A look at the Vineyard Movement’s Quaker roots:
When it comes to Spirit-attentive worship and ministry, the Vineyard manifests Quaker spirituality in a way that is faithful to the Evangelical tradition, but truly mystical, and of course deeply Quaker. They live out a Quakerism many of today’s American Quakers, both Liberal and Orthodox, would find laughable, backwards. George Fox, on the other hand, may get it.
Where does new ministry come from?
It is through prophecy, through continuing revelation, that the Religious Society of Friends moves forward into God’s next work for us. And we very often get our first inkling of that new truth from someone’s vocal ministry, in a meeting for worship, or a meeting for worship with attention to the life of the meeting, or in a consultation or Triennial or world gathering or FGC Gathering,
The Importance of Vocal Ministry: Prophecy and Continuing Revelation
Study turns to something more spontaneous after a failed computer save:
Since that Sunday worship, I have found myself more inclined and responsive to leadings to share vocal ministry out of Silence. While I still prepare diligently when occasions to plan to preach arise, melding scholarship, daily life, and spirit over time, I am more sensitive and responsive to those inner leadings and the Spirit, from which ALL vocal and non-verbal ministry are born and enlivened.
http://www.nyym.org/content/my-experience-sharing-vocal-ministry
A fishy story:
This isn’t your ordinary fish story, though it is incredible. Nevertheless, there’s a lesson about reality being taught here, a lesson to be confirmed by experience alone. For the experience goes well beyond that which we have learned is possible in nature, just like the story itself.
http://www.quakerquaker.org/xn/detail/2360685:BlogPost:161406
From the new clerk of New York Yearly Meeting:
If all the world interacted on the basis of consensus, the world would be a far better place. But if all the world functioned on the basis of sense of the meeting, as Friends do, the world would be a very different place altogether. Everyone would have full responsibility to find the best way forward for everyone.
http://www.nyym.org/content/what-is-clerking-consciousness
Steven Davison urges us to rethink annover-reliance on committees:
This dynamic tends to quench the spirit behind new leadings. All of our testimonies, and continuing revelation in general, start out as new — that is, prophetic; that is, Spirit-led — concerns and leadings. They deserve Spirit-led attention and eldership, not a bucket of cold water.
http://www.nyym.org/content/spirit-led-structures-quaker-meetings
These are numbers of Friends in Canada and the United States (including Alaska, which was tallied separately prior to statehood) compiled from Friends World Committee for Consultation. I dug up these numbers from three sources:
Friends in the U.S. and Canada:
Friends in Americas (North, Middle South):
You could write a book about what these numbers do and don’t mean. The most glaring omission is that they don’t show the geographic or theological shifts that took place over time. Midwestern Friends have taken a disproportionate hit, for example, and many Philadelphia-area meetings are much smaller than they were a century ago, while independent meetings in the West and/or adjacent to colleges grew like wildflowers mid-century.
My hot take on this is that the reunification work of the early 20th century gave Quakers a solid identity and coherent structure. Howard Brinton’s Friends for 300 Years from 1952 is a remarkably confident document. In many areas, Friends became a socially-progressive, participatory religious movement that was attractive to people tired of more creedal formulations; mixed-religious parents came looking for First-day school community for their children. Quakers’ social justice work was very visible and attracted a number of new people during the antiwar 1960s1 and the alternative community groundswell of the 1970s. These various newcomers offset the decline of what we might call “ethnic” Friends in rural meetings through this period.
That magic balance of Quaker culture matching the zeitgeist of religious seekers disappeared somewhere back in the 1980s. We aren’t on forefront of any current spiritual trends. While there are bright spots and exceptions 2, we’ve largely struggled with retaining newcomers in recent years. We’re losing our elders more quickly than we’re bringing in new people, hence the forty percent drop since the high water of 1987. The small 2017 uptick might be a good sign3 or it may be a statistical phantom.4 I’ll be curious to see what the next census brings.
2023 Update: I seem to have mixed up some numbers in my original 2018 post and have corrected them above.
From QuakerSpeak and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a look at what attracts newcomers to Friends:
I very much like for example the determination that says somebody believes in peace and has the guts to say in a time of war, “No, I can’t fight. I can’t do that.” I think that takes a lot.
I think it had a lot to do with the people. There wasn’t really that hierarchy, where there was someone talking down to us, but we could really share ideas and we could all learn from each other, and I really appreciated those ideals.
http://quakerspeak.com/what-attracts-newcomers-to-quaker-meeting/