Bringing the Good News about the Current State of Quakerism

This summer, I preached three times at the church where I was interning. Part of sermon writing is to bring the good news at the end of the sermon that let people know that Christ loves them and to point out the good in our world that sometimes look like anything but good.

Over the past few months, I have read blog posts about how Quakerism is dying, no one is supporting Young Adult Friends' ministry, etc... I think these points do have a point, but I don't see it as that as the only point. I have seen several instances of Young Adult Friends being supported by the wider community and I believe that we are growing.

Here is some of the good news:

• New York YM Young Adult Friends Field Secretary Gabi just wrote a post about her travels among Young Adults Friends in New York and New Jersey in the past six months. She has been busy attending to the needs of Young Adults there.

• Christina has been carrying a leading since 2002 about a Quaker yearlong service program. She followed the leading and others joined her along the way. She was supportive by Friends all over and by her home meeting.  In August her leading came into reality when seven Young Adult Friends arrived in Atlanta to begin a yearlong internship with Quaker Voluntary Service. The leading is still growing. Houses will open in Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon next August too. And it will not stop there... People are energized about bringing this explicitly Quaker program to their community and our dream (Currently I serve on the board) is to keep growing a network of houses. 

• In Portland, two Evangelical Friends churches and an unprogrammed meeting have joined together to support the new QVS house there. That is amazing and exciting to see the branches working together!

• Another Young Adult Friend, Ana, followed a leading to create a Quaker summer camp in the Intermountain Yearly Meeting region. She worked for several summers at different Quaker summer camps and visited others. She and her partner, Ariel, have shared their vision with Friends across the Southwest. The camp, Mountain Friends Camp, has been going three years now and it keeps growing each summer. 

• An unprogrammed Young Adult Friend, Zachary, was led into Navy chaplaincy. He is currently serving in the Navy under the care of an Evangelical Friends church, who have taken him in and supported him in his ministry. Next month he will speak at a Convergent Friends gathering in the Northwest, A Nursery of Truth. I wish I could go. Hopefully others can go!

• Friends General Conference just started the New Meetings Project. The coordinator, Brent, has found that more than 70 Friends worship groups/meetings/church have started in the last ten years. That translates to one new group starting roughly every seven weeks. I have been to several of these new groups and they have a great sense of community.

• I am a big proponent of online outreach, but two of these new meetings, West Philadelphia Worship Group and Silver River Meeting, do not have an online presence. They grow because of the community they have created. They see each other throughout the week in between meetings for worship and are deeply connected to each other lives. How can we grow to know each other outside of worship? 

Lastly, God loves us for the imperfect human beings we are.

These are just a few examples I know of and why I have not lost all hope in my faith community.

Yes, there is a lot to be sad about with Friends today, but I don't see it as just doom and gloom. I am having conversations with Friends all over about a whole range of topics and I am excited. Yes we have a lot of divisions, but amazing conversations and projects are starting!

Where do you see hope in the world of Friends today?

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!

Sermon - "Have We Crossed the Line?"

This summer I am interning at Princeton United Methodist Church as part of my field education requirements for my Masters of Divinity degree. I preached the sermon yesterday (for both services), which was the same day I was formally introduced as the summer intern. The church's current sermon series is called "Majoring in the Minors" with the focus on the minor prophets. Yesterday was Amos, so I preached on Amos 7:1-9. I am pretty happy with the message God gave me. (This was also my first sermon I have ever given in a church outside of the Friends' tradition.)


Also, following Friends' tradition, I did not wear a robe and I had an elder praying for me (She became violently ill on Saturday and could not physically attend the service, but I still felt her presence)

Have we crossed the line?

A long time ago God erected a wall with a plumb line upon Israel reconfirming God's faithfulness to the Israelites despite their disobedience. In erecting this line, God made a promise to never leave us. As confessing members in the Body of Christ, do we keep our own promise to God to remain faithful? Do we cross the line into unfaithfulness? How do we practice this unfaithfulness? What would God answer today if we asked for God's perspective on this question?

Have we crossed the line?

 Last week Anna preached on Hosea. In Hosea we find a disobedient family and an unfaithful spouse. In her message she confessed to being an unfaithful spouse to God. This week we are focused on Amos. He is speaking to the community of Israelites about their collective unfaithfulness to God. Earlier in Amos, he talks about how the Israelites have not practiced justice and righteousness towards both God and their fellow neighbors.

This language is key. Amos does not call out certain people. He doesn't blame John or Jane, or the ancient equivalents of those names, but instead he calls out the whole community of Israelites. The whole community is responsible for their actions, not just one person. In today's world, we always look for a scapegoat, someone else to blame, whether it is an individual, a neighborhood, a political party, a business... How many times have we witnessed this? We can open today's paper and read this sort of blaming. That goes back to the question I asked in the beginning: Have WE crossed the line? Please note that I didn't asked: Have YOU crossed the line?

We are a community of seekers. We worship together, we break bread at the communion table together on the first Sunday of the month. We play softball together, we have BBQs. Christianity has always been a communal faith. In the early church they would meet in each other's houses to worship, in that intimate of a setting Christians could not forget that their faith was communal. In the body of Christ, we are yoked together for better or worse. We are together in this journey. Sometimes many churches have sadly lost this sort of intimacy and in those churches, strangers worship together and then go home failing to connect with each other. In my first two weeks here, I feel that this church is different, but I think there are still strangers within our midst. These people are the ones who stand alone at coffee hour or avoid coffee hour altogether, the ones whose hands we rarely shake during passing of the peace, the ones who feel utterly alone during difficult times, not knowing who to reach out to in their time of need.

Have we crossed the line?

Amos is talking as an outsider to the Israelites. He came from the Southern Kingdom of Judah to the Northern Kingdom. As an outsider, he has a special point of view because he is not entrenched in the everyday life. Because of this viewpoint, God has led him there to witness to the Israelites about their sins. They are very apparent too, so Amos tries to warn them about God's wrath if they do not change. Even though they do not listen to him, he still tries to stand up for them. In the passage we just heard, Amos begs God not to shower locusts or to bring fire on to Israel. God relents and instead builds a wall to signal that God will never leave them behind. I see that as a line of faithfulness for us too. But unlike God, we cross the line with our actions outside of our Sunday mornings together.

How would an outsider view Christians' actions today? If Amos traveled here, what would he see? Would he see Christians living out the Gospel in everyday life and building the Kingdom here on Earth? In many ways I see us 21st century Christians in the same position as the Israelites in Amos' times. Sure we worship other gods, they are not named Baal, instead they are named Google, Starbucks, Whole Foods. I could go on. Consumerism is the god in this country and the effects are all over us and our community. We value consumerism more than anything else in this land.

What about injustice in the midst of us? It is obvious. Right now we have over two million people involved in the penal system. 1 in 3 black males will end up in prison at the current rate due to discriminatory factors in our judicial and penal systems. Then let’s look at how we spend our money as a country. The number one expense in the federal budget is for our military. Often times that money goes more towards private defense contractors than our own soldiers. We spend more money on the military than feeding people. More than 1 million of our neighbors here in New Jersey have to worry about having access to food, about where their next meal will come from. Surely this wasn't what Jesus meant when he preach that we should love our neighbors.

Have we crossed the line?

Do you enjoy those windy country roads that are around Princeton? I know I do. One of my favorite roads is Canal Road up in Montgomery Township. It is a narrow road with a couple one-lane bridges. Sometimes when I drive that road, I get distracted by looking out at the canal on one side or at the beautiful homes on the other side. Then suddenly I realize that I have crossed over the center line and a car is coming the other way, so I have to get back into my lane quickly. How many times has that happened to us? We get sidetracked by something while driving and cross over the center line. Then we look up and realize this and quickly get back into our lane. Or sometimes it is just easier to go over the line to smooth out the curves than staying in our own lane, especially if no one is looking.

God laid down a clear plumb line in front of Amos, but we don't see that line today. That line is not as clear as the center line on Canal Road. It is not as finite. Back in Missouri near my parents' farm, there are a lot of back roads with no center lines, so as a driver I have to pay extra attention to where I am on the road so I do not cross the invisible line into the other lane. But it is sometimes hard to tell where the line should be. I think following God is like that. It is hard to know always what to do, especially when it’s against the cultural norms. Sometimes faith is just not easy or clear-cut.

The good news in all of this is that God will remain faithful to us, no matter how unfaithful we are towards God. God won't cross the line like we do. Just as Anna reminded us last week, I will remind you again that God will remain with us. God will always welcome us back with open arms. By setting that plumb line in Amos' presence, God made a commitment to us, the followers of God. As people gathered together in Christ, We have made a commitment to follow God. We may wander but we do come back. Our presence here today confirms that.

Also we have each other. We are not alone in our journeys and struggles. Christianity is still a communal faith, even in the great age of individuality. In a community, as we know, not everyone will always agree on everything, but we do all look out for each other. We help each other, offer comfort and aid during hard times, give advice and mentorship during difficult moments. We can ask each other questions in an open and loving environment. We share in each other’s joys and accomplishments.

We are extending our Christian love beyond the people sitting here today. Just this last week we began our Cornerstone Community Kitchen where we open the doors to anyone to have a meal. All walks of life are welcome. We do not have ulterior motives in this ministry. We aren't trying to fill our seats on Sundays or enticed the unchurched with a free meal. Instead we just want to nurture our community through food and good conversation in the heart of our beautiful town.

It is also through our love that we are acting this month to help a fellow congregation, Turning Point UMC, with collecting donations for their congregation and their own ministry to their neighborhood in Trenton.

Lastly, in the fall the church will sponsor a 5K run/walk to help raise funds to help people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. These three things are just a small bit of our work for others.

So I ask once again: Have we crossed the line?

Yes we do cross the line from time to time, but as a community we can hold each other accountable. And yes God will still love us when we do. And finally yes we, as a church community, do practice our Christian love out in the world, even if we each falter now and then. Our love for others can be seen within our own community and by our collective actions for our neighbors across the world.

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