Tag Archives ⇒ youth ministry

Invisible Quaker Misfits

October 21, 2008
· Martin Kelley

This week I received an email from a young seek­er in the Philadel­phia area who found my 2005 arti­cle “Wit­ness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings” pub­lished in FGCon­nec­tions. She’s a for­mer youth min­istries leader from a Pen­te­costal tra­di­tion, strong­ly attract­ed to Friends beliefs but not quite fit­ting in with the local meet­ings she’s been try­ing. Some­where she found my arti­cle and asks if I have any insights. 

The 2005 arti­cle was large­ly pes­simistic, focused on the “com­mit­ted, inter­est­ing and bold twenty-something Friends
I knew ten years ago” who had left Friends and blam­ing “an insti­tu­tion­al Quak­erism that neglect­ed them and
its own future” but my hope para­graph was optimistic:

There is hope… A great peo­ple might pos­si­bly be gath­ered from
the emer­gent church move­ment and the inter­net is full of amaz­ing conversations
from new Friends and seek­ers. There are pock­ets in our branch of Quakerism
where old­er Friends have con­tin­ued to men­tor and encour­age mean­ing­ful and
inte­grat­ed youth lead­er­ship, and some of my peers have hung on with me. Most
hope­ful­ly, there’s a whole new gen­er­a­tion of twenty- some­thing Friends
on the scene with strong gifts that could be nur­tured and harnessed. 

Hard to imag­ine that only three years ago I was an iso­lat­ed FGC staffer left to pur­sue out­reach and youth min­istry work on my own time by an insti­tu­tion indif­fer­ent to either pur­suit. Both func­tions have become major staff pro­grams, but I’m no longer involved, which is prob­a­bly just as well, as nei­ther pro­gram has decid­ed to focus on the kind of work I had hoped it might. The more things change the more they stay the same, right? The most inter­est­ing work is still large­ly invisible. 

Some of this work has been tak­en up by the new blog­gers and by some sort of alt-network that seems to be con­geal­ing around all the blogs, Twit­ter net­works, Face­book friend­ships, inter­vis­i­ta­tions and IM chats. Many of us asso­ci­at­ed with Quak​erQuak​er​.org have some sort of reg­u­lar cor­re­spon­dence or par­tic­i­pa­tion with the Emerg­ing Church move­ment, we reg­u­lar­ly high­light “amaz­ing con­ver­sa­tions” from new Friends and seek­ers and there’s a lot of inter-generational work going on. We’ve got a name for it in Con­ver­gent Friends, which reflects in part that “we” aren’t just the lib­er­al Friends I imag­ined in 2005, but a wide swath of Friends from all the Quak­er flavors.

But we end up with a prob­lem that’s become the cen­tral one for me and a lot of oth­ers: what can we tell a new seek­er who should be able to find a home in real-world Friends but does­n’t fit? I could point this week’s cor­re­spon­dent to meet­ings and church­es hun­dreds of miles from her house, or encour­age her to start a blog, or com­pile a list of work­shops or gath­er­ings she might attend. But none of these are real­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry answers. 

Else­where:

Gath­er­ing in Light Wess sent an email around last night about a book review done by his PhD advi­sor Ryan Bol­ger that talks about tribe-style lead­er­ship and a new kind of church iden­ti­ty that uses the instant com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools of the inter­net to forge a com­mu­ni­ty that’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly lim­it­ed to local­i­ty. Bol­ger’s and his research part­ner report that they see “emerg­ing ini­tia­tives with­in tra­di­tion­al church­es as the next
hori­zon for the spread of emerg­ing church prac­tices in the Unit­ed States.” More links from Wess’ arti­cle on emerg­ing church­es and denom­i­na­tions.

The Not-Quite-So Young Quakers

September 14, 2008
· Martin Kelley

It was five years ago this week that I sat down and wrote about a cool new move­ment I had been read­ing about. It would have been Jor­dan Coop­er’s blog that turned me onto Robert E Web­ber’s The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals, a look at gen­er­a­tional shifts among Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cals. I found it simul­ta­ne­ous­ly dis­ori­ent­ing and shock­ing that I actu­al­ly iden­ti­fied with most of the trends Web­ber out­lined. Here I was, still a young’ish Friend attend­ing one of the most lib­er­al Friends meet­ings in the coun­try (Cen­tral Philadel­phia) and work­ing for the very orga­ni­za­tion whose ini­tials (FGC) are inter­na­tion­al short­hand for hippy-dippy lib­er­al Quak­erism, yet I was nod­ding my head and laugh­ing out loud at just about every­thing Web­ber said. Although he most like­ly nev­er walked into a meet­ing­house, he clear­ly explained the gen­er­a­tional dynam­ics run­ning through Quak­er cul­ture and I fin­ished the book with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of why so much of our youth orga­niz­ing and out­reach was floun­der­ing on issues of tokenism and feel-good-ism.

My post, orig­i­nal­ly titled  “The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals and the Younger Quak­ers,”  (here it is in its orig­i­nal con­text) start­ed off as a book review but quick­ly became a Quak­er vision man­i­festo. The sec­tion heads alone ticked off the work to be done:

  • A re-examination of our roots, as Chris­tians and as Friends
  • A desire to grow
  • A more personally-involved, time-consuming commitment
  • A renew­al of dis­ci­pline and oversight
  • A con­fronta­tion of our eth­nic and cul­tur­al bigotries

When I wrote this, there was­n’t much you could call Quak­er blog­ging (Lynn Gazis-Sachs was an excep­tion), and when I googled vari­a­tions on “quak­ers” and “emerg­ing church” noth­ing much came up. It’s not sur­pris­ing that there was­n’t much of an ini­tial response.

It took about two years for the post to find its audi­ence and respons­es start­ed com­ing from both lib­er­al and evan­gel­i­cal Quak­er cir­cles. In ret­ro­spect, it’s fair to say that the Quak­erQuak­er com­mu­ni­ty gath­ered around this essay (here’s Robin M’s account of first read­ing it) and it’s follow-up We’re All Ranters Now (Wess talk­ing about it). Five years after I postd it, we have a cadre of blog­gers and read­ers who reg­u­lar­ly gath­er around the Quak­erQuak­er water cool­er to talk about Quak­er vision. We’re get­ting pieces pub­lished in all the major Quak­er pub­li­ca­tions, we’re asked to lead wor­ships and we’ve got a catchy name in “Con­ver­gent Friends.”

And yet?

All of this is still a small demo­graph­ic scat­tered all around. If I want­ed to have a good two-hour caffeine-fueled bull ses­sion about the future of Friends at some local cof­feeshop this after­noon, I can’t think of any­one even vague­ly local who I could call up. A few years ago I start­ed com­mut­ing pret­ty reg­u­lar­ly to a meet­ing that did a good job at the Christian/Friends-awareness/roots stuff but not the discipline/oversight or desire-to-grow end of things. I’ve drift­ed away the last few months because I real­ized I did­n’t have any per­son­al friends there and it was most­ly an hour-drive, hour-worship, hour-drive back home kind of experience.

My main cadre five years ago were fel­low staffers at FGC. A few years ago FGC com­mis­sioned sur­veys indi­cat­ed that poten­tial donors would respond favor­ably to talk about youth, out­reach and race stereo­typ­ing and even though these were some of the con­cerns I had been awk­ward­ly rais­ing for years, it was very clear I was­n’t wel­come in quickly-changing staff struc­ture and I found myself out of a job. The most excit­ing out­reach pro­grams I had worked on was a data­base that would col­lect the names and address­es of iso­lat­ed Friends, but It was qui­et­ly dropped a few months after I left. The new muchly-hyped $100,000 pro­gram for out­reach has this for its seek­ers page and fol­lows the typ­i­cal FGC pat­tern, which is to sprin­kle a few rotat­ing tokens in with a retreat cen­ter full of poten­tial donors to talk about Impor­tant Top­ics. (For those who care, I would have con­tin­ued build­ing the iso­lat­ed Friends data­base, mapped it for hot spots and coor­di­nat­ed with the youth min­istry com­mit­tee to send teams for extend­ed stays to help plant wor­ship groups. How cool would that be? Anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty lost.)

So where do we go?

I’m real­ly sad to say we’re still large­ly on our own. Accord­ing to actu­ar­i­al tables, I’ve recent­ly crossed my life’s halfway point and here I am still ref­er­enc­ing gen­er­a­tional change.

How I wish I could hon­est­ly say that I could get involved with any com­mit­tee in my year­ly meet­ing and get to work on the issues raised in “Younger Evan­gel­i­cals and Younger Quak­ers.” Some­one recent­ly sent me an email thread between mem­bers of an out­reach com­mit­tee for anoth­er large East Coast year­ly meet­ing and they were debat­ing whether the inter­net was an appro­pri­ate place to do out­reach work – in 2008?!? Britain Year­ly Meet­ing has a beau­ti­ful­ly pro­duced new out­reach web­site but I don’t see one con­vinced young Friend pro­filed and it’s post-faith empha­sis is down­right depress­ing (an involved youngish Amer­i­can Friend looked at it and remind­ed me that despite occa­sion­al atten­tion, smart young seek­ers seri­ous about Quak­erism aren’t any­one’s tar­get audi­ence, here in the US or appar­ent­ly in Britain).

A num­ber of inter­est­ing “Cov­er­gent” mind­ed Friends have an insider/outsider rela­tion­ship with insti­tu­tion­al Quak­erism. Inde­pen­dent wor­ship groups pop­ping up and more are being talked about (I won’t blow your cov­er guys!). I’ve seen Friends try to be more offi­cial­ly involved and it’s not always good: a bunch of younger Quak­er blog­gers have dis­ap­peared after get­ting named onto Impor­tant Com­mit­tees, their online pres­ence reduced to inside jokes on Face­book with their oth­er newly-insider pals.

What do we need to do:

  • We need to be pub­lic figures;
  • We need to reach real peo­ple and con­nect ourselves;
  • We need to stress the whole pack­age: Quak­er roots, out­reach, per­son­al involve­ment and not let our­selves get too dis­tract­ed by hyped projects that only promise one piece of the puzzle.

Here’s my to-do list:

  • CONVERGENT OCTOBER: Wess Daniels has talked about every­one doing some out­reach and net­work­ing around the “con­ver­gent” theme next month. I’ll try to arrange some Philly area meet-up and talk about some prac­ti­cal orga­niz­ing issues on my blog.
  • LOCAL MEETUPS: I still think that FGC’s iso­lat­ed Friends reg­istry was one of its bet­ter ideas. Screw them, we’ll start one our­selves. I com­mit to mak­ing one. Email me if you’re interested;
  • LOCAL FRIENDS: I com­mit to find­ing half a dozen seri­ous Quak­er bud­dies in the dri­vable area to ground myself enough to be able to tip my toe back into the insti­tu­tion­al mias­ma when led (thanks to Mic­ah B who stressed some of this in a recent visit).
  • PUBLIC FIGURES: I’ve let my blog dete­ri­o­rate into too much of a “life stream,” all the pic­tures and twit­ter mes­sages all clog­ging up the more Quak­er mate­r­i­al. You’ll notice it’s been redesigned. The right bar has the “life stream” stuff, which can be bet­tered viewed and com­ment­ed on on my Tum­bler page, Tum­bld Rants. I’ll try to keep the main blog (and its RSS feed) more seri­ous­ly minded.

I want to stress that I don’t want any­one to quit their meet­ing or any­thing. I’m just find­ing myself that I need a lot more than business-as-usual. I need peo­ple I can call lower-case friends, I need per­son­al account­abil­i­ty, I need peo­ple will­ing to real­ly look at what we need to do to be respon­sive to God’s call. Some day maybe there will be an estab­lished local meet­ing some­where where I can find all of that. Until then we need to build up our networks.

Like a lot of my big idea vision essays, I see this one does­n’t talk much about God. Let me stress that com­ing under His direc­tion is what this is all about. Meet­ings don’t exist for us. They facil­i­ate our work in becom­ing a peo­ple of God. Most of the inward-focused work that make up most of Quak­er work is self-defeating. Jesus did­n’t do much work in the tem­ple and did­n’t spend much time at the rab­bi con­ven­tions. He was out on the street, hang­ing out with the “bad” ele­ments, shar­ing the good news one per­son at a time. We have to find ways to sup­port one anoth­er in a new wave of ground­ed evan­ge­lism. Let’s see where we can all get in the next five years!

Youth Ministries 2: What Do Young Friends Want?

April 28, 2005
· Martin Kelley

I was giv­en per­mis­sion to pass along this data from the FGC-sponsored Youth Min­istry Con­sul­ta­tion that took place Third Month. A num­ber of goals and projects had been brain­stormed before­hand. The thirty-or-so par­tic­i­pants at the Con­sul­ta­tion were each giv­en ten stars, which they were asked to put next to the projects they thought should be pur­sued. Every star act­ed as a vote that there was one per­son inter­est­ed in that top­ic. The stars were cod­ed to indi­cate the age range of the vot­er: High-Schooler, Adult Young Friend (18 – 37 years old) and old­er Friends.

One of the “stars” charts at the consultation

Being the infor­ma­tion design geek, I con­vert­ed the resul­tant votes to into qual­i­ties and col­ors and put them into a chart show­ing inter­est lev­el. Projects that received no votes from a par­tic­u­lar age range are labeled “none,” for no inter­est; 2 – 3 stars is “weak” inter­est and so forth, up to “HOT” which are projects which received over 7 stars from an age group.

As an exam­ple, take “devel­op spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.” Sev­en adult young Friends (aged 18 – 37) put a star down for this, indi­cat­ing they thought it was some­thing FGC should pro­mote, hence “strong” (bright red) inter­est from this age group. No Friend over forty used one of their stars to indi­cate inter­est in this work, indi­cat­ing that none of them thought FGC should be pro­mot­ing spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment. Here are the results:

High-School
Voters		 YAF
Voters		 Old­er Adult
Voters

Expecially for Adult Young Friends
Com­mu­ni­ty weak strong weak
Devel­op spirituality none strong none
Out­reach & how to explain our faith none strong weak
Crit­i­cal mass at MM, QM, YM none weak strong
Men­tor­ing by old­er Friends none strong none
Men­tor­ing to younger Friends none strong none
Men­tor­ing to old­er Friends: none strong none
Help with transitions none *HOT* weak
Adver­tis­ing programs none weak none
Sug­ges­tions:
Trav­el­ing Min­istries for AYF none lukew weak
Groups through­out the year for support none lukew weak
Sup­port for AYF groups at the YM levels none weak weak
Data­base to help iso­lat­ed friends none none none
Clearness/discernment process:
For HS to College none lukew none
For work transitions none weak none
For rela­tion­ships none weak none
For par­ent­hood none weak weak
Inter­gen­er­a­tional Spir­i­tu­al Conversations
About Vital Friends Issues none lukew none
Vision of Quak­erism in 50 years none lukew weak
Finan­cial sup­port for AYF weak *HOT* lukew
Retreats for youth workers none none weak
Mate­ri­als specif­i­cal­ly designed for AYF, none none none
Gen­er­al Questions:
How do we han­dle the broad age span? none weak none
How do we tap the ener­gy and pas­sion of this group MMs, YMs & FGC? none lukew strong
How do we meet the needs with­out sep­a­rat­ing AYF from larg­er community? none lukew none
How do we sus­tain com­mu­ni­ty when we only meet once a year? none lukew weak

Especially for High Schoolers
Needs:
Adults who are bet­ter pre­pared to work with them… weak lukew strong
FAP�s that have self confidence none none weak
Help with dis­cern­ment process around college none none none
Help with disc: C‑O none none weak
Help with dis­cern­ment around life choices none none weak
Dis­cern­ment ques­tions: #3, #4, & #5: none weak strong
Build­ing community weak weak weak
Net­work­ing weak none none
Bible study, RE curriculum none none weak
Train­ing how one per­son can have impact none none none
Train­ing on how to devel­op group dialogs weak none weak
Help to get more teens involved weak none lukew
Pro­gram­ming help none none none
Lead­er­ship Development weak weak weak
Sug­ges­tions:
Youth newslet­ter lukew weak none
Email forum lukew weak none
Email data base none weak none
Event b’ween Young Quakes and Gathering weak none none
Youth exchange weak none none
Pro­grams to facil­i­tate rites of passage weak none none

Things Younger Friends want­ed more than Old­er Friends:
In order by AYF popularity:

  • MENTORSHIP: The AYFs real­ly want cross-generational men­tor­ing rela­tion­ships. When the ques­tions were first posed, there only “men­tor­ing by old­er Friends” and “men­tor­ing to younger Friends.” Check the math and you’ll see that’s the same ques­tion (who­ev­er put the ques­tions togeth­er for­got that the Quak­er under­stand­ing of elder­ship is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a func­tion of age, hmm). I grabbed a pen­cil and added “men­tor­ing to old­er Friends” and it was instant­ly pop­u­lar. Even though the men­tor­ship issue was spread over three ques­tions, AYF’s vot­ed “strong­ly” for each of them, show­ing ter­rif­ic pop­u­lar sup­port. Almost no over-40 Friend vot­ed for this. This is not some­thing that can be forced onto dis­in­ter­est­ed old­er Friends, which means I think we young-in’s are going to have to rely on one anoth­er for mentorship.
  • SUPPORT FOR AYF CONFERNCES: Younger Friends want to spend more time togeth­er. Note should be made that the vot­ers were Friends attend­ing a con­fer­ence and that we were a select­ed and self-selected group who pre­sum­ably like to attend con­fer­ences. Still, this is popular.
  • TALKING ABOUT OUR FAITH: It’s sad that only two old­er Friends thought explain­ing the faith was worth­while. At the same time it’s encour­ag­ing that 13 AYFs want­ed this. It’s very clear that younger Friends aren’t as afraid of talk­ing about seri­ous faith issues as the Baby Boomers (it’s nice to see some of my essays confirmed!).

Things Old­er Friends want­ed more than Younger Friends:

  • TAPPING THE YOUTH: There was what I thought was a semi-obnoxious ques­tion about how to “tap the ener­gy and pas­sion” of younger Friends. This is very close to the all-too-common gen­er­a­tional mind­set that sees “val­ues young peo­ple as a resource” (as a ad in heavy-rotation at NPR pro­claims). We are not a resource for extrac­tion. Young peo­ple are too often seen mere­ly as a source of cheap labor for projects ini­ti­at­ed, designed and run by old­er Friends; they are want­ed as pas­sive audi­ence mem­bers for old­er Friends’ pon­tif­i­cat­ing lec­tures; they are end­less­ly pro­claimed a far-off “future” of Friends rather than the very much here-and-now present of Friends.While old­er Friends at the con­sul­ta­tion felt strong­ly that young peo­ple should be tapped, Adult Young Friends had luke­warm inter­est in being tapped and high school Friends showed no inter­est what­so­ev­er. While not all old­er Friends think of young Friends as “resources,” it’s a common-enough theme that we need to flag it as a part of the gen­er­a­tional gap. I sus­pect that pow­er issues will sur­face when Quak­er insti­tu­tions try to pull togeth­er projects that “tap” youth: twenty-something Friends are going to want more involve­ment in the design and oper­a­tion of these projects than old­er Friends will be will­ing to give.Similarly, old­er Friends seem to be more inter­est­ed that younger Friends attain “crit­i­cal mass” at Quak­er insti­tu­tions like month­ly, quar­ter­ly and year­ly meet­ings. The phras­ing of the ques­tion is a lit­tle ambigu­ous and I see two like­ly expla­na­tions. One is that younger Friends don’t feel they need crit­i­cal mass to be involved in Quak­er insti­tu­tions and want inte­grat­ed inter­gen­er­a­tional par­tic­i­pa­tion rather than “AYF ghet­tos.” The oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty (the scari­er one) is that younger Friends sim­ply aren’t as com­mit­ted to Quak­er insti­tu­tions. I sus­pect the gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences in respons­es are the result of both these fac­tors, plus oth­ers perhaps.

Things no one par­tic­u­lar­ly cared about:

  • No one wants mate­ri­als specif­i­cal­ly designed for AYF. No one wants adver­tis­ing pro­grams. No one wants a data­base to help iso­lat­ed Friends.
  • An AYF trav­el­ing min­istries was luke­warm, 4 YAF stars, 3 over-40. This sur­pris­es me.
  • Any oth­er pat­terns that should be lift­ed up?

Dis­claimer
I should note that this was not a sci­en­tif­ic sur­vey. Though the orga­niz­ers of the Con­sul­ta­tion tried hard and the par­tic­i­pants were sur­pris­ing­ly diverse for an col­lec­tion like this, they weren’t rep­re­sen­ta­tive. There were only four high school par­tic­i­pants and I did­n’t adjust their votes: “luke­warm” sup­port from them should real­ly be relabled “strong” support.

While this is a small sam­ple size, this is one of the few recent sur­veys of it type in FGC Quak­erism and it bears close study. It con­firms a lot of what I’ve been say­ing all these years (yea!, I’m not crazy) and echoes what I hear a lot of high school and twenty-something Friends talk­ing about. Take it for what its worth!

Relat­ed:

Youth Ministry, Yearly Meeting Style

March 18, 2005
· Martin Kelley

One has to applaud the sheer hon­esty of the group of lead­ing Quak­ers who have recent­ly pro­posed turn­ing the grounds of Philadel­phi­a’s his­toric Arch Street Meet­ing­house into a retire­ment home. It makes per­fect sense. Arch Street is the host for our annu­al ses­sions, where the aver­age age is sure­ly over 70. Why not insti­tu­tion­al­ize the year­ly meet­ing reality?

The Arch Street Meet­ing­house grounds are also a ceme­tery. In about ten years time we can raze the meet­ing­house for more head­stones and in about twen­ty years time we can have a big par­ty where we cash out the year­ly meet­ing funds and just burn them in a big bon­fire (there’s a fire sta­tion across the street), for­mal­ly lay­ing down Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. The fif­teen of us who are left can go attach our­selves to some oth­er year­ly meeting.

This year’s annu­al ses­sions con­tin­ue their tra­di­tion of self-parody: the fea­tured speak­ers are the umpteenth gray-hair pro­fes­sion­al Quak­er talk­ing about the peace tes­ti­mo­ny and a psy­chol­o­gist who appears on NPR. It’s safe to assume nei­ther will stray beyond the mildest com­mu­ni­ties of faith talk to men­tion God, gospel order or nam­ing of gifts, and that nei­ther will ask why there’s almost no one under forty involved in the year­ly meet­ing. The last time I went to a nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tee work­shop at annu­al ses­sions, mem­bers open­ly explained to me why Friends under forty could­n’t serve on com­mit­tees. Lat­er dur­ing that ses­sion we learned the aver­age new atten­der was in their thir­ties yet the year­ly meet­ing clerk did­n’t think it was appro­pri­ate than any Friend under fifty com­ment on that (about 40 old­er Friends were rec­og­nized to share their thoughts, natch).

The gen­er­a­tional freefall is com­ing to the year­ly meet­ing. Arch Street Meet­ing is smack in the mid­dle of one of the pre­mier hip young neigh­bor­hoods of Philadel­phia yet they’ve been resis­tant to doing any seri­ous out­reach or adult reli­gious ed (I could tell sto­ries: don’t get me start­ed). This week­end I learned that the oth­er down­town meet­ing, Cen­tral Philadel­phia, con­tin­ues its prac­tice – almost pol­i­cy – of not sup­port­ing emerg­ing min­istry in long-time young atten­ders (I could real­ly tell sto­ries). I would­n’t be sur­prised if Philadel­phia has the low­est per-capita year­ly meet­ing attendance.

So why not just admit that the year­ly meet­ing is irrel­e­vant to younger Friends? Why not turn our meet­ing­hous­es into retire­ment homes?

PS: How I wish I weren’t so cyn­i­cal about the year­ly meet­ing. I don’t want to feel like it’s a state of all-out gen­er­a­tional war­fare. I’ve tried, real­ly I have. I’m even will­ing to try again. But no where have I found a space to have these dis­cus­sions, at year­ly meet­ing or any­where else. Oth­er Phi­la. YM Friends con­cerned with these issues are wel­come to email me – maybe we can fig­ure out some forum for this either inside or out­side of the offi­cial structures. 
PPS: There are a lot of won­der­ful Friends involved with the year­ly meet­ing. They have good ideas and sin­cere­ly try to make it a more wel­com­ing place. The best part of the year­ly meet­ing ses­sions I’ve attend­ed have been the unex­pect­ed con­ver­sa­tions. It’s the insti­tu­tion I am frus­trat­ed with: the sense that it’s big­ger and dumb­er than all of us.
PPPS: What if I took my own words to heart and con­sid­ered a PhYM renew­al as part of the fifty-year plan? If I just stopped com­plain­ing and just attend­ed patient­ly and faith­ful­ly year after year for those “teach­able moments” that might inch it forward?

Emergent Church Movement: The Younger Evangelicals and Quaker Renewal

September 6, 2003
· Martin Kelley

A look at the generational shifts facing Friends.

I’m cur­rent­ly read­ing Robert E. Web­ber’s The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals: Fac­ing the Chal­lenges of the New World, which exam­ines the cul­tur­al and gen­er­a­tional shifts hap­pen­ing with­in the Chris­t­ian Evan­gel­i­cal move­ment. At the bot­tom of this page is a handy chart that out­lines the gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences in the­ol­o­gy, eccle­si­as­ti­cal par­a­digm, church poli­ty that he sees. When I first saw it I said “yes!” to almost each cat­e­go­ry, as it clear­ly hits at the gen­er­a­tional forces hit­ting Quakerism.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly many Friends in lead­er­ship posi­tions don’t real­ly under­stand the prob­lems fac­ing Quak­erism. Or: they do, but they don’t under­stand the larg­er shifts behind them and think that they just need to redou­ble their efforts using the old meth­ods and mod­els. The Baby Boom gen­er­a­tion in charge knows the chal­lenge is to reach out to seek­ers in their twen­ties or thir­ties, but they do this by devel­op­ing pro­grams that would have appealed to them when they were that age. The cur­rent crop of out­reach projects and peace ini­tia­tives are all very 1980 in style. There’s no recog­ni­tion that the sec­u­lar peace com­mu­ni­ty that drew seek­ers in twen­ty years ago no longer exists and that today’s seek­ers are look­ing for some­thing deep­er, some­thing more per­son­al and more real.

When younger Friends are includ­ed in the sur­veys and com­mit­tees, they tend to be either the unin­volved chil­dren of impor­tant Baby Boom gen­er­a­tion Quak­ers, or those thirty-something Friends that cul­tur­al­ly and philo­soph­i­cal­ly fit into the old­er par­a­digms. It’s fine that these two types of Friends are around, but nei­ther group chal­lenges Baby Boomer group-think. Out­spo­ken younger Friends often end up leav­ing the Soci­ety in frus­tra­tion after a few years.

It’s a shame. In my ten years attend­ing a down­town Philadel­phia Friends meet­ing, I eas­i­ly met a hun­dred young seek­ers. They most­ly cycled through, attend­ing for peri­ods rang­ing from a few months to a few years. I would often ask them why they stopped com­ing. Some­times they were just nice and said life was too busy, but of course that’s not a real answer: you make time for the things that are impor­tant and that feed you in some way. But oth­ers told me they found the meet­ing unwel­com­ing, or Friends too self-congratulatory or super­fi­cial, the com­mu­ni­ty more social than spir­i­tu­al. I went back to this meet­ing one First Day after a two year absence and it was depress­ing how it was all the same faces. This is not a knock on this par­tic­u­lar meet­ing, since the same dynam­ics are at work in most of the liberal-leaning meet­ings I’ve attend­ed, both in the FGC and FUM worlds – it’s a gen­er­a­tional cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non. I have nev­er found the young Quak­er seek­er com­mu­ni­ty I know is out there, though I’ve glimpsed its indi­vid­ual faces a hun­dred times: always just out of reach, nev­er gelling into a movement.

I’m not sure what the answers are. Luck­i­ly it’s not my job to have answers: I leave that up to Christ and only con­cern myself with being as faith­ful a ser­vant to the Spir­it as I can be (this spirit-led lead­er­ship style is exact­ly one of the gen­er­a­tional shifts Web­ber talks about). I’ve been giv­en a clear mes­sage that my job is to stay with the Soci­ety of Friends, that I might be of use some­day. But there are a few pieces that I think will come out:

A re-examination of our roots, as Christians and as Friends

What babies were thrown out with the bath­wa­ter by turn-of-the-century Friends who embraced mod­ernism and ratio­nal­ism and turned their back on tra­di­tion­al tes­ti­monies? This will require chal­leng­ing some of the sacred myths of con­tem­po­rary Quak­erism. There are a lot that aren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly Quak­er and we need to start admit­ting to that. I’ve per­son­al­ly tak­en up plain dress and find the old state­ments on the peace tes­ti­mo­ny much deep­er and more mean­ing­ful than con­tem­po­rary ones. I’m a pro­fes­sion­al web­mas­ter and run a promi­nent paci­fist site, so it’s not like I’m stuck in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry; instead, I just think these old tes­ti­monies actu­al­ly speak to our con­di­tion in the twenty-first Century.

A Desire to Grow

Too many Friends are hap­py with their nice cozy meet­ings. The meet­ings serve as fam­i­ly and as a sup­port group, and a real growth would dis­rupt our estab­lished pat­terns. If Quak­erism grew ten­fold over the next twen­ty years we’d have to build meet­ing­hous­es, have extra wor­ship, reor­ga­nize our com­mit­tees. Involved Friends would­n’t know all the oth­er involved Friends in their year­ly meet­ing. With more mem­bers we’d have to become more rig­or­ous and dis­ci­plined in our com­mit­tee meet­ings. Quak­erism would feel dif­fer­ent if it were ten times larg­er: how many of us would just feel uncom­fort­able with that. Many of our Meet­ings are ripe for growth, being in boom­ing sub­urbs or thriv­ing urban cen­ters, but year after year they stay small. Many sim­ply neglect and screw up out­reach or reli­gious edu­ca­tion efforts as a way of keep­ing the meet­ing at its cur­rent size and with its cur­rent character.

A more personally-involved, time-consuming commitment

Reli­gion in Amer­i­ca has become yet anoth­er con­sumer choice, an enter­tain­ment option for Sun­day morn­ing, and this par­a­digm is true with Friends. We com­plain how much time our Quak­er work takes up. We com­plain about clear­ness com­mit­tees or vision­ing groups that might take up a Sat­ur­day after­noon. A more involved Quak­erism would real­ize that the hour on First Day morn­ing is in many ways the least impor­tant time to our Soci­ety. Younger seek­ers are look­ing for con­nec­tions that are deep­er and that will require time. We can’t build a Soci­ety on the cheap. It’s not mon­ey we need to invest, but our hearts and time.

I recent­ly vis­it­ed a Meet­ing that was set­ting up its first adult reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­gram. When it came time to fig­ure out the for­mat, a weighty Friend declared that it could­n’t take place on the first Sun­day of the month because that was when the finance com­mit­tee met; the sec­ond Sun­day was out because of the mem­ber­ship care com­mit­tee; the third was out because of busi­ness meet­ing and so forth. It turned out that reli­gious edu­ca­tion could be squeezed into one 45-minute slot on the fourth Sun­day of every month. Here was a small strug­gling meet­ing in the mid­dle of an sym­pa­thet­ic urban neigh­bor­hood and they could­n’t spare even an hour a month on reli­gious edu­ca­tion or sub­stan­tive out­reach to new mem­bers. Mod­ern Friends should not exist to meet in committees.

A renewal of discipline and oversight

These are taboo words for many mod­ern Friends. But we’ve tak­en open-hearted tol­er­ance so far that we’ve for­got­ten who we are. What does it mean to be a Quak­er? Seek­ers are look­ing for answers. Friends have been able to pro­vide them with answers in the past: both ways to con­duct one­self in the world and ways to reach the divine. Many of us actu­al­ly yearn for more care, atten­tion and over­sight in our reli­gious lives and more con­nec­tion with others.

A confrontation of our ethnic and cultural bigotries

Too much of Quak­er cul­ture is still root­ed in elit­ist wealthy Philadel­phia Main Line “Wasp” cul­ture. For gen­er­a­tions of Friends, the Soci­ety became an eth­nic group you were born into. Too many Friends still care if your name is “Roberts,” “Jones,” “Lip­pen­cott,” “Thomas,” “Brin­ton.” A num­ber of nineteenth-century Quak­er lead­ers tried to make this a reli­gion of fam­i­ly fief­doms. There was a love of the world and an urge for to be respect­ed by the out­side world (the Epis­co­palians would­n’t let you into the coun­try clubs if you wore plain dress or got too excit­ed about religion).

Today we too often con­fuse the cul­ture of those fam­i­lies with Quak­erism. The most obvi­ous exam­ple to me is the oft-repeated phrase: “Friends don’t believe in pros­e­ly­tiz­ing.” Wrong: we start­ed off as great speak­ers of the Truth, gain­ing num­bers in great quan­ti­ties. It was the old Quak­er fam­i­lies who start­ed fret­ting about new blood in the Soci­ety, for they saw birthright mem­ber­ship as more impor­tant than bap­tism by the Holy Spir­it. We’ve got a lot of bag­gage left over from this era, things we need to re-examine, includ­ing: our will­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice Truth-telling in the name of polite­ness; an over-developed intel­lec­tu­al­ism that has become snob­bery against those with­out advanced school­ing; our taboo about being too loud or too “eth­nic” in Meeting.

Note that I haven’t specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned racial diver­si­ty. This is a piece of the work we need to do and I’m hap­py that many Friends are work­ing on it. But I think we’ll all agree that it will take more than a few African Amer­i­cans with grad­u­ate degrees to bring true diver­si­ty. The Lib­er­al branch of Friends spends a lot of time con­grat­u­lat­ing itself on being open, tol­er­ant and self-examining and yet as far as I can tell we’re the least ethnically-diverse branch of Amer­i­can Quak­ers (I’m pret­ty sure, any­one with cor­rob­o­ra­tion?). We need to re-examine and chal­lenge the unwrit­ten norms of Quak­er cul­ture that don’t arise from faith. When we have some­thing to offer besides upper-class lib­er­al­ism, we’ll find we can talk to a much wider selec­tion of seekers.

Can we do it?

Can we do these re-examinations with­out rip­ping our Soci­ety apart? I don’t know. I don’t think the age of Quak­er schisms is over, I just think we have a dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pline and church poli­ty that let us pre­tend the splits aren’t there. We just self-select our­selves into dif­fer­ent sub-groups. I’m not sure if this can con­tin­ue indef­i­nite­ly. Every week our Meet­ings for Wor­ship bring togeth­er peo­ple of rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent beliefs and non-beliefs. Instead of wor­ship, we have indi­vid­ual med­i­ta­tion in a group set­ting, where every­one is free to believe what they want to believe. This isn’t Friends’ style and it’s not sat­is­fy­ing to many of us. I know this state­ment may seem like sac­ri­lege to many Friends who val­ue tol­er­ance above all. But I don’t think I’m the only one who would rather wor­ship God than Silence, who longs for a deep­er reli­gious fel­low­ship than that found in most con­tem­po­rary Meet­ings. Quak­erism will change and Mod­ernism isn’t the end of history.

How open will we all be to this process? How hon­est will we get? Where will our Soci­ety end up? We’re not the only reli­gion in Amer­i­ca that is fac­ing these questions.

Tra­di­tion­al
Evangelicals
1950 – 1975

Prag­mat­ic
Evangelicals
1975 – 2000

Younger
Evangelicals
2000-

Theological
Commitment

 Chris­tian­i­ty
as a ratio­nal worldview		 Chris­tian­i­ty
as ther­a­py Answers needs		 Chris­tian­i­ty
as a com­mu­ni­ty of faith.
Ancient/Reformation
Apolo­get­ics
Style 		Evi­den­tial
Foundational		 Chris­tian­i­ty
as meaning-giver
Experiential
Per­son­al Faith		 Embrace
the metanarrative
Embod­ied apologetic
Com­mu­nal faith
Eccle­sial
Par­a­digm 		Con­stan­tin­ian
Church
Civ­il Religion		 Cul­tur­al­ly
sen­si­tive church
Mar­ket Driven		 Mis­sion­al
Church
Counter cultural
Church
Style 		Neigh­bour­hood
churches
Rural		 Megachu­ruch
Suburban
Mar­ket targeted		 Small
Church
Back to cities
Intercultural
Lead­er­ship
Style 		Pas­tor
centred		 Man­age­r­i­al
Model
CEO		 Team
ministry
Priest­hood of all
Youth
Min­istry 		Church-centred
programs		 Out­reach
Programs
Week­end fun retreats		 Prayer,
Bible Study, Wor­ship, Social Action
Edu­ca­tion
 Sun­day
School
Infor­ma­tion centred		 Tar­get
gen­er­a­tional groups and needs		 Inter­gen­er­a­tional
for­ma­tion in community
Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty
 Keep
the rules		 Pros­per­i­ty
and success		 Authen­tic
embodiment
Wor­ship
 Tra­di­tion­al Con­tem­po­rary Con­ver­gence
Art
 Restrained Art
as illustration		 Incar­na­tion­al
embodiment
Evan­ge­lism
 Mass
evangelism		 Seek­er
Service		 Process
evangelism
Activists
 Begin­nings
of evan­gel­i­cal social action		 Need-driving
social action (divorce groups, drug rehab		 Rebuild
cities and neighborhoods

See also:

On Quak­er Ranter:

  • It Will Be There in Decline Our Entire Lives. There’s a gen­er­a­tion of young Chris­tians dis­il­lu­sioned by mod­ern church insti­tu­tion­al­ism who are writ­ing and blog­ging under the “post-modern” “emer­gent church” labels. Do Friends have any­thing to offer these wea­ried seek­ers except more of the same hashed out institutionalism?
  • Post-Liberals & Post-Evangelicals?, my obser­va­tions from the Novem­ber 2003 “Indie Allies” meet-up.
  • Sodium-Free Friends, a post of mine urg­ing Friends to active­ly engage with our tra­di­tion and not just selec­tive­ly edit out a few words which makes Fox sound like a sev­en­teen cen­tu­ry Thich Nhat Hanh. “We poor humans are look­ing for ways to tran­scend the crap­pi­ness of our war- and consumer-obsessed world and Quak­erism has some­thing to say about that.”
  • Peace and Twenty-Somethings: are the Emer­gent Church seek­ers cre­at­ing the kinds of youth-led inten­tion­al com­mu­ni­ties that the peace move­ment inspired in the 1970s?

Elsewhere:

  • From Evan­gel­i­cal Friends Church South­west comes an emer­gent church” church plant­i­ng project called Sim­ple Church­es (since laid down, link is to archive). I love their intro: “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.”
  • The emer­gent church move­ment hit the New York Times in Feb­ru­ary 2004. Here’s a link to the arti­cle and my thoughts about it.
  • “Ortho­dox Twenty-Somethings,” a great arti­cle from TheOoze (now lost to a site redesign of theirs), and my intro to the arti­cle Want to under­stand us?
  • The blog­ger Punkmon­key talks about what a mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty of faith would look like and it sounds a lot like what I dream of: “a mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty of faith is a liv­ing breath­ing trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ty of faith will­ing to get messy while reach out to, and bring­ing in, those out­side the cur­rent community.”