What is the Religious Society of Friends for? — Support of Ministry
November 30, 2013 § 2 Comments
The soul of Quaker spirituality is the faith and practice of Quaker ministry:
the faith . . .
- that all of life is sacramental, a vehicle for grace;
- that the Inward Teacher is always with us, seeking to guide us throughout our lives and throughout each day, in matters from the significant to the mundane; and
- that each of us is called on occasion into special service;
the individual practice of . . .
- always turning toward the Light, seeking its guidance in our affairs; of
- always listening for the call to special ministry; of
- living lives that will allow us to answer the call when it comes; and then of
- answering the call to service faithfully, to the measure we are able;
the corporate practice, as a meeting, of . . .
- helping members and attenders with discernment regarding their ministry—is the prompting a true one, is it of the Spirit? and
- with clarity—helping them move past an unformed sense of calling into clarity about the work they are called to do; and
- providing support and oversight for the ministry and the minister, once the service has begun.
The faith and practice of Quaker ministry is a unique, tested, and powerful Way of approaching one’s life. It is a tremendous gift that we can offer to our members and attenders, and indeed to the world.
So what is the Religious Society of Friends for regarding our distinctive faith and practice of ministry? What is the purpose of a Quaker meeting in respect to Quaker ministry? :
One of the purposes of the Quaker meeting is to present the path of Quaker ministry clearly to our members and to equip them to follow it.
To fulfill its corporate calling, a meeting has to be equipped itself to serve its members in their ministry. A meeting should be ready and able to . . .
- teach this Way of discipleship, so that all in the meeting know what it is and how it works;
- provide resources and guidance on Quaker ministry—books, internal programs and access to outside programs and resources, and, especially, eldering—mentoring by Friends who are seasoned in the Way themselves;
- conduct clearness committees, both clearness committees for discernment, and committees for clearness about life decisions—two different forms that are convened and conducted differently;
- be ready as a body to provide support to its ministers, in the form of
- minutes of travel and/or service;
- support committees;
- oversight committees, if appropriate; that is, the willingness to take responsibility for accountability;
- and release of its ministers—a willingness to unburden the minister from those obstacles that might stand in the way of answering the call; these days, this often means financial aid; and
- readiness to engage gospel order, if appropriate—to take the ministry to your regional and/or yearly meeting, if it is clear that the work will take the minister outside of local Quaker circles and/or requires more resources than the local meeting can provide.
As I said, I think that the faith and practice of Quaker ministry is the very soul of Quaker spirituality. Consequently, I think that few things could me more important to the life of a meeting than being able to support their members and attenders in their ministry.
Therefore, I think meetings (presumably starting with their committees on ministry and worship, whatever they are called) should use something like this outline as a kind of checklist to determine whether they are up to speed.
- Do you need to develop your capabilities in some of these areas?
- Do you have Friends who can teach this stuff? Are you providing the religious education this practice requires?
- Do you know how to conduct clearness committees?
- Are you paying attention to help members recognize their calls to ministry, since very often we find ourselves moving before we even know consciously what’s happening, especially if we are not familiar with the faith and practice of Quaker ministry?
- Are you helping members who are already performing some service in the meeting or in the world to recognize this work as Spirit-led ministry? (How often have we discovered that one of our members is visiting a nursing home once a week, or whatever, and we didn’t know, and they had never thought of it as religious service, or as Spirit-led, or thought to tell anyone or to take it to the meeting in this way!)
- Does your meeting think of vocal ministry as religious service, rather than just the sharing of messages, as a call to ministry (especially for those who speak often) that should be developed, supported, and held accountable?
The Gift of Healing
August 3, 2013 § 2 Comments
Several years ago I studied the passages in Paul’s letters on gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12–14, Romans 12, and Ephesians 4) and developed a workshop in which Friends mapped Paul’s extensive list to their own Quaker experience, expanded it to include things he had not considered, and most important, helped each other identify each other’s gifts.
Paul seems to think that the gift of prophecy is the most important, but I came away from my research and the experience of doing the workshop feeling that the gift of healing was the most important. It is the most concrete of them all, it does the most to relieve real suffering in the world.
At the time, I lamented to myself that the gift of healing was also the most rare these days. But I was wrong. The gift of healing is alive and well among Friends; at least it is in New York Yearly Meeting and certainly at the annual Gathering of Friends General Conference, I have attended the Gathering only once and only for one day, but I am well-acquainted with New York Yearly Meeting.
New York Yearly Meeting’s annual Summer Sessions are held at a historic YMCA resort on Lake George. The campus is large and beautiful and it has several pavilions, single-story buildings about twenty feet on a side, with glass windows all around and a sizable porch. For several years, NYYM Friends have used one of these pavilions as a healing center, modeled, I believe, on the healing center at the FGC Gatherings, and the place is well-used.
Healers practicing a wide range of healing modalities sign up for time slots that fit their schedule and clients either sign up or just show up. Every time I passed the healing center, the place was abuzz. I have never gone myself, either as a healer or a client. One day . . .
Moreover, conferences held at the Yearly Meeting’s conference center, Powell House, very often have someone who offers healing work during the breaks and rest times. Powell House has also offered conferences for healing, regularly bringing in John Calvi, and occasionally hosting weekends intended for the deepening and sharing of this wonderful gift among our members.
As a community, New York Yearly Meeting welcomes and nurtures the gift of healing.
I have not heard of any miraculous cures. But Friends are serving because they believe they are doing some good and Friends are going because they believe they are being done some good. And all of this is being done in the spirit of Quaker ministry. I think it’s a great blessing.
It is a blessing not just because people are being healed. One of the greatest blessings in my own religious life as a Friend has been to live and worship in a community that recognizes spiritual gifts and that provides opportunities to people who have a call to ministry to use their gifts and pursue their call. In its gatherings, New York Yearly Meeting does a pretty good job of this.
I am not so sure about our local meetings, though. I am afraid that many of our local meetings do not even think about spiritual gifts, let alone actively work to identify them in their members and attenders and then help to deepen them and support the ministries that arise from them. For this, meetings would need elders, people equipped to do this work of service to ministers, and a vital culture of eldership that supports the naming and nurture of spiritual gifts and ministries.
How many meetings have healers amongst them? Most meetings, I would guess, at least in the Liberal branch that I know fairly well, since we have so many members in medicine and the social services. Do we encourage our nurses and doctors, our therapists and social workers, to see their work in the world as a ministry, as service to G*d (whatever that means to them)? Do we make ourselves available to them for support? Do we help to make their services available to our own membership?
I know that my meeting’s pastoral care committee works with the therapists and social workers in our meeting—they serve on the committee and they serve as consultants when the committee needs advice. I’m not sure whether they think it’s professionally advisable to offer services to the membership, because we all know one another so well. But Philadelphia Yearly Meeting maintains a roster of such Friends on whom my meeting or a member could call at need. (I’m a member of Yardley Meeting in Philadelphia YM; I don’t think New York Yearly Meeting has such a list or provides this service.)
What about your local meeting? or your regional or yearly meeting? How fares the gift of healing among you?
Funding Quaker Ministry
January 25, 2013 § 8 Comments
A couple of months ago I learned of an idea that I believe is a breakthrough of continuing revelation on a par with the clearness committee. It’s a proposal by Friends Vonn New of Bulls Head-Oswego Meeting in New York Yearly Meeting and Viv Hawkins of Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting for funding Quaker ministry through a crowd-sourcing platform modeled on Kickstarter.
Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects in which creatives publish what amounts to a grant proposal for their project and visitors to the website then pledge whatever support they want. If the project reaches the funding goal set by its creator, then the donors’ credit cards are charged and the creator is off and running.
Vonn and Viv’s idea (I call it QuakeStarter) is to do the same for Quaker ministers. Someone led by the Spirit into some form of service describes on the website what they want to do, documents the discernment they have received so far, and declares the amount and kind of support they need to be faithful to their leading. Friends (and others) can then go to the website and pledge support for the ministry. If the minister’s request for pledges reaches its goal, then the cards get charged and the service is secured.
When this idea takes off, we will undoubtedly discover unexpected issues and see unintended consequences, as is always the case with Quaker ministry. But won’t that be an adventure!
When I learned about this idea, I was in the process of editing an issue of Spark, New York Yearly Meeting’s newsletter, with the theme of Cultivating Gifts in Ministry. I invited them to write an article for Spark and they did. Click here to read “Ministry & Money: A Proposal” on the NYYM website to get a better idea of their goals and rationale.
They dedicate much of the article to rationale—why such a tool is needed. It boils down to the fact that important ministry is languishing because the ministers can’t afford to pursue it. Most of the ministers they mention are young adults. One hears a lot these days about how important it is to encourage young adult Friends, while many of our institutions are pulling back on the funding that supports this sort of work. Viv and Vonn’s idea is a creative way to do something that we all agree is important independently of the failing resources of our established institutions.
Catch-22: Viv and Vonn need support themselves to get this project off the ground. Vonn is a web developer, so they have what it takes to pull it off. They end their article with this appeal, which I wholeheartedly support:
Vonn New and Viv Hawkins seek others who are interested in this project, whether that be Friends with ministries under the care of a meeting seeking support, individuals or faith communities seeking the services of a ministry, people seeking to provide support to ministries, Friends with expertise in funding and governance, or funders for this particular project. Please contact us at friendviv@gmail.com or vonn.new@gmail.com.
I hope my readers will consider spreading the word about this idea and about offering some support of their own.
Through the Flaming Sword 