Quakers Are Weird? Yepper!

My friend Jana Llewellyn recently wrote "The Bible says that the Jews are God’s chosen people. Author Anne Lamott says that the Presbyterians are God’s frozen people. I decided last week that the religious sect I’m a part of, Quakers (also called The Religious Society of Friends), are God’s weird people.

That means I’m weird, too."

That means I'm weird, too -- which is a badge I'll add to my "bad" badge.  Not bad as in "evil," but bad as in not being very good at being a good Quaker.

Jana offers seven tips to help us deal with the not so good weirdness we Quakers sometimes experience/demonstrate --

First and foremost, we need to live a life that focuses on a deep inward connection to God.

Second, each of us needs a personal and daily practice of communing with God.

Third, stop talking about being Quaker. Stop navel-gazing. Reach out.

Fourth, cut your beard.

Fifth, humbly minister to other Quakers.

Sixth. Get out of the past.

Seventh: Look for the best in everyone you meet.

This essay is warm, quirky, funny, biting, and helpful.   Every Quaker and every Friends meeting should read the whole thing -- which you can here: God's Weird People

Planting for Spiritual Renewal: Post 5

[Jesus] told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed.  As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.  But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.  Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”  (Matthew 13)

That's a good parable and it holds a lot of spiritual truth.  But, this prairie farmer is not going out scattering seed the way Jesus' farmer did.  Nosirree.  Not when that seed costs $100 an acre and is coming out of his "hobby" pocket.  When Woody and I planted the prairie we wanted to make certain that every expensive seed made contact with the soil in such a way that germination and growth would be optimized.  To that end we hooked up my John Deere tractor to a Great Plains seed drill with a native seed box and designed to open a shallow furrow, drop the warm season grass and wildflower seeds, and cover and slightly compact the furrow, pressing the seed into the soil.  We seeded the field and hillside (as the picture above show) going one lengthwise.  Then we went widthwise.  And then we drove across at angles.  

It was intensive work.  A little tractor pulling a big seeder that weighed as much as it did.  We had to be careful to go the right speed to get the seed into the ground.  Woody drove.  I helped by riding on the back and keeping the seed stirred and jumping off the seed drill to make sure seed was dropping freely and at the right amount.  

All of this serves as a good parable for Quaker revitalization and renewal, I think.  While Jesus is promiscuous in his seed of life sowing, even he recognized that the the seed grows best in ground that's ready to receive it -- good soil.  We have good soil in many of our meetings.  Soil that is ready to receive the Seed. 

To maximize growth, we would do well to use a spiritual seed drill -- to open up furrows, place the seed carefully, cover it over, tamp it down and allow the Spirit to water it and bring it to life.  I referred to some of the seeds in my post immediately previous to this one.  The difference between a prairie and our spiritual life is, though, that careful, intentional seeding is constant for the spiritual life.  We need to be intentional -- individually and corporately -- about getting the Seed in contact with the soil of our souls.  Our seed drills may vary -- spiritual deepening classes, spiritual story telling, outward practices, inward practices, adult religious education opportunities.  We may use a variety (or all!) of these things over and over as we move across the fields of faith.

Intention and frequency are the key words here, I think.  We need, as the Religious Society of Friends to be offering intentional and frequent spiritual seedings in our meetings.  Just as there is no one prairie management plan, so to is there no one plan for spiritual seeding in a meeting.  We need to find what works for our soil -- our souls.  And then get to it. With care, prayer, and intention.

Seeds and Spiritual Renewal: Post 4

When Woody and I planted the prairie we used special seeds.  Because we wanted to plant a prairie and not a lawn or pasture, we started with warm season grass seeds and wildflowers seeds.  “Well, doh?!”  you say.  “Of course you did.” 

While our choice of specialized seeds for the prairie seems obvious, why are we so easy to use generic seed (or no seed plan at all) when it to renewing our spiritual fields?  If we want our fields to flourish, I propose the following seed mix (based on Diana Butler Bass’s recommendations in Christianity after Religion and intentional conversations Beth Collea and I have led on “Friends in a Time of Spiritual Awakening.")

Reconnection with our prime texts
            Friends need to connect deeply with the Bible.  This is true for both liberal and more conservative Friends.  The Bible was the foundational text for the early Friends.  In addition to their personal experience with God, they were well versed in scripture, studied it carefully, and quoted it often.  If we would understand the faith and practice of our movement, we need to reconnect with serious study of the Bible.  Some liberal Friends will need to lay down their resistances that spring from a number of understandable sources (misuse of scripture by others, woundedness, intellectual disagreement, etc) and look at what it says and examine how it informed Friends through the years.  Many programmed Friends will need to lay down their assumption that they “KNOW” what it says and read it again with careful eyes.  It is not enough for them to quote verses memorized as children or stories told so often that we have stopped really reading them.
            Friends need to connect with Quaker texts.  For many years Friends families often had, in addition to the Bible, core Quaker texts in their home libraries.  Fox’s and Woolman’s journals, Barclay’s Apology, Penn’s maxims, Faith and Practice, and so on.  Friends today know occasional favorite Friendly quotations, but have rarely studied these (and other) hallmarks of Quaker faith to find the essence, the life of the Spirit that empowered these Friends.  Of course, there are other Quaker texts that we could study.  We need to use these good seeds that we have – for they abound.

Sharing our spiritual stories
            We need to provide opportunities to share our spiritual stories with each other in community.  What possibilities are there in our meetings for us to share our spiritual journeys and beliefs with each other?  We may be worshiping next to someone we’ve known for years but not have any idea what brought them to Friends or any of the significant, formative spiritual experiences in their lives.  We need to create seeds of such opportunities – based on what will work for our community.  A seed of weekday evening sharing groups?  A five week adult religious education class on First day?

An Inward spiritual practice
            One seed is to enhance our spiritual life through a daily practice.  We might do a gratitude practice.  Or a daily prayer practice.  Or a meditation practice.  Intentional.  Regular.  Deep.  The strength of a regular practice is that it becomes a part of us while helping us deepen.  When regularly practiced, it becomes so valuable to our souls that we miss it and long for it when we aren’t able to do it that day.
            Think of the power of a meeting community doing this together – finding a practice for everyone to do for a month.  And then a different one the next month.  There would be personal and communal deepening from which The Seed could spring.

An Outward spiritual practice
            Another seed is putting our faith into practice in the larger word.  As William Penn said, “True godliness does not turn us out of the world, but helps us better live in it.” (Brent Revised Version).  What outward practices could we do that would connect our inner lives with our outer world?  Both as individuals and as a meeting?  What fits our spiritual life and our passion?  Work in a homeless shelter.  Work for peace?  Till up some of our lawn for a community garden? 

In the same way that a good seed mix makes all the difference in the establish of the kind of prairie Woody and I wanted to see spring forth, so will the above seed mix (with maybe a few local “wildflower seeds” that fit your community thrown in) help the establishment or reestablishment of a thriving Friendly faith community.

Prairie Management Practices and Quaker Revitalizaton: Post 3

In the middle of July last summer, on one of the hottest, most humid days, a wildlife biologist, our district wildlife and conservation specialist, and I took a hike through our prairie.  I was discouraged with the progress of the prairie.  We had planted in 2007 and it had burst forth with wildflowers.  It was beautiful.  Grasses began appearing the next year, though spotty.  We did a proscribed burn three years later – per our approved prairie management plan.  We kept down the bad plants (mostly thistles) and tried to leave the rest alone – per the plan.  But six years in to the plan, the prairie was not near the lush prairie of photographs.  There were wonderful pockets of tall grasses and wildflowers.  But there were also stretches of bad weeds and undesirable grasses.  In 2012 a friend of mine from Pheasants Forever and I spent six hours on an April Sunday afternoon and evening drilling (with a special seed drill) replanting the entire prairie with almost $1,000 worth of specialized warm grass and wildflowers seeds.

And then it didn’t rain for almost four months.  In 2013, I was bemoaning all the work and expenses and effort for so little yield.  So when the state wildlife biologist offered to come out and look over things, I readily agreed.

For two hours we walked through the prairie.  Not around it – looking at it from the outside.  But deep inside the plants over our heads – grasses and weeds.  The biologist pushed aside plants/weeds, knelt down, nodded, pointed, made short comments.  Then he’d move a few more feet and we’d look again.  “So,” he asked.  “Did you do the proscribed burns.”  “Yes,” I said, and gave him the dates.  “What mix did you plant?”  I told him. “What kind of seed drill?”  I answered.  “What are you doing to get rid of the thistles and briars?”  Each question he asked, I answered.

As we made our way out of the prairie, sweaty, weed-seed covered, I asked, “So what should I be doing?”  “Just keep on doing what you’re doing,” he said.  “There’s more going on than you see.  There’s lots of good growth going on.  It’s just down low.  It’s hungry for light.  And the weeds are choking out the light.  So, my suggestion is for you to get out your tractor, hook up your bush hog, and mow it all down to a height of 3 feet.  The heat and cutting will stress the weeks and they’ll die.  The heat and light will help the grasses and they’ll flourish.”

“But,” he said, “keep doing the things you’ve been doing.  It’s working.”

As I said in my previous post, I do believe the soil of Friendly renewal is being prepared.  Good things are happening, even if some are not visible to the larger world (Friends and the “real” world) yet.  I also believe that certain “management” practices need to be put into place.

The good news is that none of them require a proscribed burn!

Instead of saying the exact practices as a prescription, I want to offer then as queries, and invite y’all to dive deep into your spiritual wisdom and invite Christ our present teacher to teach us the “management practices” we are going to need to grow a new prairie that mirrors the life of the prairies that once covered much of the middle of our country and supported an abundance (and variety) of life.

Queries:

• Given that there is a correlation between being a loving community and the depth and quality of worship, what can be done to enhance the sense of spiritual community and love in our meetings?
• Given that there is a correlation between vitality and deep worship, what steps should be taken to increase our meetings’ vitality?
• Given that each meeting has its unique problems and challenges, how do meetings avoid focusing on the problems and concentrate on strengthening connectivity with God?

Again, I want to acknowledge my friend with whom I began this conversation – many of the queries were originally questions that she sent me and helped get this train of prairie thought going.

Soil and Quaker Renewal: A Prairie? Post 2

In my last post on the Quaker renewal (and by that, I mean the renewal of Quaker faith and practice, not institutions, per se), I spoke about how I feel that many of our meetings are like fallow fields -- involved in the invisible process of rest and renewal and ready to burst forth with life.  And I mentioned the questions that my friend asked me in follow-up, continuing the metaphor:

• tilling = ?
• planting = ?
• seeds of life = ?
• soil = ?
• deep soil = ?
• shallow soil = ?
• plants = ?
• fruit = ?

I am going to address a few of those in this post.  The ones about soil.  After all, in the prairie outside my window, it's the soil that is lying fallow. It's not the plants seed, and so on.  The soil has been getting ready for this coming summer since early last autumn.  The various plants -- warm season grasses (big blue stem, little blue stem, side oats gamma), forbs (black-eyed Susan, coneflowers of various shades, partridge pea, milkweed, ironweed, rattlesnake master, New England aster) -- are either dormant (the grasses) or dead.  All of the plants, dead or dormant, have been shaken by the wind and rain, releasing seeds that scatter across the land.  They've been buried in snow, borne down by the weight and pushed into contact with the soil.  They've been disintegrating.  They look ugly.  The whole prairie, but the world's standard of beauty, looks ugly.  Dead.

And yet that's exactly what's needed.  The dead plants are feeding the soil.  The rain is watering it and breaking it up so that the new seeds can find just enough depth to germinate and spread their roots.  The snow, in addition to adding moisture to the ground, insulated the dead growth from the bitter cold and sped the decomposition process.

So, back to the questions my friend asked.  In Quaker life today, what is the soil?  What is the deep soil? And what is the shallow soil?   Hmmm, her questions remind me a bit of story of Jesus from Matthew 13 --

Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.  Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.  Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

When I answered my friend (and we were having this conversation Facebook Messenger, hence short answers), I told her I thought "soil = our souls. the soul of the community/meeting."  Upon further reflection, I still think that.  The soil in which the Seed grows best is our individual souls and the soil of the meeting.  Does a meeting have "a soul."  I think it does.  I would argue that the soul of a meeting can be "felt" when we pay attention -- is it a deep, spiritual soul filled with love and life?  Or is it one of discord and disharmony?  Regardless, the Seed longs to spring forth.  But the soil must be made ready.

In the case of the prairie, natural, organic processes are at work.  The afore mentioned decomposition and watering.  But also, as the soil warms, worms and bacteria moving through, breaking it up, preparing it for growth.  Production farmers augment the processes, in their need to turn a profit, with chemical fertilizers and herbicides.  They increase the short term fertility and viability of the soil, but drain it, too.

That's why I believe that the processes for Quaker renewal have to be organic -- growing naturally from the Spirit doing spiritual work within us and the soul of the meeting.  There is no quick fertilization.  While we celebrate the past, we must allow it to die and thereby nurture new grow.  I'm not talking of people here, so much as the ancestor worship we often engage in -- remember how we worked for abolition of slavery, for women's suffrage, against the Vietnam war?  Yep we did.  But those are past.  What work is God calling us to now?  I cannot sit back and just look at photos of prairies past -- even though I have tons of pictures. They are glorious.  And each prairie in last seven years has been different.  Each one is new and unique.  Let's celebrate, let the past feed and inspire us, and move forward!

And, while we may not like to think of ourselves this way, some of us need to be worms and bacteria.  We need to be preparing the soil -- some with prophetic calls for justice as a spiritual enterprise, others by prayer and example, others by leading spiritual formation opportunities, some by...  Much of this may be "underground" and invisible to the larger field of the Society of Friends, but is happening across the US and Canada even now.  We need to do what we can to encourage this work.  And, instead of bemoaning the lack of visible "results", to keep at it.

For there is deep soil out there.  Deep soil, for me, equals souls/spirits who are hungry for God and community and real spiritual work.  Some people and meetings may not even be able to name that hunger.  But they know it when they experience it -- and find it nurtured.  We are called to move out of the shallow soil of being "cultural Quakers," of seeing the Quaker way as a system of ethics or as a "nice way of behaving" (i.e. the Testimonies divorced from their grounding spirituality).

I feel the soil preparation has been going on for a long time.  It needs to continue.  Organically, like I said -- from Friends who feel called to be at work, even behind the scenes. Spring is nearing, though.  Which means  is also time for some above ground work.

• tilling = ?
• planting = ?
• seeds = ?

Fieldward...

Fallowness and Quaker Renewal: A Prairie?

So a friend and I were e-chatting the other day about spiritual dryness and renewal of the Quaker movement in the US and Canada.  That’s not unusual.  I talk with my friends about that a lot.  In that conversation, I said, “I'm hoping we can till spiritual soil in ways that encourage deep sharing and drop seeds of new life in new places and in fields that have lain fallow perhaps.”

Fallow is concept that didn’t use to mean much to me.  Especially when I lived in the city.  But now that I’m on the farm and trying to get a tall grass prairie going, fallow is concept I can relate to.  All winter I’ve been looking out my office window at the prairie covered in deep snow.  Now, after our recent warm-up, the snow is gone.  I walked through it the other day.  It looks dead – grasses dry bent low, mud all around.  Then one of my cats caught a mouse there.  Hmmm, not exactly what I was hoping for, but still a sign of life.

So I’ve begun to understand the concept of fallow.  The prairie went unseeded last year.  Uncultivated.  It is land at rest.  It is waiting.  The seeds planted two year ago have been at work putting down roots.  Prairie grass is like that.  It goes deep.  Then it spreads.  The results are rarely seen above ground for two or three years.  The coming summer will be the third year since planting and cultivation.  It should be the year that the grasses really take off.  Life should abound.

As I also told my friend, it seems to me that many Quaker meetings are like a fallow prairie at rest.  Their spiritual soil is not dead.  It has just been quiescent, like a field out of production. Now it is ready to be tilled, planted, tended, and will spring forth with spiritual fruit.

Then my friend asked (she’s really good at questions), “So…

·         tilling = ?

·         planting = ?

·         seeds of life = ?

·         soil = ?

·         deep soil = ?

·         shallow soil = ?

·         plants = ?

·         fruit = ?

·

Indeed!  What do those things equal for Friends today -- for the Quaker way which we love and want to share?

Stay tuned…

Quakers Revitalization -- Come Chat About It!

This is a time of renewed interest in Quaker life and spirituality. This interest is shown by the number of Quaker titles on amazon.com (and their strong sales) and through other things, such as Beliefnet.com's "Belief-O-Matic." Thirty thousand people a day try Belief-O-Matic. 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 fifty links! So why aren't our Meetinghouses bursting with newcomers? Join us at Quaker Center, January 25-27, for a weekend of spiritual reflection around this question and, more importantly, exploring God's future for Friends. It will be a time focused on positive language, idea generation, learning, sharing, videos, and more using interactive techniques and tools. You'll come away from this weekend with a fresh sense of God's working with and among us. Registration is open now for A Modest Proposal: Participating in God's Future for Friends at quakercenter.org. ABOUT THE PROGRAM LEADER: J. Brent Bill is the author of many articles and books, including Sacred Compass: The Way of Spiritual Discernment, Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality, Mind the Light, Learning to See with Spiritual Eyes, and the recently released Awaken Your Senses: Exercises for Exploring the Wonder of God. He also wrote A Modest Proposal for the Revitalization of the Quaker Message in the United States which has been the basis for a number of retreats across the United States. Brent is a Quaker minister, author, photographer, and congregational consultant and the coordinator for FGC's New Meetings Project. Brent graduated from Wilmington College and the Earlham School of Religion and has worked as a local church pastor, yearly meeting staff member, and seminary faculty member. For eleven years he was the executive vice president of, and congregational consultant for, the Indianapolis Center for Congregations. The Center for Congregations is a project of Lilly Endowment, Inc and is dedicated to helping congregations find and use the resources they need to thrive. Brent and his wife Nancy live on Ploughshares Farm, which is fifty acres of Indiana farmland that is being reclaimed for native hardwood forests and warm season prairie grasses. Download Quaker Center's full 2013 program schedule here. Yours in service, Kathy and Bob Runyan Co-Directors Ben Lomond Quaker Center

Quakers and a Jackson Browne Quote that Applies (at least for me)

I'm a big fan of singer/songwriters.  And Jackson Browne's one of my favorites.  Recently I was listening to one of his solo live acoustic albums. When he's taking requests, a fan yells out for "Peaceful Easy Feeling."  Which, of course, is not a Jackson Browne song.  But he's game and gets ready to sing it (after pointing out he didn't write it) and then he says he has trouble with some of the lyrics, particularly in the section that goes:

And I found out a long time ago
What a woman can do to your soul.
Oh, but she can't take you anyway,
You don't already know how to go.

"Well," Browne said, "I flat out disagree with that."

I felt the same way when reading a couples of blogs written by Friends (and friends) the past week or so.  My first disagreement arose when I read David John's Quaker Life article titled "Moving Forward or Circling the Wagons."  David's a thoughtful Quaker theologian and the article has some good points, such as "There are numerous occasions inviting us to examine our identity and our purpose" and "embodying [the Testimonies] means we move as Christ calls us and enter the places where living these convictions takes us."

But when he writes "But one thing is certain: God is not calling us to be Quakers," "Well," Brent said, "I flat out disagree with that."

Strongly.  Perhaps that is true for David and some others, but it's not true for me -- and others I know.  Some of us do feel that God is calling us to be Quakers.  That's why we are Quakers -- we felt called to it, led to it, introduced to a way of faith that spoke to our condition in a manner that no other form of Christianity did.  I grew up a Friend -- but it was in college that I became convinced that this was the faith tradition for me.  And that was not just some intellectual assent.  It felt like then -- and remains to this day -- a call.  I am called to be a Quaker.  I think the RSoF is being called by God to be Quaker.

I do not say that being Quaker is about preserving Quakerism and its institutions, but rather living out a particular faith tradition that speaks to our conditions -- and to which we can invite others seeking for a vital, living faith that has emphasis on both personal encounters with God and practicing the results of those encounters in the wider world.

Another blog (especially the title!) that pricked my spirit was Micah Bale's "Being Quaker Is Not the Point."  "Well," Brent said again, "I flat out disagree with that."  For me, being Quaker is precisely the point.  That's because my understanding of what it means to be a Quaker encompasses embodying "the living presence of his [Jesus'] Spirit."  Again, I am not concerned with preserving an "-ism" or it's institutions, but I think the Quaker message and the way it impacts our daily lives of faith and practice can be a profound experience of faith for those of us who claim to be Quaker and on those who are seeking for a faith that "brings them to Christ and leaves them there," as George Fox said.  Oops, I'll probably get in trouble for invoking Fox instead of Jesus, but heavens to Betsy (not Betsy Ross), what an amazing concept.  Introduce seekers (and ourselves?!) to Quaker faith whereby they experience the life-changing power of the ever-living and ever-loving Christ who can speak to their condition.  A faith that is not some goofy new-age concoction but is rooted in Christian practice and faithful adherence by saints (and sinners) for over 350 years! 

I, for one, want a faith that is both lived in the present condition of my life and grounded in tradition.  And so, for me, being Quaker is the point.  It speaks to my spiritual condition -- and, I am finding in my ministry of writing books about spirituality and at FGC in nurturing the start of new Quaker worship groups and meetings, to others, too.  People are drawn to what the Quaker message and way stand for and so.  So much so that where groups do not exist, they want to create them. 

I find these ideas of not being called to be Quaker or the point is not to be Quaker offensive, hurtful, and dismissive of those of us who have intentionally and spiritually felt called to be Quaker, have made it a central point of our faith, and who have worked to spread that message as a main part of our message.  I find it dismissive of that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us -- some of whom gave their lives for this message and way of faith life.  I find it dismaying and tinged with a touch of self-loathing. 

While I admit I am quickly approaching geezerhood (if not already there) and more prone than ever to curmudgeonliness, I don't think that's the reason these pieces bothered me.  In fact, I don't mind being bothered, or shaken, or challenged in my thinking.  They bothered me because of the reasons stated above.  If you do not feel that God is calling you to be Quaker or that being Quaker is not the point, then perhaps you're in the wrong place.  Perhaps some new movement based on your interpretation of what God's work in this day and age are is where you belong.  You can root it in your particular understanding of scripture, tradition (well, probably not tradition -- after all, shrines and looking backward are a bad thing), and what the face of faith looks like today.  Burn down the meetinghouses, erase a history of faithful Christians, deny the spiritual wisdom of a collective community that has written spiritually and prophetically for hundreds of years, and spurn authority outside of like-minded others.

"Well," Brent said, "I flat out disagree with that."

Sigh.

As for me, as I stated I do feel that I am called to the Quaker faith and its way of working in my life and the world.  I feel in the deepest parts of my soul that being Quaker is point.  And I will continue to work for the expansion of this way of faith and life.  Not -- just in case you haven't picked up on this, dear reader -- to save institutions or an "ism", but because it is a faith that has changed my life and still has the power to change others.  I will continue to write about the spiritual riches of this ancient/modern faith and its efficacy.  I will support those who labor in the fields which are white unto harvest. And I will go on bearing the name Quaker as a servant of the Living Christ who was not born yesterday, but is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow and continues to teach his people himself.

-- Brent

Shallow Small Group

Now this could be the kind of small group that would actually attract people to your congregation...

Quakers and Church Planting -- Two Reviews

As part of my work for FGC's New Meetings Project, I've gathered a stack of books about how to start new churches.  I blogged a bit about some premises gathered from Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by New Church Starts by Jim Griffith and Bill Easum.  After reading that book, I moved on to The House Church Book: Rediscover the Dynamic, Organic, Relational, Viral Community Jesus Started by Wolfgang Simson.

I had great hopes for this book.  After all, I have had some experience in helping to start a "house church" (Friends in Fellowship that meets at Ploughshares Farm) and I think the house church model may be helpful to Quakers as we think about ways of seeding new meetings and worship groups.  That idea seems to me to be very much in keeping with how the early Friends did their "church planting" work. 

So I opened this book with great anticipation -- only to find that it's just horrid and unhelpful. Its scope is as small as its premise -- and is far from "dynamic, organic, relational, viral" and "Jesus" (to quote the cover). There's a mean-spirit about this book -- criticising and dismissive of all other expressions of what it means to be church. Disdainful that God might be at work in other forms.  And the author's "biblical" premises for his positions seem to me as if he's reading some other Bible than mine. I finally put it down in disgust without finishing it.  It will be one of the few books that gets literally recycled -- I don't want anybody I know to read it.  Or anybody I don't know -- so it's not going to Goodwill or Friends of the Library.

In some ways I feel I should have known better than to expect good things from this book.  It's forward is by George Barna and the book is published by his company.  I've long had a negative bias  against his church research (after all, I do hang around with social scientists of religion and American congregations and was once a member myself of the Religious Research Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion) and my friends do not tend to have a high regard for his methodology.  Plus he always seems to have something to "sell" -- both figuratively and literally.  I should have avoided this book and I recommend you do, too.

Reading Finding Organic Church: A Comprehensive Guide to Starting and Sustaining Authentic Christian Communities by Frank Viola was time much better spent (at least I didn't find myself throwing the book down in disgust!). 

Viola offers a number of helpful thoughts (including practical arrangements for starting a new group -- where to meet, time, etc.), an detailed view of what he considers "apostolic" church planting based on his reading of the New Testament, and the idea that "organic" is the way to go. The organic, as he describes it, method of church planting seems to me to have much to commend it and indeed reminded me of early Quakers establishment of meetings and the way our meetings today (at their best) conduct worship (fully participatory by those attending) and business (striving toward a sense of the meeting -- though Viola used the term consensus, which is something close, but not equal to the sense of the meeting). Some of Viola's s suggestions could come straight from a "Quaker church playbook" were there such a thing. But, he seems not to have heard (or at least, studied) us at all.

Some things about this book were off-putting. The main one is his use of the male pronoun -- "he" this, "him" that. He says in the preface that he "has no problem with the idea that women can engage in apostolic work" but that "it's simpler to write 'he' than "he or she." Lame -- both as an excuse and for lazy writing.  So I think women who read this will find it tough going. 

Another thing is what I consider his tortured reading of the New Testament to make it conform to his "apostolic" method. I think that he makes a lot of assumptions about what scripture says and infers that are not laid out as clearly in the Bible as he implies they are.  Many of them are good thoughts -- it's just that it's more eisegesis than exegesis. 

Viola's also a bit repetitive -- especially when giving the biblical basis for his model, which he contends begins with how the Trinity interacts. A bit of a stretch there, too, I think.

Still, there's a good deal of helpful material here, much of which I hope to adapt for use by the New Meetings Project.  If you can read past his seeming gender and Biblical biases, I think you'll find it worth the read -- at the very least it will help you think about issues surrounding starting new Quaker groups (and maybe revitalizing some older ones) today.

-- Brent

Quakers and ... um... the "E" Word

I must admit I feel just delighted to be in my new position as coordinator of Friends General Conference's New Meetings Project.  The projects goals are something I believe in and have written about for a number of years -- most recently on posts here and some other blogs.

As part of this position, I've been doing a lot of reading and research.  And I'll be sharing that reading and research here and (hopefully!) elsewhere.  On my shelf (in place of my usual stack of novels and short-story collections) are titles such as Planting Missional Churches, The House Church Book, Organic Church,  Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by New Church Starts and more.  Many of these have at least some information helpful to Friends -- especially if we're willing to wade past some assumptions (you can decide what they are) and look for the nuggets that are helpful.

While I do think that a Quaker model of starting new congregations and/or worship groups will vary in methodology and practice from most other denominational models (I mean, if we want to be true to our Friend-ly roots and theological understandings of congregations as being comprised of people of faith called and led by the Spirit to do God's work together and not organized and/or presided over by ordained clergy*), there are some things we can learn from others' efforts.  And one struck me this evening whilst reading Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by by New Church Starts.  The authors say:
Our experience has confirmed that over 80 percent of those who visit a church and return to that church and gradually become enfolded into that faith community do so on the elbow already connected to that church.  So work on making your your church the most loving and inviting place in the area so when people do show up they are loved.

Hmmmm.  Two thoughts occur to me.  If 80% of those who visit, return, and become involved do so because someone has brought/invited them, then perhaps we had best shed a bit of our Quaker reticence to let others know that we are Friends, and friendly, and would welcome them.  Yikes! Invite a friend to Friends?  Well, yes.  In a Friend-ly sorta way, of course -- a mere invitation would suffice.  Either personally ("Um... err... I'm a Quaker.  You wouldn't want to come to Meeting me with me, would you?" probably isn't the best approach, though) or corporately through Facebook or Google ads or the like.

The second is that "loving and inviting" line.  What I noticed when I read that is the lack of of specific theological position mandate.  Evangelical.  Liberal. Programmed.  Unprogammed. Middle of the road.  Nope, the theological mandate is love.  Reminds me of something I read in a certain pretty important book -- "the greatest of these is love." 

Loving, inviting Meetings, filled with people of Spirit.  Perhaps that's a sort of Quaker E- E- E- En-vitation we can embrace.

-- Brent

Quakers, Revitalization & The Role of Beauty

I think a lot about Quaker faith and how we attract people to it -- which means (for me) attracting them to the ever-living Christ.  As someone who's been a congregational consultant for over ten years, I've seen lots of congregations try lots of things to bring people in the doors. They hear that conservative churches are growing and so they decide that the way to growth is to be more theologically conservative.

Or an expert tells them that "contemporary worship" is attracting new folks -- so they rip out the pipe organ and put in a praise band.

Or start seeker-sensitive services.

Or begin Saturday night services.

Or round-up folks for Cowboy Church (I'm not making this up!).

Or... whatever. Lots of congregations try these things and don't see much in the way of results.

It seems that the one thing we don't do is try and make our faith beautiful.  That's right -- beautiful.  I've been thinking about that a lot after reading Tony Jone's The New Christians. Especially the passage where he says:

"... why in the world would you think that you can do anything to get people to come to church? Instead, why don't you worry about being faithful -- living out a beautiful Christianity -- and see what the spirit does in your midst? I think that people will be more attracted to the Spirit than anything you could ever do to "hook" them. (p. 201)

"Why don't you worry about being faithful -- living out a beautiful Christianity -- and see what the spirit does in your midst?"  I am more than ever convinced of the wisdom undergirding Jones' thinking.

Stay for Pay: Church/Meeting Growth -- The Bad Friends Way

As many Friends, good and Bad, know, I (Brent Bill) have thinking about ways to revitalize Quaker life (not the magazine!) in the 21st century. Thus I've offered my "Modest Proposal" series (visit it here or download a pdf of it here).

But, of course, those writings are very deep and thoughtful and practical. Not much fun, I guess. Association of Bad Friends co-clerk Jacob Stone and I (with help from our Bad spouses) have come up with some other ideas in the past -- such as the inclusion of the Quaker Whoopee Cushion as a way to enliven Meeting and perhaps attract a more fun-loving bunch of Seekers.

Whilst those earlier ideas were great, the newest one from the Research and Development Sub-committee of the Advancement and Outreach Committee of the International Association of Bad Friends for Meeting Expansion and World Domination (Corporate motto: "We see a great people to be snookered") is simply stupendous.

We call it "Stay for Pay."

Simply put, Quaker meetings will begin paying people to attend Meeting for Worship.

Brilliant, isn't it?

Instead of taking an offering during or after worship, local meetings will pass out cash to attendees. Below is the proposed payment schedule:

Action	Payment
Attend Meeting for Worship (entire service)	$10
Give good vocal ministry (5-7 on clerks’ scale)	$5
Give great vocal ministry (8-10 on clerks’ scale)	$7.50
Give outstanding vocal ministry (leaving people crying, laughing, ready to march on DC, etc – without mentioning anything about God or Jesus or John Woolman)* *unprogrammed meetings only	$10
Give outstanding vocal ministry (leaving people crying, laughing, ready to go door to door on evangelization campaign, etc – without mentioning anything about how God or Jesus is your best Friend and made you rich)* *programmed meetings only	$10

Vocal ministry (other than the outstanding category, which has obvious criteria) would be rated Olympic style, with three or four clerks holding up signs with their scores for the message.

It's a win/win situation. Meetinghouses will be packed and a family of four will walk away with enough money to go do something enjoyable on Firstday afternoon! Who could ask for more?

And the best part -- it's not going to cost any money! That's right. Every Friends meeting seems to be sitting on some stash of endowment cash that they can't spend. Here's an opportunity to put the proceeds that have been piling up for the past one hundred years in the Phoebe Ann Mosley Memorial Straight Shooters and Outreach to Indigent Orphans of the Spanish American War Fund to work. The legal team of Stone, Bill, Stone, Stone, Stone M O'Gwynn will be glad to help with the details of modifying the conditions of the endowment.

For more information on this amazing program and how your meeting can franchise this opportunity for its use, contact us at 1-666-BAD-QUAK.

-- Brent