministry, the new meeting’s actions would depend on circumstances. The basic principle should be this, though: that the support committee should at least have members from the minister’s new worshipping community and it should probably be under the new meeting’s care.

In my situation, because the members of my committee are from different meetings and regions and even continents, and because all of the members of my current support committee want to remain on the committee, and because we meet on Zoom, my current committee is staying in place. So we have asked Princeton Meeting to name at least two new members to the committee, so that my support and my support committee will have a direct relationship with my worshipping community. We have yet to work out whether Princeton Meeting will formally take the committee under its care, but as I said, I think that that would be rightly ordered.

However, if the support committee has been meeting in person, and/or some of its members don’t want to continue serving, then the new meeting and any committee members that do want to continue serving will have to decide whether to start meeting virtually. Or, if the new meeting feels that in-person meeting is important, it might want to convene its own all new committee. Ultimately, care of the ministry is now up to the new 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.

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:

  1. the minister’s name;
  2. the minister’s meeting;
  3. a descriptive, like “minute of travel”; and
  4. 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:

  1. Print the multi-page pdf file of the minute;
  2. 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;
  3. re-scan the whole document, creating a new pdf file with the same filename; and
  4. 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

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