From Johan Mau­r­er, a look at how we should think about growth and out­reach. One part that stood out to me:

There is noth­ing about this oblig­a­tion that requires me to exag­ger­ate Quak­ers’ virtues, or to con­ceal our defects. I cer­tain­ly don’t need to claim that no oth­er faith com­mu­ni­ties are equal­ly trust­wor­thy or equal­ly capa­ble of heal­ing and giv­ing hope.

In my expe­ri­ence, a lot of incom­ing seek­ers real­ly like it when we fess up to our past indis­cre­tions and cur­rent strug­gles. Per­haps they’ve come from some church that was over­ly con­fi­dent and unable to exam­ine its flaws and so like our trans­paren­cy. Nowa­days the influ­encer class all talk about “emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty” and I think part of that is appre­ci­at­ing our­selves for who we real­ly are in a healthy way.

Maybe because I’m think­ing about the upcom­ing Friends Jour­nal issue of “Spir­i­tu­al Opti­mism vs. Spir­i­tu­al Pes­simism” (there’s still ten days to write for it!) but I’m also think­ing about the tone with which we approach out­reach. In some cir­cles there’s a pan­ic that we some­how have to save Quak­erism. That begs the ques­tion of “what is Quakerism”?

Is Quak­erism a way of approach­ing our rela­tion­ship with the liv­ing Christ and shar­ing that good news as we walk cheer­ful­ly over the world? Is it build­ing com­mu­ni­ties that express our com­mit­ment to love of God and love of neigh­bor? If so, then noth­ing is ever going to destroy it. The whole point of the orig­i­nal Quak­er move­ment is that it didn’t need a large infra­struc­ture: no priests or pas­tors, no staff, no tithing. An emp­ty barn and a small room of believ­ers was enough. Here’s my naive side ris­ing up: if we are faith­ful God, will con­tin­ue to give us guid­ance and blessings.

When I dropped in for a day of the FGC Gath­er­ing this sum­mer, I attend­ed a work­shop led by the most excel­lent Chiyo Mori­uchi, titled “Let­ting our Light Shine: Gov­er­nance & Friends.” The work­shop wrote its own epis­tle, which FGC pub­lished on their web­site today with the title “A Call to Action.” Here’s part of its message:

Imme­di­ate action is required to address the fact of declin­ing and aging mem­ber­ship. We have too few peo­ple avail­able to do the “work,” and we are burn­ing out too many of those who are. We feel that address­ing the inad­e­quate com­mu­ni­ca­tion of who Quak­ers are is the most promis­ing path to solve this problem.

This is all true, but it’s true of our insti­tu­tions. It’s true of our infra­struc­ture. The doc­u­ment has two calls to action: the first is for Quak­er insti­tu­tions to do some self-reflection on what makes them Quak­er (sounds good to me!). The sec­ond is for Friends to hire out­side mar­ket­ing firms. I’ve seen big bud­gets poured into mar­ket­ing firms before and sigh at what a pro­pos­al like this would like­ly give us: gener­ic, feel-good copy that irons out all blem­ish­es. Any spir­i­tu­al lan­guage that might be deemed off-putting gets cut.  His­to­ry is dropped except for a few past heroes who are turned into car­toons.¹

Decades of reli­gion sur­veys have found that peo­ple aren’t look­ing for bland and gener­ic. A lot of the fastest-growing denom­i­na­tions are opin­ion­at­ed and have high expec­ta­tions of incom­ing mem­bers. The new­com­ers I see walk­ing into my meet­ing seem to be search­ing for some­thing real, some­thing pal­pa­ble, as indeed I myself was when I walked into Abing­ton Meet­ing over three decades ago. We can be our­selves and share our blem­ish­es. We don’t need to put on an act.

And final­ly, some opti­mism: Quak­er mar­ket­ing is doing great. Seri­ous­ly. We’re more vis­i­ble and acces­si­ble than we’ve been in our entire his­to­ry. Friends Jour­nal is a part of that, with the mag­a­zine free with­out pay­wall and the Quak­er­s­peak inter­view series, Quak­ers Today pod­cast, and Quak​er​.org por­tal. But we’re just a piece of what’s hap­pen­ing. My friend Jon Watts’s Thee Quak­er pod­cast and the Dai­ly Quak­er email is super-visible. The Quak­ers sub-reddit and Dis­cord serv­er are very active. The slick Friends Library makes his­toric Quak­er writ­ings acces­si­ble by web, app, and audio (and the old-school Project Guten­berg, Chris­t­ian Clas­sics Ethe­r­i­al Library, Quak­er Her­itage Press are still around). It’s easy to find local meet­ings (FGC and FWCC have good resources, plus Google Maps does a great job). Any curi­ous per­son want­i­ng to know about Quak­ers can get up to speed in weeks. I know because I see these peo­ple walk­ing into my own Crop­well Meeting.

So I don’t think our insti­tu­tions nec­es­sar­i­ly need new mar­ket­ing so much as new vision­ing. What kinds of sup­port is need­ed for the new seek­ers and for local meet­ings? I think in some ways we need to step back and see with new eyes. What is it we want to market?