Quaker Emergent Church Planting

Over on the Evan­gel­i­cal side of Friends is “Sim­ple Churches”:www.simplechurches.net, a move­ment of “organ­ic” church plant­i­ng. It’s a project of Harold and Wendy Behr, record­ed by North­west Year­ly Meet­ing and now work­ing with Evan­gel­i­cal Friends Church South­west. The core val­ues are ones I could cer­tain­ly sign off on: Lead­er­ship over Loca­tion, Min­istry over Mon­ey, Con­verts over Chris­tians, Dis­ci­ples over Deci­sions, Peo­ple over Prop­er­ty, Spir­it over Self, His King­dom over Ours. I par­tic­u­lar­ly like their site’s disclaimer:
bq. As your peruse the links from this site please rec­og­nize that the Truth reflect­ed in essays are often writ­ten with a “prophet­ic edge”, that is sharp, non com­pro­mis­ing and some­times rad­i­cal per­spec­tive. We believe Truth can be received with­out “curs­ing the dark­ness” and encour­age you to reflect upon find­ing the “can­dle” to light, per­son­al­ly, as you apply what you hear the Lord speak­ing to you. In Body life, often the most pow­er­ful oppo­nent of the “best” is the “good”.
They’re lead­ing a con­fer­ence next month in Rich­mond, Indi­ana, with mem­bers of Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing. How tempt­ing is this?


h3. See also:
* “Emer­gent Church Move­ment: The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals and Quak­er Renewal”:/Quaker/emerging_church.php

13,542 thoughts on “Quaker Emergent Church Planting

  1. This item improved my mood, which has been impact­ed by the Iraq prisoner-abuse scan­dal. I enjoyed get­ting to know the Behrs dur­ing the years that they and I over­lapped in North­west YM. But what first impressed me about Harold Behr is his con­tact­ing Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing back at the very begin­ning of his “New Works” min­istry to see what we were doing with evan­ge­lism. Unlike too many in capital‑E Evan­gel­i­cal Friends’ world, he did­n’t assume that FUM would have noth­ing use­ful to say.

  2. This is in response to the lead arti­cle “Quak­er Leap…” I am an Angli­can though I was bap­tized a Catholic and expe­ri­enced the exact oppo­site of what you were talk­ing. Here every­one was told exact­ly what to believe in and how to believe in what and this lead to false chat­ter about God and the inabil­i­ty to think or pray with any hon­esty for one­self to one’s Lord. Every­one FELT they should be a Chris­t­ian, but no one real­ly want­ed to admit that they had no expe­ri­ence of Christ, just rules to fol­low. The oth­er week I went to a Uni­tar­i­an church and found just the oppo­site. I’d been look­ing for Quak­ers, but could­n’t find any so went there. They can’t even pray because they’re so lib­er­al there might not be a God to pray too. One of them said, “I expe­ri­ence a Quak­er meet­ing. It was creepy… all they did was sit there.”

  3. I have not yet read the arti­cle sub­ject by mr. Harold.But from the com­ments I found my brehrens have writ­ten on the web,I believe is a pri­or time for the quak­ers allover the world to use their month­ly meet­ings to con­duct world fire meet­ings for the pur­pose of elec­tri­fy­ing the church by use of youth­ful people,to pray and becom­mit­ted to God so that they be giv­en the pow­er to run effec­tive a five fold min­istry that our choosen broth­er George fox used to have and we stop sleep­ing on chairs.Time has come for the church­es all over the world to install new Techono­log­i­cal equip­ments and to restore full wor­ship of Jesus Christ in order to achieve bless­ings of mir­a­clor pow­er from the Lord.We need to proc­tect our fol­low­ers by giv­ing them chance to express the love of christ so that they should not be possed by false prophets

  4. Thanks for the kind notes friends. Wendy & I are cur­rent­ly find our­selves in Kla­math Falls Ore­gon work­ing for a won­der­ful com­pa­ny (N.E.W. Corp as a man­ag­er of sev­er­al hy=undred Cyus­toe­mer Sup­port folks. Our min­istry has expand­ed to a dai­ly opor­tu­ni­ty to lead many to the light of Christ. I have decid­ed that work­ing with evan­gel­i­cal friends was more of a lia­bil­i­ty then not in reach­ing those whom are hurt­ing the most. Way too much time was wast­ed with­in stir­ring up hor­net’s nests of resent­ment and the like in even con­sid­er­ing min­istry as we are led to knopw as gen­uine and even gen­uine Quak­er. I am think­ing of writ­ing some more and com­mu­ni­cat­ing amongst like mind­ed folks who are freed to “be the Church in the world”, wher­ev­er they find them­selves plant­ed. We share many pleas­ant mem­o­ries work­ing with­in YMs but have nev­er felt as close to God and one anoth­er as now. Bless­ings from our home to yours in Christ.
    Harold & Wendy Behr

  5. please i have known about quak­ers for many years but it seems you dont exist in africa. i am inter­est­ed in your faith and belief. please come here to ivory coast­to plant one for us .i will glad­ly give you an invi­ta­tion to vis­it ivory coast.

  6. Evan­gel­i­cal Friends Church South­west is Quak­er in name alone. If you read their web­site, you quick­ly real­ize that they’ve adopt­ed a mod­i­fied Nicene Creed as their “Affir­ma­tion of Beliefs.” They also have dis­parag­ing com­ments about oth­er Friends on their web­site, which I find to be rather un-Quakerly: “One branch, the Hick­sites fol­lowed the teach­ings of Elias Hicks, a New York farmer/preacher who espoused false doc­trines.” In addi­tion, they are 

    I have trou­ble see­ing how they are dif­fer­ent than any oth­er evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian group?

    1. There’s that advice Jesus gives to not wor­ry so much about the dust in the oth­er guy’s eye and focus instead on what’s block­ing our own sight. I could name all sorts of Quak­er bod­ies across the Quak­er spec­trum that are “Quak­er in name alone.” Pick up any­thing by Mar­garet Fell and you’ll see it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly un-Quakerly to call oth­ers on what you per­ceive as their the­o­log­i­cal errors.

      Sure, Evan­gel­i­cal Friends Church South­west does­n’t have much of the Quak­er DNA in evi­dence. One of the com­ments below is from Harold Behr report­ing back that he had left its ser­vice after con­clud­ing that work­ing with the year­ly meet­ing was “more of a lia­bil­i­ty than not” and that “way too much time was wast­ed with­in stir­ring up hor­net’s nests of resent­ment.” But that’s true every­where (this is where I have to remind read­ers that my own work is out­side of both my year­ly meet­ing, Philadel­phia, and its larg­er denom­i­na­tion­al body, Friends Gen­er­al Conference).

      We need to be open to being sur­prised about what shows up where. The heart of our mes­sage is Christ’s love and we should­n’t make an idol of that sil­ly name “Quak­er.” The “Sim­ple Church­es” mod­el of the Behr’s seems quite com­pat­i­ble with Friends, more so than some of the pro­gram­mat­ic out­reach efforts among lib­er­al Friends. I pray that Friends tes­ti­fy­ing to the pow­er and love of the direct expe­ri­ence of the Liv­ing Christ will some­day feel more wel­come through­out our reli­gious society.

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