Ministry for and to Different Conditions
October 25, 2025 § Leave a comment
I’ve just finished reading Brian Drayton’s Messages to Meetings, a book of epistles to Quaker meetings and gatherings “written originally out of a motion of love and with the intent that they might help some readers on their path towards the more abundant life that Christ promises and makes possible.”
The book is a wonderful source of spiritual nurture, for both readers and their meetings. Parts of this book spoke to me so deeply that I want to share them more widely here. I’m going to pass on more from this book in future posts.
For instance, in letter number four, titled: “As we reflect on our meetings’ spiritual condition,” Brian writes about “Ministry for and to different conditions” in ways I found very useful as I work with my own meeting to bring my ministries into the life of the meeting. The entire letter, and especially the last paragraph, are an appeal to our meetings to be more proactive in our nurture of ministry, which resonates with my own calling to have more “fire in the Spirit” in the nurture of ministry in our meetings.
I quote Brian in full (page 16–18):
The ministry of the meeting, which includes the words spoken and the silent ministry, and the words or deeds of service or prayer with individuals or groups at other times, is rooted in a listening, loving focus on the actual people gathered and on the One in whom they are gathered.
As you consider the meeting’s condition this year, Friends, listen for the conditions within the community in compassion and honesty. Three conditions that have come particucarly to mind in my exercise are these: the “young” members, of any age, who are new to Friends; the “established”; and the “well-grown in the truth.” Each of these condition has characteristics that may require particular kinds of service to help them forward, and it is good sometimes for a meeting to reflect on whether the ministry is offering what it can under God’s guidance.
In the “young,” that is, those new to Friends, there may be exploration, enthusiasm, receptivity, and a need and desire to learn the foundations of the Quaker path. They need guidance, but not only instruction. They have come to you in curiosity, perhaps, but under that is a restlessness or inquiry, and it is through the witness of your acts and life joined with words of explanation and welcome that they will be helped to see that among you they can find a living path. Inquirers need to feel our humility, but also where we are touched with fire and the Holy Spirit.
In “established Friends,” there is a growth of discipline and order, a maturing exploration of and use of gifts, and a habit of bearing responsibility for the life and support of the meeting. But in this period, there can be an engagement with contradictions and continued mysteries in the understanding of Quakerism. Faith and discoveries that were nourishing and inspiring in the first days among Friends may feel stale or insufficient for the demands now encountered. New resources and opportunities are needed if such active Freinds are to rediscover their spiritual childhood—the place of wonder and gratitude, openness and receptivity. Fire and the Spirit!
Those well grown in the truth have a tested understanding of the value of the diverse paths people can follow as well as the dangers of a mere celebration of diversity. They have an understanding of the pirtfalls and dangers of life in the Spirit, for individuals and meetings, and a sympathy for questioning and doubt. Their expeirence has brought a reliance on the workings of the Lord in many situations, and they have learned to wait and listen; they have seen (or others have seen in them) a growth in tenderness, courage, freedom, and discipline in love and truth. At this stage, though, there are fresh challenges that come from habits long established, the same problems and challenges returning over and over. They can read the indicators of the meeting’s long-term good or ill health and stability, its growth and depth; caring deeply, they can yet feel taken for granted and that their own seeking and spiritual thirst is not seen.
Fire and the Spirit—the baptism is needed at every stage!
People in each of these stages of their spiritual life offer ministry rooted in the questions and findings of that condition, but each stage also has its temptations and problems. In each stage there are times of dryness, or misplaced complacency, of frustration, and of hope. Everyone needs to receive nurture and love, in meeting and out, if their gifts and strengths are to be confirmed and to grow. All need exhortation or inspiration, instruction, reasurance, consolation, gratitude, and challenge—accompaniment in the Spirit as individuals trying to walk in the Light.
“That of God”—Again
October 17, 2025 § 6 Comments
For decades, I have complained about Friends claiming that “that of God in everyone” is our central tenet of faith and that it’s to be understood as a divine spark of some kind, something inherent in the human that partakes somehow of God’s being or nature. I’ve heard Friends equate it with the “image of God” in which Genesis one says we were created.
For all these years, I have accepted Lewis Benson’s argument that this usage of the phrase was introduced by Rufus Jones and is a misunderstanding of Fox’s use of the phrase. Benson claims that Fox used the phrase almost always in the pastoral sense implied in the quote that we use as our source for it in an epistle which he includes in his journal, that Fox did not use the phrase in the doctrinal sense that is common among us nowadays, usually stated as “there is that of God in everyone.
Then, in Michael Langford’s Becoming fully human: Writings on Quakers and Christian thought, I find this quote from Fox:
None that is upon the earth shall ever come to God but as they come to that of God in them, the light that God has enlightened them with; and that is it which must guide everyone’s mind up to God, and to wait upon to receive the spirit from God. . . . That which is of God within everyone is that which brings them together to wait upon God, which brings them into unity, which joins their hearts together up to God (Doctrinals, Works, Vol. 4, pp. 131–132; page 117 in Becoming fully human)
This quote demonstrates how complex and fluid Fox’s thinking was, how hard it is to pin down what he actually means, or at least what kind of coherent theology we might reconstruct from his truly prolific output. Fox is edging right up to Jones here. Or to put it in chrono-theological order, you can see how Jones might see in this passage some foundation for his own understanding. And there it is in one of Fox’s doctrinal works.
However, Fox is still giving “that of God in everyone” a pastoral role; that is, it brings us to God. And he equates “that of God” with the light of John 1:9, “the true light, which enlightens everyone,” which is the Word, which is Christ. So it looks like this is an Inward Light, because God has given it/him to us for our enlightenment. It’s not inherently in-dwelling; it was given to us.
On the other hand, however, “that which is of God within us”—that looks more like an Inner Light, an indwelling light that might in fact be inherent, since it is within us and everyone has it. It looks like Fox is having it both ways.
My sense from reading Jones’s books on mysticism is that he was some kind of neo-neoplatonist, in the sense that neoplatonism believes that a universal divine spark is what brings us to God, just as Fox is saying here. God’s spark seeks to return to its origin-home in God; this is the source of the religious/mystical impulse. Likewise, God reaches us inwardly by reaching this God-seeking God’s-self within us, and that divine spark recognizes and receives God when God comes. In mystical union, the divine spark has finally come home. This is the dynamic of mystical union experience.
Jones believed that this universally possible God-to-God’s spark connection is what lies behind all mystical experience, whatever the mystical tradition. And Jones is the one who taught us to think of Quakerism as “practical mysticism”. All of this is very close to what Fox seems to be saying in this quote.
Fox’s sublime innovation is to equate all this—the pastoral “bringing” to God, the doctrinal dwelling “within” us—with the light of Christ, the enlightening Word. “God” in this dynamic is Christ speaking to our condition, penetrating the sheath of sin and ignorance around our soul with the Light, seeking to reach that of God within us, which yearns for him.
“That of God” yearns for God, Fox implies in the quote we always use for this phrase. In that epistle, once we have done the inner work of our own transformation in the light of Christ ourselves, then we can answer that of God in others. That of God within us is calling out in the darkness, and the Light answers with the Word.
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:
- 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,
- 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.
- Send public notices of your intended action to
- as many relevant media sources as possible, and
- using whatever social media networks you are active in, and
- to your representatives in local, state, and federal government.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 . . .
- 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 . . .
- 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 . . .
- 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:
- 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.
Through the Flaming Sword 