One of the dis­tinc­tive qual­i­ties of my Friends meet­ing¹ is that there is a lot of vocal min­istry, espe­cial­ly for such a small group (we aver­age about 10 – 20 peo­ple depend­ing on time of year and sched­ules). It’s does­n’t feel “pop­corny,” the mild­ly derog­a­tive Quak­er term for mes­sages that come one after anoth­er in rapid fire suc­ces­sion. There is ample time left between mes­sages and they often have the kind of unin­ten­tion­al syn­chronic­i­ty that is one sign of “a gath­ered meeting.”

There are occa­sion­al Sun­days in which we’ll spend the whole wor­ship in silence. It’s usu­al­ly quite sweet. When we break wor­ship, our clerk will acknowl­edge that spe­cial feel­ing but then say with a gen­tle defin­i­tive­ness that Quak­er wor­ship should always have min­istry and that there should always be some­thing from the Bible.² What our clerk has done is set the expec­ta­tion that min­istry is nor­mal and easy. We’ve had wor­ship in which half of the peo­ple gath­ered have spoken.

I’ve been try­ing to under­stand this approach. See, I’m some­one who tends to over­think min­istry and I’m not alone. Some Friends have gone to the trou­ble to cre­ate elab­o­rate flow charts, a multi-step check­list to deter­mine whether a mes­sage ris­ing in our hearts is one we should speak aloud. Seri­ous­ly, how is any­one expect­ed to get to “Speak!” in under an hour’s time?

There’s per­haps even more pres­sure in Friends meet­ing with pro­gram­ming. There’s often the expec­ta­tion that the min­is­ter will be trained and cre­den­tialed and their ser­mons con­struct­ed the week before over many hours. I appre­ci­ate this sort of lec­ture for­mat and get a lot from them but the bar to par­tic­i­pa­tion is incred­i­bly high.

I was talk­ing recent­ly with Chris Stern, a sea­soned min­is­ter from Mid­dle­town Meet­ing in Lima, Pa.; I reg­u­lar­ly attend­ed there for awhile cir­ca 2006. He’s going to be giv­ing a talk at Crop­well in a few weeks and I was try­ing to explain to him what I’ve been experiencing. 

I think what it boils down to is a con­fi­dence that God (the Holy Spir­it, the Inward Light) is present in our wor­ship. And of course that’s true. God is every­where, all the time: “And remem­ber, I am with you always, to the end of the age.“³ If we expect that the Spir­it is present, we should also expect it to speak to us and through us while we sit togeth­er. We can expect a nudge from the Inward Christ to rise and give ministry. 

Vocal min­istry can be an expect­ed mir­a­cle. The bar to par­tic­i­pa­tion can be just our faithfulness.

1. Crop­well Meet­ing in Marl­ton, N.J.
2. I recent­ly told my wife an Earl Evens sto­ry and she laughed and called him our pas­tor. He’s not but he def­i­nite­ly plays a pas­toral role that helps shape our community.
3. Matthew 28:20.