“Mainline denominations can seem to “enforce” a scripted liturgy that “must be finished” and surely the stripped down way in which Quakers — even programmed ones — worship might seem like a breath of fresh air to introverts who love to reflect and refocus on God’s Presence.”
— James Tower: Is Quakerism “Worship for Introverts?” http://bit.ly/YajMEU
Earlier this week I wondered if it might not be such a bad idea if some of our struggling established meetings experimented with the house church model. An commenter maps out the difficulties:
Speaking as a “meeting planter” (our small Friends meeting here was founded two years ago by me and one other Friend), I can tell you without reservation that, while we could meet in people’s homes, it would strictly limit the ability to reach out with our message and attract others to participate. You can pretty well be certain that only those who already feel comfortable with you will come back to someone’s home, which may not include the seekers who really are looking for something they can be part of.
I have seen this with other churches as well; the local UU fellowship grew from ten to 15 people in the 5 years that they met in living rooms; they grew from 30 to 60 in two years when they had their own meetinghouse.
I am trying hard to raise the money to allow us to purchase and maintain an appropriate building for a meetinghouse. Until we do, our Meeting will continue to hide its light under a bushel, despite all our efforts to the contrary. The desire to have a “home” is deep within the human heart, whether it is where we reside or where we worship.
The commenter was anonymous (update: no, he’s not, it’s Bruce Arnold of Letters from the Street) but I’d love to hear more. I wonder particularly of there’s a zone of difficult viability when the worship community it’s too small to support a building structure and need to pick a bigger-or smaller model for long-term viability.
Worship at the Medford (N.J.) Meeting started this morning with queries for the upcoming “Salt and Light” gathering of world Friends. Medford is sending a delegate to the Kenyan event, and in preparation they’re reading the queries from the Salt and Light material during the month of March, along with some passages from the Gospel of Mark(“Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.” http://bible.us/Mark9.49.KJV). I spoke in worship to a recent omission of salt.
A Saturday ritual in the household is morning pancakes. One of the boys likes chocolate chips in his pancakes; another likes vanilla chips; I myself like blueberries. What all the pancakes have in common is salt: just one and half t‑spoons in the mixing bowl is enough to transform the batter.
A few Saturdays ago I forgot the salt. The results looked like pancakes but when we bit into them we knew they weren’t right. Rather than give them up, we poured them extra-heavy with syrup. Enough syrup masked the bland tastelessness of the pancakes – the empty form of these almost pancakes – and allowed us to eat it.
How many of the religious bodies descended from Mark’s early gospel have masked our saltlessness (or a fear of it) with extra heapings of syrup? Certainly, the current fashion for charismatic preachers and praise rock bands can act as a kind of masking syrup. But there’s all sorts of ways of compensating for missing salt.
As Jon Watts and Maggie Harrison have been reminding us though the http://www.clotheyourselfinrighteousness.com project, early Friends opted for spiritual nakedness: people gathering without props or distractions, one-on-one and together waiting for the Holy Spirit to lift up and gather the worship. The salt is the Living Spirit, here to guide, direct, comfort and scold. In the quiet of a Friends meeting you’ve either got it or you don’t. We’re working without nets and there’s not much room to hide. The question facing the participants in Kenya – and the gatherers in every Friends meetinghouse and church in the world – is whether we have the salt.
There are many types of masking syrup. Even once-radical Friends have found ways to sidestep the salt question, pre-empting the empty nakedness of our worship with causes, busy-ness, historical festishism, etc. When Friends gather in Kenya, I hope they will ask one another about the salt, the Living Spirit. Maybe they can bring back a re-appreciation of nakedness. For the good news is that Jesus is always ready to bring salt to the simplest of meals: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” (http://bible.us/Rev3.20.KJV).
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Welcome to the World Conference of Friends 2012 Website
The largest worldwide conference of Friends since 1967 comes together from 17 – 25 April 2012 in Kenya. The theme is Being Salt and Light — Friends living the Kingdom of God in a broken world. One thous…
Last weekend I was invited to speak to Abington (Pa.) Meeting’s First-day school (n.b. proper FJ stylesheet) to talk about vocal ministry in worship. I haven’t been to worship at that meeting for eons and can’t speak to the condition of its ministry, but I do know that vocal ministry can be something of a mystery for unprogrammed Friends. Many of us are “convinced,” coming to the Society as adults and often have a nagging feeling we’re play-acting at being Friends, but I’ve met many life-long Quakers who also wonder about it.
Perhaps as a response to these feelings, we sometimes get rather pedantic that whatever way we’ve first encountered is the Quaker way. The current fashion of vocal ministry in the Philadelphia area is for short messages, often about world events, often confessional in nature. What I wanted to leave Abington with was the radically different ways unprogrammed Friends have worshipped over time and how some of our practices outside worship were developed to help nurture Spirit-led ministry.
(written this a.m. but only posted to limited circles, cut and pasted when I saw the mix-up)
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“The drafters of the statement included Quaker Symon Hill who has written of the statement: “As one of the drafters of the statement, I want to make clear that we want to act in solidarity with people of other religions and of none, not impose our religion on them or claim to be a more important part of the movement than they are. This point is made in the opening line of the statement.”
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A Quaker presence at Occupy London
Almost 100 Quakers attended a Meeting for Worship on the steps of saint Paul’s cathedral in London on Sunday afternoon. The Meeting for Worship took place in support of the Occupy London movement that…
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In my twenty-plus years with Friends, I’ve seen Big Outreach Projects come and go. I’m afraid I can’t even remember most of the Great Names they had. Is there a repository for their Bold Mission Statements? Videos from their Important Conferences? You’d think with all this talk of Community and Vibrance and Roots and Newness that the Society of Friends would be busting out at the seams. Well, I thought I’d get into the act, throw my hat in the ring if you will and give you the Biggest Newiest Outreachiest Program Ever:
When a newcomer shows up at meeting, invite them out for lunch.
I’ll leave the details up to you. Your place, a local restaurant, sandwiches at the meetinghouse, doesn’t matter. Total newcomer, someone from another meeting, a old regular who hasn’t shown up in awhile, doesn’t matter. When someone you didn’t expect shows up for worship on First Day Morning, say hi and invite them to a meal. What’s that? You missed it?
When a newcomer shows up at meeting, invite them out for lunch.
I warn you, you might be venturing into Quaker Uncomfort Zones:
Now I realize this proposal is HERESY! It’s a complete violation of QUAKER PRINCIPLES! Cost of the program: nothing. Number of committees needed to oversee it: zero. Mission statement: twelve words, already written (Review with me: “When a newcomer shows up at meeting, invite them out for lunch“). Planning consultations: none. Amount of airfare transporting Important Friends hither and yon: zero. Presentations at yearly meetings: none. Staff support: none. Grant proposals: none. Oh but don’t get me wrong, THERE ARE HUGE COSTS! You might have to schedule that committee meeting for another day!!! You might have to have that Important Conversation with a fellow committee member by PHONE later in the afternoon!!! You might have one hour less on First Day for all of the Critically Important Things You Have to Do. Your Facebook friends won’t be particularly impressed when you update to say you had lunch with someone they’ve NEVER EVEN HEARD OF!
Random capitalization aside for a moment, I realize that there are Friends with a gift of hospitality. And some of us can come out of our shells if we make a bit of effort (it’s not the most natural thing for me either). I’ve seen a few meetings and yearly meetings that seem to have a talent for hospitality so I know it’s possible. But I visit a lot of meetings these days and have to report that I rarely have the opportunity for more than ten minutes of idle chit-chat after worship before everyone’s jumped in their cars. I’ve seen Friends so involved with committee-work that they don’t notice new people or notice when regulars stop coming. Newcomers typically look around with a mix of hopefulness and anxiety at the rise of worship. Handshakes and introductions are helpful; welcome tables, brochure racks and name tags are all very good. But depending on personality, shy visitors will only stick around for a few minutes if no one engages them any further. Like all of us, they’re looking for a personal connection and want more than just a few questions answered Wikipedia-style. Not everyone will take us up on our offer of lunch but they’ll remember we offered and will be that much more likely to return a second time.
So, one more time, in case missed it, the most outreachiest program ever:
When a newcomer shows up at meeting, invite them out for lunch.
Now go off and outreach. I hear the blueberry waffles down the street are really yummy.
An interview with Raye, a member of Ohio Yearly Meeting Conservative who serves on their Electronic Outreach Committee. You can also watch it on QuakerQuaker: Quaker Video and Electronic Outreach.
Raye: Ohio Yearly Meeting holds our yearly meeting in Barnesville Ohio – some people know us as those Barnesville folks. We have an electronic Outreach Committee and that includes the oversight and ministry associated with our website. We spend time thinking about how to open up to people who might be interested in Friends’ ways and might want to know more about us whether or not they’ve ever read the Journal of George Fox. We’re trying to expand our witness, if you will.
One of the questions that has come up in this electronic outreach group is: what types of communication or video are useful for someone to get to know us but also respectful of the fact that we do worship and that worship is a spiritually intimate time. We’re trying to bridge and deal with respecting the worshippers, the Friends themselves, to not put on a performance and yet to try to communicate what it is that is edifying in practice and worship.
Martin: How do you give newcomers a taste of Quakers without directing it too much? If you just have that silent empty box it’s hard for newcomers to know what should be filling that box.
Raye: One of the things Friends have done for hundreds of years is to publish, to keep journals and to share that. But that’s not all there is to the Friends experience. There are those quiet times and those moments of ministry that we believe are Spirit-inspired. Many of us wish we could give people a little taste of that because that doesn’t show up in a lot of published writings. That spontaneous and timely, and at times prophetic, witness that we see in our Meetings. We have considered digital video as a way to do that.
Martin: I love the video possibilities here. Video can be a way of reaching out to more people.
Raye: It’s not just anything that can be written. Certainly the writings that have been published are very helpful in getting some sort of a glimmer of where we have been, or in some cases where we are headed or where we are. But there is nothing like that experience of being with Friends in meeting. It doesn’t always happen but there are these moments called a covered meeting or a gathered meeting where everybody seems to be in the same place spiritually and when seems to be messages and gifts coming through people. That’s difficult to get across.
We’re hoping that with video we can discuss these kinds of things after the fact. We don’t want to turn it into a spectator sport or performance.
Martin: Authenticity is a key part of the Quaker message. You’re not practicing what you’re going to say for First Day or Sunday. You’re sitting there and waiting for that immediate spirit to come upon you.
Raye: We don’t know when that will happen. There are meetings where everybody is very quiet, where there’s a sense of that spirit and unity but it may be an outwardly quiet meeting. I have been in meetings where someone stood up and began to sing their message or a psalm or someone had a wonderful sermon that was perfect for the moment. These things happen but we don’t know when they will.
One of the things I liked about my old Quaker job is that I occasionally had a moment in between all of the staff meetings (and meetings about staff meetings, and meetings about meetings about staff meetings, I kid you not) to take interesting calls and emails from Friends wanting to talk about the state of Friends in their area: how to start a worship group if no Friends existed, how to revitalize a local Meeting, how to work through some growing pains or cultural conflicts. I’ve thought about replicating that on the blog, and halfway through responding to one of tonight’s emails I realized I was practically writing a blog post. So here it is. Please feel free to add your own responses to this Friend in the comments.
Dear Martin
I have read that Meetings that are
silent for long periods of time often wither away. But I can’t remember where I
read that, or if the observation has facts to back it up. Do you know of any
source where I can look this up?
Thanks,
CC
Dear CC,
I
can’t think of any specific source for that observation. It is
sometimes used as an argument against waiting worship, a prelude to the
introduction of some sort of programming. While it’s true that too much
silence can be a warning sign, I suspect that Meetings that talk too
much are probably also just as likely to wither away (at least to
Inward Christ that often seems to speak in whispers). I think the
determining factor is less decibel level but attention to the workings
of the Holy Spirit.
One of the main roles of ministry is to teach. Another is to remind
us to keep turning to God. Another is to remind us that we live by
higher standards than the default required by the secular world in
which we live. If the Friends community is fulfilling these functions
through some other channel than ministry in meeting for worship then
the Meeting’s probably healthy even if it is quiet.
Unfortunately there are plenty of Meetings are too silent on all
fronts. This means that the young and the newcomers will have a hard
time getting brought into the spiritual life of Friends. Once upon a
time the Meeting annually reviewed the state of its ministry as part of
its queries to Quarterly and Yearly Meetings, which gave neighboring
Friends opportunities to provide assistance, advise or even ministers.
The practice of written answers to queries have been dropped by most
Friends but the possibility of appealing to other Quaker bodies is
still a definite possibility.
Your Friend, Martin
