I used to be a reg­u­lar at Mid­dle­town Meet­ing¹ and always felt fed by Chris Stern’s ministry.

I’ve often wished that meet­ings might embrace what­ev­er unique cir­cum­stances they might be in to cul­ti­vate a col­lec­tive min­istry. Sit­u­at­ed in a col­lege town? Make sure the wor­ship space is close to cam­pus and net­work with fac­ul­ty, staff, and stu­dents. In an urban set­ting get­ting lots of first-time vis­i­tors every week? Insti­tute a lowkey, ongo­ing, drop-in Quak­erism 101 class or oth­er type of activ­i­ty to give them a next-step in the Quak­er path. Do mem­bers have more of some kind of diver­si­ty (race, age, the­ol­o­gy)? Then use that to edu­cate and advo­cate. The meet­ing can con­tin­ue to do every­thing else, of course, but it could look to see if there’s a lead­ing among mem­bers to do some­thing special.

Mid­dle­town — and specif­i­cal­ly the Mid­dle­town Men’s Group as I under­stand it — does that by reg­u­lar­ly pro­vid­ing events to share the Friends Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. This past June they held a Zoom work­shop called “Faith, Hope, and Wit­ness With­in” as part of the year­ly meet­ing’s “Run­way to Annu­al Ses­sions” series, with Chris Stern one of the speakers.

It was a nice event but as always, I kind of won­dered who it was reach­ing. Many of us on Zoom were already quite com­fort­able with a Chris­t­ian Quak­er wit­ness. What about all the kids on Red­dit and Dis­cord and YouTube who might appre­ci­ate a Quak­er voice that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly hear about PYM events or know that this was like­ly to be a not-to-be-missed one?

Read­er, it took me a week to remem­bered that I work with the Quak­er­S­peak video­g­ra­ph­er, Rebec­ca Hamilton-Levi and that Chris might make a good inter­vie­wee. You don’t need to be on a Slack chan­nel with Rebec­ca to make a sug­ges­tion. If you know some­one who should be con­sid­ered for Quak­er­S­peak, you can let her know.

I like how Chris takes the famil­iar sto­ry of a young George Fox and makes it his own. It’s a nice tes­ti­mo­ny that there’s still that one, even Christ Jesus, ready to speak to our conditions.

ps: Chris has also been fea­tured the mag­a­zine, most recent­ly in 2013 for Find­ing a Way to Peace.

1. The one in Lima, Pa., in Con­cord Quar­ter that is: the Philadel­phia area has two Mid­dle­town Meetings.