It seems as if Friends are in the mid­dle of a big shift, fast-forwarded by Covid lock­downs but part of a larg­er trend.

A few weeks ago at a Quak­er meet­ing, I was giv­en a print­out for a Quak­erism class being spon­sored by anoth­er meet­ing. Noth­ing remark­able, except that the meet­ing is thou­sands of miles away and the work­shop leader thou­sands of miles from the meet­ing. Obvi­ous­ly this is all hap­pen­ing by Zoom. I’m glad to see Friends hun­gry to go deep­er into their faith, but the top­ic is one I’ve taught mul­ti­ple times and could teach in-person at any near­by meeting.

I appre­ci­ate our new Zoom oppor­tu­ni­ties. I have a busy sched­ule and love that I have the chance to attend inter­est­ing work­shops and meet Friends with­out leav­ing my house (to be hon­est, I’ve occa­sion­al­ly run errands to the gro­cery store or a kid drop-off while lis­ten­ing to a live Quak­er talk).

But what hap­pens when our pri­ma­ry Quak­er expe­ri­ence is with peo­ple who aren’t local? It’s increas­ing­ly easy to be an “at large” Friend liv­ing a busy life of dai­ly Quak­er wor­ship and far-flung work­shops all on Zoom. This is great for Friends at a dis­tance from local Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties. But what becomes of our meet­ing com­mu­ni­ties as this trend accel­er­ates? How do our ties to spe­cif­ic neigh­bor­hoods change? And what does it mean if the peo­ple in local meet­ings stop being asked to teach because of the easy acces­si­bil­i­ty of nation­al­ly known teach­ers via Zoom? Will Friends who would have been encour­aged to teach at the local lev­el be rel­e­gat­ed to the role of con­sumer? Will Quak­er lead­er­ship becomes even more con­cen­trat­ed and nation­al — indi­vid­u­als with per­son­al brands and followers?

I sus­pect the inter­est and shifts reflects needs that have been unmet by our cur­rent struc­tures. Maybe our local meet­ings aren’t that nur­tur­ing or will­ing to go deep. Many aren’t set up well for busy par­ents like myself, or for those with lim­it­ed trans­porta­tion. In the U.S. alone mil­lions of peo­ple are nowhere near a Friends congregation.