The Need for Intimacy in Quaker Worship

I wrote this piece for The Canadian Friend Summer Youth Issue, which is being mailed to Friends across Canada and beyond this week. 

Do we know our fellow worshippers? Do we know the people with whom we are filling Christ's request for His presence in the Book of Matthew chapter 18? Christ says in 18:20, " For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them"

The Canadian Friend Summer Issue Cover

Often our monthly meetings do not function as a close caring group of Friends. I attended a large meeting for well over a year and one day during worship I looked around the room to count the names of people who were there. Even though I attended regularly and was active in organizing the Young Adult Friends, I was embarrassed that I only knew half of the names of the people gathered that day. After attending another Meeting regularly for six months, I was called by a member of the Outreach committee and was asked if I was still attending worship. Even though I have a more positive experience with this particular monthly meeting and had knew most of the community, I had never met the caller. Furthermore when I asked the clerk of the meeting if she could point out the person, she could not recall who this woman was.

Recently, I read an article in Friends Journal recommending that the Religious Society of Friends talk about having a testimony of intimacy. I agree with the need to talk about intimacy in our community, but this Friend referred only to sexual intimacy.

I utterly reject using intimacy to mean only romantic relationships. By relegating this word to just mean one kind of relationships, to mean just one of its definitions, we are losing a valuable aspect of our community. When worshipping together was considered a criminal act, early Quakers know what being intimate with each other meant. Then during our Society's isolationist period - in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - when Quakers lived in their own communities away from others, they knew each other and set up ways to monitor each other. This is why we have traveling minutes and marriage certificates. Both of these traditions were introduce partly as ways to watch over people to make sure that our collective faith stayed pure. Friends were definitely involved with each other in an intimate manner.

I am definitely not arguing that we go back to our isolationist period, but our spiritual ancestors definitely knew who they worship with every First Day. Do we? Can you name everyone in Meeting on Sunday? If so, do you know what their recent struggles and triumphs are?

Quakers do not believe in outward forms of sacraments. Rather, we believe in sharing the holy communion inwardly with each other. Through waiting worship should be offering each other the proverbial bread and wine. It is a communal experience. If it isn't, why do we gather each week? Why pay for the upkeep of our Meeting Houses? Instead we could just stay at home and mediate alone. Sharing God's body with fellow worshippers each Sunday is an intimate act. Do we treat each meeting for worship as a sacred time? Do we come to meeting for worship expecting to be changed through this weekly time for sharing inward sacraments with each other?

One of my favorite meeting for worships happened in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy that hit the eastern coast of the US last October. The Sunday after Sandy hit, the Meeting House was still without electricity. Yet we gathered on a rather cold morning. We huddled together around the fireplace for an hour of waiting worship. Our bodies were touching as well as our souls as we gathered in God's presence. That day, I felt a part of this worshipping community in a whole new way.

By the next Sunday, the electricity to the Meeting House was restored and we returned to our usual seating pattern spread throughout the room, with two or three on a pew, instead of a dozen. The only people who sat close together were couples and families. Months later I still miss the intimacy I felt that one cold Sunday morning as we huddle together simultaneously seeking the warmth of the fire and the Holy Spirit.

How can we reclaim intimacy within our faith community, before we just become strangers who gather together for personal time of mediation?

Lets Stop Glorifying War in Church

This weekend, we are celebrating Memorial Day. In the last week, as I have passed churches on the road and seen their Facebook updates, I have seen a lot of messages that says something about honoring our heroes. Each time I read or see that, I cringe. It is further evidence of the combining Christianity and patriotism in this country. The Early Church gathered in secret to worship a Savior that was executed by the most powerful military at the time, but now we worship the most powerful country and its military strength along with Christ. There are a lot of dangers in this continued Idol worship.

The influential German theologian Karl Barth was perturbed as a young man when his clergy mentors and other prominent Germans signed the Manifesto of the Ninety-Three in 1914. This manifesto offered unequivocal support of the actions of the German military. This had a major effect on Barth's theology about the separation of the church and the government. When a professor talked about this pivotal moment in Barth's life and theology last semester during a class on Karl Barth, he did not even attempt to make the connection between Barth's crisis to the current dilemma that we face in this country. Tomorrow, thousands, perhaps millions of US Christians will walk into their churches and not be surprised to see the American flag near the altar.

I have been thinking about this dilemma for a while. Growing up, I attended anti-death penalty vigils outside of my state's Governor Mansion. In reading about the cases, I sometimes learned that the death row inmates have served in the armed forces at some point before their crime. Often I reflected on this double standard, we teach people how to kill people and then praise them, but then we will also put to death the same people if they kill other people. How does any of this fits in Christ's admonishment that we should love our neighbors?

Last May I took a short intensive class on Young Adult Ministries. As part of this class, we talked about ministries in university settings, prisons, and the military. To talk about military chaplainships, the class traveled down to Washington DC and talked to chaplains currently serving in different parts of the armed forces. Several of us asked most of the chaplains how they dealt with the command from Christ to love our neighbors. All but one chaplain did not answer this question. Usually they responded with that they are just following orders or altogether avoid the question. The one chaplain who actually answered the question said that it was a hard question and one that some soldiers had a hard time wrestling with.

As a Christian, when I am in church, my allegiance is only towards Christ. I do not believe that God only blesses the USA, instead I believe God loves the whole world. I do not buy into a philosophy that is the outgrowth of the Manifest Destiny that led to the unnecessary slaughter, slavery and death of millions of Native people. I do not buy into a philosophy that was used to justify slavery in this country and around the world. I believed that we are called to love our neighbors period.

By writing this, I do not want Christians to abandon our troops. We should dialogue about what it means to support our troops and how to support these men and women after they return home, changed forever. We should also hold up the people who go to the same regions to do purely humanitarian work, often unarmed and with less support, in an effort to bring about peace in other ways. But at the same time lets not glorify the world's richest military within our church doors. We already do that enough the other six days of week.

Instead, on this Memorial Day weekend and after, let's keep Church as a place to remember the human costs of the war (including all casualties of war) and our own implicitness in this industry that keeps us at war. Let's pray that God will keep giving us strength to work towards an eternal peace that will only exist when God's Kingdom come into being.

Reflections from My Lenten Journey with Anger

The Lenten season has ended, but my journey with anger is just getting deeper. Over the Lenten season, I thought about: How deep my self-hate actually is; why I root for underdogs; and How I may unknowingly discriminate against others.

During the Lenten season, I began to really grapple with how deep my self-hate goes. I wrote about this in my first blog post, but at that time I did not know just how deep it is and how I have held a grudge against myself. Upon this realization, I thought that if I just started to love myself the self-hate would magically disappear...

Sadly, it does not work that way. By focusing on my self hate more during the Lenten season through therapy, writing, and mediation, I was able to explore how I have internalized people's opinions of myself since a young age. I have sought outside reinforcement of my worth because I do not have a high opinion of myself. I thought I would gain this through other means, but I never have. As I have discovered through the Lenten season, no outside reinforcement has been enough to build a sense of self-worth, it ultimately has to come from me and me alone.

For most of my life, I have been active in helping others and advocating for social justice. I always thought it had to do solely because of my Quaker upbringing. But during Lent, I reflected more on this. In late February the poet Shane Koyczan released a video of the slam poem "To This Day" and it made its rounds across the internet. Then in early March his TED talk was released as well. I have listened to the poem several times and his TED talk once. His words connected deeply to my experiences growing up feeling out of place and why I root for the underdog. If I believe that the underdogs would never win, I would never have a chance. I always thought if they could win, I could win. I am still working through this realization and how it has impacted my life and my outlook on life.

Thinking about this "underdog" mentality also reminded me of the movie, Simon Birch, which I saw years ago. At the end of the movie when the title character dies, everyone else reflects on what lessons they had received from him and his tragic circumstances. This is how people, usually children, with disabilities are portrayed in popular culture as being here solely so that other people can learn valuable lessons. Afterwards they are promptly discarded or ignored. They are not to be recognized as regular human beings with the same desires and feelings, instead they have a mythical presence. This might be because people with disabilities are largely ignored or avoided in the real world.

Society largely does not know what to do with adults living with disabilities. As kids, at least society will raise money and make movies about us. As adults, we are often left alone and the discrimination just gets worse. Another famous example is Helen Keller. Most people learn about her childhood and about her teacher, Anne Sullivan. But did you know that as an adult she graduated from college and became a socialist activist, fighting for human rights? We all like the story of Helen overcoming her disabilities to communicate, but we never hear the rest of the story of how she used her communication skills to advocate for others.

Shane’s poem also raised up the subtle ways my teachers and friends compounded my self-hate and discriminated against me with their use of words and their actions. Realizing how language and actions impacted me has made me wonder how I might discriminate against others with my words and acts. Now I am looking at what I say and how I act towards others. I have explored how I treat people and the words I use. In a recent sermon, I explored the concepts of Light and Darkness. This is just the beginning of that process in exploring ways I might have discriminated against other.

I did not write a lot during the forty days but I hope to continue to write and to develop something for children growing up with disabilities and their families and friends. I continue to welcome anyone who wants to dialogue on any of these topics. This journey will continue as my journey with God and Christ continues after the end of Lent.   

Light and Darkness Become One

I preached this sermon this morning in my preaching class based on some thoughts that I have been mulling over in the last week about the use of the word, "Light" among Quakers.

This sermon is based on Jonah 1:17-2:10 (NRSV)

In the Quaker tradition, we use the metaphor of the Light a lot. Partly because early Quakers use this imagery often in their writing and also partly some Quakers are uncomfortable with using the word "God". Most of them tend to be spiritual refugees from other denominations, having grown up being told that God did not love them for one reason or another. Some tried to hide their true selves from God and others, feeling like if others knew the insides of their souls, they would be disowned forever by God and the church. Now to them Light seems safe to say because it is a new metaphor to them, something different, something without baggage.

But I have been reflecting on what I have been using for the opposite of Light for most of my life, which is usually darkness, to describe a lack of God, evil. I started rethinking using darkness to describe the opposite of Light last semester when I read a quote from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In an address in 1967 Dr. King said, "In Roget's Thesaurus there are some 120 synonyms for blackness and at least sixty of them are offensive, such words as blot, soot, grim, devil, and foul. And there are some 134 synonyms for whiteness and all are favorable, expressed in such words as purity, cleanliness, chastity, and innocence." Ever since then, I have been wondering: Do I promote this negative duality through the way I talk about my spirituality? Light/White = good and Darkness/Black=bad.

To seek out guidance on how I should proceed with this question, I went to the wisest place I know of for answers. Facebook!

Several friends commented. A friend bought up the ideas of an UU theologian Jacqui James who writes that there are some good points about darkness, like it brings relief from the scorching heat. Also in darkness seeds begin to sprout and thus new life begins. Another friend brought up the story of Jonah being in the whale. Jonah had to go through the darkness within a fish to accept his call. As we heard from the passage, in the darkness, Jonah says a praise of thanksgiving to God, before the fish throws him up onto the land.

Before this praise of Thanksgiving, Jonah has tried his best to avoid accepting the call from God to go to Ninevah. As we hear in the praise, he had to be close to death before he realized the entire positives in his life and how much he believes in God. But we know from the passage that he was not actually near death because God sent the fish to shallow him before he drowned to the depths of the ocean. God protects him, even though he acts disobediently when God calls him. Jonah is not the only prophet he tries to hide from God. Oh no!

I bet some of us have stories of being disobedient towards God's calling to come to be here today listening to this story. Heck, you probably wanted to be disobedient and did not want to get out of bed this morning. I know I did.

For me the journey of coming to seminary took me to rural Missouri. I had heard the calling before I moved to rural Missouri from Washington DC, but I ignored the call. I was always too busy or too poor to go to seminary, or I thought. I kept saying no to seminary, thinking another opportunity, in the form of a job or anything else, was around the corner. But it took me asking God late at night alone what the next plans God had for me. It took doors closing before I said yes to God's calling. I thought I was spiraling downwards but now I know that God was leading me here by taking me to those dark cold nights in Missouri. Now I am thankful for those cold dark nights wondering where I would go next.

As future pastors and leaders of the church, we will be charged with helping people of all ages as they go through terrible parts of their lives. Some things we will see will be horrible. But sometimes we will see our parishioners struggle and they will actually be rebirths into Christ and deeper faithfulness. There will be times where we will go through difficult times in our own lives too. But the good news, just like Jonah in the fish, we are not alone. God will always be watching over us and this process.

Also I think this is where the church that we are inheriting is right now. Many people think the church is dying. All the signs are there. Attendance is down across the board in the mainline denominations. Churches are often in the red, only surviving off of endowments from past generations. There are more pastors looking for positions than open positions. Most of us are going to graduate without an assurance of a job.

But in the midst of this struggle, there is a hope, a seed, a thanksgiving to be seen. We are seeing the church changing. LGBTQ people are being accepted in as the children of God as they have always been. The church is becoming more than just a building that is open on Sunday to only some. There are so many examples of pastors and Christians taking new risks, trusting on God, doing and being in the Church in radical new ways because we cannot do any worse than we are right now. A couple weeks ago we listened to Dean Kay preach about his former church in Minnesota which changed themselves into a new kind of church with an active laity outreach to the community. We live in a time of great hope of pastor being bold. The church is being reborn and we are involved with this process.

Finally, this Sunday we will celebrate women finding an empty tomb and a command for them to tell the world about their find. In this dark cave, a place of death and sadness, God gave a people a message of hope that has lasted over 2,000 years, the resurrection of Christ and a proclamation of freedom to the captives. Light and darkness became whole together in that tomb with Christ's Resurrection. This act confirms God's devotion to all, despite what some people may try to say. By putting Jonah in a fish and by making a sealed cave empty, God shows that God does love all!

The Unpredictability of March

A couple weeks ago, I attended the meeting for worship at Princeton Friends School, which the school calls "Settling In". Each week they meet for 30 minutes and a student offers a query. Since it was the first day of March, the assigned student asked "What are you looking forward to in March?"

Students talked about upcoming birthdays, looking forward to playing outside more, and summer coming closer. They were ready to shed their winter clothes and activities for sunny days spent outside. Eighth graders expected to hear back from high schools soon and they were nervous and eager to find out where they were accepted. These students were eager to take the next step in their education and life.

One of the teachers stood up and talked about how March could bring different weather. In March it is still normal for there to be a late snowstorm he said, but we also could expect sunny days to happen where short sleeves can be worn and bike riding could be done. The theme of his message was that March brought unpredictability, at a time when we wanted something concrete, ie the end of Winter and the start of Spring or the end of one stage of life and the becoming of another. We know that Spring is coming and we will hear about where we go on the next stage of our life, but March always brings surprises and bumps along the way.

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In my experience this rang true. I used to go to New Orleans in March from Washington DC with a group of high school students for an alternative spring break trip. I remember often times bundling up to go to the airport in DC and then shedding all the layers once we landed in New Orleans. New Orleans was usually sunny with highs in the 70s and 80s that week in March. It gave us our first glimpse of Spring that helped us make it through the last few weeks of a DC winter/early Spring when we returned home. We were given a chance to see what was awaiting us once we waited out the dreadful last weeks of the winter season.

But that was not always true. Once I remember arriving to the airport in DC when it was in the 70s there. Instead of the group all wearing shorts and T-shirts in preparation for warm weather to follow us, we were carrying jackets and coats while wearing jeans. I actually expressed concern for two students who arrived with shorts on. "Did you come prepared? Did you look at the weather forecast?" Once we landed in New Orleans, it was a different than other years. It was cloudy with a high in the upper 40s. That night the temps dipped down to about freezing. We were cold that night sleeping in the not well insulated dorm room. It did warm up by the end of the week, but it seemed strange.
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A week later after the Settling In worship, I was reminded of the teacher's words. A small snowstorm dumped a couple inches on Princeton, ruining any plans for bicycling or playing outside. It was beautiful and Princeton looked more like it was early January than early March. Jenn and I would have appreciated the snow more if we weren't in a hurry to make it to DC. We left that morning instead of the night before due to forecasts of snow. Yet, despite the weather forecasters' predictions, the snow came that morning.
The unpredictability of March caught us and we were not prepared or happy. We were worried that we were going to be late. Even though we knew it would clear up as we headed south, we were still worried in the moment. We knew that we needed to just keep driving until we were out of the storm

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I feel like being a religious seeker is living perpetually in a state of March. Hopefully most of us have made it through the long journey towards God, the Light, the Holy Spirit. We know that we are almost there to the glory and unlocking the mystery, but we are not there just yet. Instead we will encounter a little more doubt and weariness and we will encounter quick fixes that promises happiness sooner than later. Sometimes I feel like that this time is harder than the journey I experienced at my lowest point in time. I am ready for the low point to be over. I am ready for God! That thought, much like looking forward to sunny days during a late winter snowstorm, keep me going in my faith.  

Giving Up Anger for Lent

For Lent I am giving up my anger.

Not a lot of people know about my anger because I have tried to keep it hidden from most people, but my closest friends, family and housemates have seen my anger side. For years I thought my anger came out of my social justice work and seeing  the inequalities in the world.

After working with my therapist for more than a year, I finally realize that the anger comes out of a self-hate. This self-hate has developed over the years due to growing up with a speech impediment and feeling less than equal. I remember crying to my mom when I was young and asking, "Why did God do this to me? Why me?"

I have always known that my family and my faith community love me for who I am, but I spent most of my time out in the world where any slight differences were good enough reasons to be bullied, treated differently, or to be largely ignored. After years of this painful treatment and feeling less than whole, I internalized this hate and started to see myself as not being whole. I would wake up in the morning hating myself and thought that I had to do other things to make myself lovable. This has led me to undertake a lot of different kinds of work to prove that I am worthy of love and respect.

But in the last year, with the support of Jenn, my fiance, and my therapist, I have finally gotten to a point in my life when I recognize that I am a whole human being and that I am deserving of love and respect because of being a person and not because of what I do or do not do.

In this season of Lent, which I am doing in solidarity with my fellow Christians*, I will focus on writing more about my trauma and on loving myself more. I hope that my writing can lead to more personal healing. In the future I hope to produce materials to help youth living with disabilities and their families through the challenges of growing up in a world that is not always accepting of differences. Also, during this Lenten season, I hope to further internalize self-love to rid myself of the self-hate that has plagued my life.  

*Quakers historically do not celebrate holidays because we believe that every day is a holy day. In the last 100 years Quakers have started to celebrate holidays and more and more Quakers are observing Lent, but we do not have any special commeration for the Lenten season as a denomination.

The Need for Eldering

Last week I wrote about where I see hope among Quakers today. Let me be clear that was only a partial list of the good news and I was primarily focusing on YAFs because I have read and heard YAFs talk about their negative experiences of not being supportive. With the post I did not want to diminish these concerns, but I do not think that is the only storyline out there about the current state of YAFs. But that is the only storyline I see being repeated over and over.

With that being said, I do have a concern about the current state of Quakerism: Our lack of effective eldering (that is, eldering that is spiritual-led and not personal attacks).

We need eldering again. We need people to be elders. We need people who are willing to be eldered.

We need Quaker meetings/churches to be a guide for ministers and a nurturing place for them, but also a place for people in ministry to be challenged and held accountable. I do not see this happening a lot and I, for one, have ran away from eldering on several occasions.

I have held this concern for a while, but I have not written about it yet because I do not have any concrete ideas on how to get to that point. But I feel like I needed to write this post anyways.

Overall, I do not think ministry happens just because of one person or a small group. I do not believe if the one person or group does not act or is not adequately supported, that ministry will disappear forever into the abyss. I know this because I have seen this happen a couple times where people independently feel led towards a particular ministry. Sometimes they join together and work towards this common vision. Sometimes only one or two goes forward with the ministry while others find other callings.

I want to share a personal story about not following a leading. After the last YouthQuake in 2004 (a triennial event that bought together teens and younger young adults from all kinds of Quakerism), I was pumped to have an event for Young Adult Friends across the divide and hold it during the summer at Earlham College. I even gathered together some traveling Quakers in a room to talk about this idea and to gather their opinions about this kind of event. I had found someone else to join me in this work. But it never got off the ground.

But this event still happened about four years later in May 2008 and the people who ultimately organized the conference were not in that room when I shared my idea. I did not feel called or I was not ready to take on the leading, but that energy was not lost because I did not stand up to follow. I am glad others did. It was a great conference. In the future, I hope I can stand up and follow a leading that others had, but, for some reason, they couldn't follow through.

God works in mysterious ways and being in ministry is about being faithful to God and to your own self. But also ministry is also about the community and is larger than one person or a handful of people. I am wary of ministries being focused on the glorification of an individual or a small group. Ministries are a way to live out God's Kingdom here and to show people to see what is possible through God.

This lead me to offer some queries rather than solutions:
How can ministers ground themselves into monthly meetings/churches?
How can monthly meetings/churches hold ministers accountable and ask difficult questions?
How can ministers hear these difficult questions and not feel personally attacked?

I have more questions than answers on this subject, but I am clear that Quakers need eldering again.

Introducing youngadultfriends.org

For the past year I have been working with Martin Kelley, Stephen Dotson, and Katrina McQuail to set up www.youngadultfriends.org, a website where Young Adult Friends, also known as Quakers, can connect, find information about others, events, resources, etc...

Stephen has made a wonderful video about the amazing features of the website.

The website is still a works-in-progress! Let us know if you have information you want added. Also you can add stuff to the Google Map and the Google Calendar yourself. But if you can't, please email youngadultfriendsorg@gmail.com

We are setting up a support committee for the website and we are open to new people. We are especially looking for more representation from Conservative Friends and Evangelical Friends! Please email youngadultfriendsorg@gmail.com if you are interested!

I am so excited that it is finally launched!

A Messy Faith- Inclusivity Within Friends

I love Quakers, yet they frustrate me endlessly. Regardless, all of them are still part of my religious family. I have traveled among Friends of all types, backgrounds, theological perspectives, ages, etc.... and we are an interesting, diverse community worldwide. We have a lot of room for improvement, for spiritual growth, for outreach. But I do not want to kick any one out, instead Quakerism to me means to be on a journey with God within a community of seekers, not a community of know-it-alls.

If we start saying, "I am a Quaker and you are not." We are setting up Quakerism to be an enclosed community, a gated community, again. Who will have the keys? Who will make up the rules?

I am grateful that Quakers believe in continuing revelations, that God is still speaking to us. In that belief, I feel that we do not need to conform to 1600s Quakerism, but instead ask ourselves, "How is God leading us today?" (See another blog post I wrote: "If I wanted to live by 1600s standards, I would be Amish")

The 1600s Quakers were radicals, then the 1700s US Quakers started to close themselves from the outside world, which continued until the mid 1800s. Especially in the mid 1700s, US Quakers read people out of meeting for a lot of infractions of all kinds, like attending a wedding of another denomination. This was meant to keep the faith pure. For example, meetings would issue traveling minutes as ways of introducing their members to other meetings, but it was also a way to track members, to keep them honest, and make sure that they did not wander off.*

So if we start kicking people out, what will be the list of infractions we will enforce? Who will decide? Do we want to return Quakerism to a pure state? Do we want to isolate ourselves again? Do we want to track each other's movements all the time?

Or, instead, do we want to invest in the spiritual growth of all Quakers and help each other grow? Do we want to struggle and grow together in faith?

I want to keep Quakerism a messy community. I want to invest in my fellow Quakers and to keep challenging them to go deeper in their faith, while they challenge me to go deeper. I do not want to be involved in a faith where everybody follows the rules for fear of being expelled.

There are a lot of conflicts within Quakerism today. They are hard, difficult, and painful. But, if dealt with loving kindness, these conflicts will help all of us to go deeper with our faith.

Lets keep challenging each other and keep Quakerism a messy faith, instead of a pure, exclusive community open only to the members who follow strict rules.

What would the Religious Society of Friends look like, if we challenge each other to go deeper?

*I recommend reading The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748-1783 by Jack Marietta

Reflections on Revitalizing the Quaker Message

Yesterday at my monthly meeting's, Columbia Friends Meeting, Meeting for Business, the clerk opened the meeting with queries on outreach from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's Faith and Practice. The positive responses to the queries encouraged me to share my thoughts from a workshop I just attended, entitled Revitalizing the Quaker Message (FYI: PDF File and the workshop changed names), in order to start a longer discussion within the meeting about outreach.

The workshop was presented by Brent Bill at Quaker Hill Conference Center in Richmond, Indiana. Last year, Brent wrote a great piece, A Modest Proposal (PDF File), on the topic of revitalizing the Quaker message and the weekend was based on his proposal. On his blog, Brent gave a good wrap up of the session in a series of posts: First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth. Since he gave a great overview, I don't feel like writing my own overview of the whole weekend.

I attended the workshop, because since moving back to Missouri and reconnecting with Illinois Yearly Meeting, I have been invited by a Friend to start exploring the idea with her of promoting outreach within the yearly meeting.

Here are a couple key points from the weekend that I think are important for liberal unprogrammed Friends to consider:

First, Brent mentioned that revitalizing the Quaker message is as much about in-reach as it is about outreach. How can we deepen the experience within the meeting to nurture our existing members? In the last twenty years, Friends General Conference (FGC) has only added 1,000 members, which is about one and a half new member per meeting affiliated with FGC (I wonder if the numbers could be skewed by the recent addition of Intermountain Yearly Meeting to FGC, which has about 1,000 members). When we grow, how do we also keep members already there in the meeting?

An example of a good program to help with in-reach is Quaker Quest where a meeting meet for four weeks to talk about topics such as Quakers and God and Quakers and Peace. Then they will repeat the series but this time invite the public to the talk. This is a great experience for the meeting members to articulate their beliefs to each other.

Another way to retain members is for the meeting to actively nurture spiritual growth within their members. One point from A Modest Proposal is entitled The End of Quaker Pastorate. From the title, it seems like it has nothing to do with unprogrammed meetings, but oh it does. Brent talks about how the profession of Quaker pastors should end and instead pastors be called released ministers. Instead the discussion that followed brought up several questions for me:

How can unprogrammed meetings improve the process nurturing their members and attenders and renew the tradition of recording ministers?

On the flip side, how can meetings improve eldering and spiritual guidance to their members and attenders?

A church, where the members are engaged and feel nurtured, radiates this feeling and visitors can sense that. Vice versa is true too, churches that are struggling with issues between its members give off a negative vibe to its members

Second, someone mentioned the Belief-o-matic quiz at meeting for business today. This quiz has a well documented bias towards Quakers (1). Here is an outreach tool for meeting that is not related to Quakers. When someone receives Quaker as one of their top results, the person will then search for the nearest meeting to them in Google. What will they find when they search:

Does each meeting have an inviting, engaging website that seem alive? The website doesn't need to be fancy or cost a lot.

Does the homepage say anything about welcoming visitors?

Are there pictures, besides the meetinghouse?

Are all the information current and up-to-date?

Do all the links work?

Currently FGC is looking into helping meetings improve their web presence. Also in a meeting there is a good chance of someone who possess web developing talents. Lastly there is Word Press and it is simple to set up a modest website for free.

Third, when newcomers come, how do meetings welcome them before worship start? How do we inform them about meeting for worship beforehand? Brent related a story about going to meeting for worship while visiting New York City and no one greeted him beforehand. To a visitor, who has no prior experience with meeting for worship, worship can seem very different, maybe even intimidating. Without a proper introduction, they could feel uncomfortable leading to a negative first impression. After meeting for worship, how do meetings engage the guest? Talk to them! But don't engage with them because you just want another person to attend meeting, engage with them to find out who they are. People can sense fake hospitality. Martin Kelley has a great idea: Invite them out for lunch! Make them feel welcome.

I have a lot more thoughts on the workshop and the topic of Quaker outreach, but I think this is a good stopping point for this post. These three points are a good place to start a discussion on outreach and I am looking forward to continuing this conversation with my monthly and yearly meetings.

Apologies to Brent if I misrepresented anything he said.

1. "An issue of Newsweek magazine reported that a "disproportionate number" of respondents to the quiz identified themselves as 'liberal Quakers.'" The article notes that the page on the BeliefNet web site devoted to Quakers has become one of Beliefnet's top 50 links!" http://holyordinary.blogspot.com/2010/09/modest-proposal-part-1-for.html