The awfulness of ministry

February 4, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Bill Taber’s The The­ol­o­gy of the Inward Imper­a­tive: Min­istry of the Mid­dle Period

The “awful­ness” of becom­ing a min­is­ter lay part­ly in the high expec­ta­tions which the Friends placed on their min­is­ters, for they expect­ed every­thing and noth­ing all at the same time. Min­is­ters were to do every­thing which the Light, the Mas­ter, the Guide, the Heav­en­ly Father (to use some of the var­i­ous names) required of them; they were sup­posed to fol­low every inti­ma­tion and speak every word giv­en them in the light. Thus moth­ers or fathers might have to leave fam­i­ly, work, and friends for years while they trav­eled, not know­ing when the Spir­it would allow them to return. On the oth­er hand noth­ing was expect­ed of them if they felt no imme­di­ate lead­ing, not, of course, could they ever pre­pare for any ser­mon. Thus each new meet­ing, each new fam­i­ly vis­it was a fresh test of faith in which one might be called to rise with­out know­ing what was to be said, or what dif­fi­cult or per­plex­ing words might come forth; even worse, a well-known min­is­ter might be required to remain silent through­out a meet­ing called just for him…

Thus, as their jour­nals make very clear, they expe­ri­enced the body of Christ not as a metaphor but as a liv­ing cli­mate or organ­ism from which — as well as in which — they func­tioned. They saw them­selves not as sep­a­rate lead­ers but as exten­sions of the one Life and Pow­er. They dwelt togeth­er with the oth­er mem­bers in the same pool of the divine pres­ence which blend­ed all souls togeth­er in a won­der­ful uni­ty. Although Quak­er min­is­ters were expect­ed to be very good exam­ples of the Quak­er way of life, they were not required to be lead­ers all the time; they could sink back into the nur­ture and uni­ty of the body until such times as they were clear­ly called to stand forth for the Lord. They knew that if they were “faith­ful,” he would give them both words and pow­er, or the “mat­ter and the “life.” Yet even so, each new meet­ing was a renewed test of faith; as Han­nah Strat­ton (1825 – 1903) of Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive) put it near the end of her life, “it don’t get easy.”

Ever since I found Friends at age 20, I’ve been drawn to this rather seri­ous vision of min­istry, with its strict demand for a com­plete trust in the Holy Spirit’s prompt­ing in the moment. It’s not easy to square with mod­ern Quak­er prac­tices. I’m due to lead 5.5 hours of a work­shop next week; the top­ic and times are set. But maybe this dilem­ma is not so very new. Trav­el­ing min­is­ters in the qui­etist “mid­dle peri­od” that Tabor describes had itin­er­aries and meet­ings called for them (as for the min­is­ter of his sto­ry that was led to stay silent for a called worship). 

How do you pre­pare when you shouldn’t pre­pare? Per­haps by spend­ing part of a Sat­ur­day after­noon read­ing an old Bill Tabor pam­phlet that’s not on a top­ic you’re expect­ed to lead on the fol­low­ing week. 

I’m read­ing Tabor’s essay in Quak­er Reli­gious Thought num­ber 50, autumn 1980.

Finding Our Ways

February 2, 2023
· Martin Kelley

An excerpt from my intro­duc­to­ry col­umn in the March Friends Jour­nal.

It’s only human to turn to metaphors to describe our spir­i­tu­al rela­tion­ships. We talk about “nur­tur­ing the seed” and “turn­ing toward the light.” We move along on spir­i­tu­al “jour­neys” that don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly involve any trav­el at all. Our con­fer­ence themes often include words like weave and motion and open.

I live in an area with a lot of old roads going off in var­i­ous direc­tions and one big high­way going to the obvi­ous near­by city. When I plug a des­ti­na­tion into my phone it usu­al­ly tells me to get on the high­way even if it’s going in the wrong direc­tion from where I want to go. I gen­er­al­ly ignore the direc­tions and take the back roads. This is a metaphor, per­haps, for our Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. We are dwarfed by denom­i­na­tions many times our size, most of which have bet­ter sig­nage, more con­ve­nient rest stops, and wider break­down lanes. But I’d like to hope that the Quak­er way can be more direct, more sur­pris­ing, more inter­est­ing, and more reward­ing in the long run.

Finding Our Ways
Find­ing Our Ways 

Intro­duc­tion to our Feb­ru­ary issue.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Sunsetting My Twitter

February 2, 2023
· Martin Kelley

In ridicu­lous Twit­ter news, the ser­vice has decid­ed to close off its free API access. For the less tech­ni­cal read­ers, this will effec­tive­ly end cross-posting and bot accounts. While Twit­ter bots have a bad rep they can be use­ful tools and pow­er all sorts of neat accounts. One of them is the Quak­erQuak­er Twit­ter account, which was set up to send out tweets when­ev­er a Quak­erQuak­er mem­ber wrote a new blog post or start­ed a new con­ver­sa­tion on Quak​erQuak​er​.org. It was use­ful enough that it had 3,317 fol­low­ers, but it will now be going dark. For those want­i­ng to keep post­ed on new con­ver­sa­tions, I rec­om­mend the Quak­erQuak­er Mastodon account.

Also going is the abil­i­ty to post notices of new Quak­er­ran­ter blog posts on Twit­ter and to cross post from my per­son­al Mastodon account to my Twit­ter account. I’m not clos­ing the lat­ter but my use on it (already down quite a bit from six months ago) will become very infrequent.

None of this reflects my opin­ions for the new Twit­ter own­er’s pol­i­tics. Cut­ting off free APIs is an incred­i­bly dumb move for Twit­ter HQ, a reflec­tion that they fun­da­men­tal­ly don’t under­stand why so many of us stuck with the ser­vice for years despite its flaws. For those want­i­ng more, Buz­zFeed News’s arti­cle is called “RIP To The Best Bots On Twit­ter.”

Following the money in a downsizing Quaker meeting

January 20, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Adria Gulizia’s series on dying meet­ings:

Final­ly, we might see dying meet­ings dis­in­vest from their First Day School pro­grams, as the needs of par­ents and chil­dren are tac­it­ly acknowl­edged to be in com­pe­ti­tion with those of set­tled old­er adults. Those with pow­er and longevi­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty ensure that their needs keep get­ting met, while increas­ing­ly neglect­ing those they are called to serve — chil­dren, those new to our faith, peo­ple in prison, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and peo­ple who are strug­gling financially.

Friends instead spend their dwin­dling resources on inter­nal pri­or­i­ties and the expens­es asso­ci­at­ed with keep­ing a meet­ing­house well-warmed, well-lit and well cared-for — even if there’s nobody in it.

When doing out­reach, you have to focus less about the peo­ple in the meet­ing­house and more on the peo­ple who would be join­ing if they knew we exist­ed and were wel­comed in. So too, I think, for our pri­or­i­ties in a shrink­ing meet­ing. It’s easy to turn inward and just keep the status-quo rolling. I see meet­ings in well-populated areas that are shrink­ing and not doing what they need to do to be more vis­i­ble in their local community.


Turning Our Resources Inward

Turn­ing Our Resources Inward 

Dying church­es use their resources for their own com­fort, rather than to serve others.

In the Shadow of Babylon In the Shad­ow of Babylon 

The importance of Google listings

January 20, 2023
· Martin Kelley

The blog archives will show that I’ve long been inter­est­ed in Quak­er out­reach. As I’ve grown more involved at Crop­well Meet­ing in Marl­ton, N.J., this past year I’m learn­ing some prac­ti­cal lessons for hyper-local out­reach that I’ll share occasionally. 

Two non-regular vis­i­tors to Quak­er meet­ing this Sun­day, one a first-time enquir­er and the oth­er a Friend mak­ing a spe­cial vis­it. Both saw our Google Maps entry first. One said that all the pic­tures there made the meet­ing look espe­cial­ly active. Good to remem­ber that for a lot of poten­tial vis­i­tors this is our homepage.

When I was in my wandering-between-meetings phase, vis­it­ing dif­fer­ent meet­ings all the time, I’d often upload pho­tos to Google Maps and update con­tact details as I was sit­ting in the park­ing lot before I left. Some of the Crop­well pho­tos are from my first vis­it a year ago. Adding pic­tures is very easy and is a great way to help places we like look good to poten­tial visitors. 

At Crop­well we’ve also been post­ing events to Google (via Eventbrite, as I under­stand the process) and these also appear in Google Maps. 

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Autopsy for Quaker Meetings?

January 6, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Adria Gulitzia, in Autop­sy of a Deceased Church: Quak­er Edi­tion:

Think about that: since 2010, near­ly one in four Quak­er meet­ings or church­es has closed its doors. The top­ic of dying con­gre­ga­tions, and how to save them, feels urgent to me, and I’ve been unable to write much of any­thing since I read these dev­as­tat­ing numbers.

These are pre­lim­i­nary U.S. num­ber from Friends World Com­mit­tee for Con­sul­ta­tion, which does a peri­od­ic cen­sus. We need the usu­al dis­claimer that mem­ber­ship num­bers are always more a lit­tle dodgy (which FWCC read­i­ly admits) and that the pic­ture is dif­fer­ent out­side the Unit­ed States, espe­cial­ly in Evan­gel­i­cal Africa. But, how­ev­er you slice it, these are con­cern­ing numbers.

Adria promis­es a whole series of posts. I’ll be tuned in.

Autopsy of a Deceased Church: Quaker Edition
Autop­sy of a Deceased Church: Quak­er Edition 

A new series on the book “Autop­sy of a Deceased Church”

In the Shadow of Babylon In the Shad­ow of Babylon 

Update: a new post has dropped, Wor­ship­ing the Past, Aban­don­ing the Future:

When con­gre­ga­tions die, it’s usu­al­ly after a slow ero­sion rather than a cat­a­clysmic event. Dur­ing that process, there are sev­er­al points when they could change direc­tions. The decline is sel­dom irre­versible. But instead of fac­ing real­i­ty and respond­ing accord­ing­ly, peo­ple use some high point in their past to jus­ti­fy why they should not change now. And so they die. 

I like Adri­a’s ques­tions at the end about focus­ing on the periph­eries of our com­mu­ni­ty. It was some­thing of a per­son­al rev­e­la­tion for me many years ago when I real­ized I should focus my out­reach efforts on the peo­ple who would be Quak­er if only they knew about us (and if only we were accom­mo­dat­ing and wel­com­ing) rather than the folks already on the benches.

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished 1/3, updat­ed 1/6