I don't post much here anymore since I mostly use Facebook, Twitter, and the like to offer thoughts. But what I have to say here requires a bit more space.
As my faithful reader (notice, singular, not plural) knows, I retired from full-time, paid employment a year ago. And while I'm as busy as I've ever been, I'm busy doing mostly things I really enjoy -- writing, leading retreats, hanging out with friends, and the like.
I've also come to really enjoy something else -- and that's watching friends of mine who are a generation or two younger than me move into really significant leadership and staff positions in the Religious Society of Friends. What I especially enjoy about this is seeing how they do things differently than I (and others of my advanced age) would do them.
Now, when I was younger and way more insecure (I'm still insecure -- just not as much as I used to be), I would have been critical of how they do things differently. After all, I did them the right way. And I did -- for my time and with my understanding of what was needed. But times have changed (my gosh, I sound like my Grandma Bill!) and ways doing things in the RSOF and its institutions and organizations need to change, too. I'm pleased that younger (than me) leaders are doing just that.
I'm just going to focus primarily on one example (because otherwise this post would become a book -- and I'm already working on a book with a deadline looming!!) and that's my friend Wess Daniels who serves as the William R Rogers Director of Friends Center and Quaker Studies at Guilford College.
I've known Wess for a number of years and followed his thinking and writing -- especially about the RSOF and revitalization. He's a good thinker (but not as good a writer as I am -- kidding). And his thinking and writing have challenged me to rethink some of ways of how we do things. One of his most innovative ideas is that of remixing. I'm not going to go into it fully here (if you want to explore it further and I hope you do, check out his book A Convergent Model of Renewal: Remixing the Quaker Tradition in a Participatory Culture or his recent Michener Seminar at Southeastern Yearly Meeting), but as I understand it, it is remaining faithful to the bedrock of our faith tradition while reinterpreting it (remixing) so it is hearable, usuable, and useful for today. He posits that "remixing" is what the early Friends did to revive their understanding of the spiritual vitality of primitive Christianity.
And now Wess is remixing in his position at Guilford. The good work of Friends Center and, especially its Quaker Leadership Scholars Program, was founded and grew thanks to the efforts of my dear friend (and Friend) Max Carter. It's been a joy to watch this program grow and prosper under Max's direction (and with the help of other friends/Friends like Frank Massey and Deborah Shaw). I've even had the good fortune to lead workshop or two there. Friends Center and QLSP made a huge difference in RSOF and in young adults' lives. Max's contributions can not be overstated (I only wish my own to the RSOF were anywhere as significant as his!). And his vital ministry to Friends continues (which is one of the fun things about retirement -- all the ministry without all the administration, budgeting, etc!).
I see Wess taking the bedrock of Friends Center's "tradition" and remixing it in ways that embrace that tradition and make it accessible in new ways to a new generation of students. I think that's grand. In the same way that it's grand that Gabe Ehri and the Friends Publishing folks have remixed Friends Journal, Marta Rusek and Dan Kasztelan are remixing communications at FGC and FUM, and on and on.
Part of what I believe is that we, as created in the image of God, are called to create -- and re-create. I see that happening around me and am grateful.
My prayer is that I can continue to celebrate the "re-creation" (remixing) even when it rubs up against my ideas about how things should be done. While I continue my ministry in new ways, freed from the constraints of having to earn a living, may I support those who are re-doing our ministry in new ways. To borrow an idea from the Bible -- "the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" Well, the "old" (at least my personal part of it!) has not quite gone yet (and I hope it doesn't for awhile!), but I rejoice that the "new is here."
Showing posts with label society of friends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label society of friends. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Tuesday, November 06, 2012
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
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
Wednesday, October 03, 2012
Worship Group Research
As part of the work of the New Meetings Project, I am compiling a list of recently formed meetings and worship groups. Once the list is developed, I’ll be in contact with them so we can learn from their experience. It would be really helpful to this learning opportunity if you could send me the names of any meetings or worship groups that you know that have been founded in the past ten years. Contact information for the group would really be helpful, too. You can post it here or send it to me at brentb@fgcquaker.orgFriday, July 13, 2012
Gathering Quakers
“So, how do we let people know?” That was the first question my friend Mary Lee
and I had when we felt that God wanted us to start a new worship group focused
on theological hospitality and based on Quaker listening worship. We hoped to
create a space where people could come share their spiritual experiences in
their own language and where we would listen to God and each other together in
love and care. We felt certain that other people were, like us, looking for such
a place.
But how to let such people know about the new group?... read more here http://blog.newmediaprojectatunion.org/2012/07/gathering-quakers.html?spref=tw
From a post at the New Media Project at Union Theological Seminary.
But how to let such people know about the new group?... read more here http://blog.newmediaprojectatunion.org/2012/07/gathering-quakers.html?spref=tw
From a post at the New Media Project at Union Theological Seminary.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
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.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
We Ain't the Amish -- Quaker Quest
“We’re Not the Amish” Say the Quakers
Many people have stereotypes about Quakers – that they dress like the man on the Quaker Oats box. That they ride in horse-drawn buggies. That they don’t use electricity. That, in other words, they are just like the Amish. While Quakers have great respect for the Amish, they want to dispel any ideas that Quakers are Amish! West Newton Friends Church will be addressing that issue at the April 25th & May 2nd editions of “Quaker Quest.” The theme those nights is “Quakers and Everyday Living.”
“Quaker Quest” is a series of free sessions that gives people a chance to learn about Quakers today. “Quakers and Everyday Living” will be held at West Newton Friends Church at 6800 S. Mooresville Road in Indianapolis at 6:30 p.m. on April 25th and May 2nd. Two Quakers from West Newton Friends Church will be sharing short personal presentations on Quaker life based on their own experience.
The Quaker Quest sessions are open to the public and are held on Wednesday evenings. The programs include small group discussions, time for questions and answers, and an opportunity to experience a bit of Quaker worship. Refreshments and childcare will be provided as well. Advance reservations aren't necessary and the sessions are free.
All visitors will receive a complimentary autographed copy of Mind the Light: Learning to See with Spiritual Eyes by Quaker author and West Newton Friends Church member J. Brent Bill.
The schedule for Quaker Quest is
April 25 Quakers and Everyday Living
May 2 Quakers and Everyday Living
May 9 Quakers and Jesus
May 16 Quakers and Worship
The Friends, as Quakers are formally known, will also be available after the sessions for further visiting, answering questions, and hearing from folks who attend.
People interested in attending, or learning more about Quakers, should contact West Newton Friends Church at 317-856-5967 or brentbil@brentbill.com
West Newton Friends Church
6800 S. Mooresville Rd Indianapolis, IN 46221
http://sites.google.com/site/westnewtonfriends/
317-856-5967
Friday, April 13, 2012
Who is Jesus? A West Newton Quaker Quest Video
Who is Jesus? Come find out what some Friends think at West Newton Friends' Quaker Quest series.
Quaker Quest is a series of free sessions presented by West Newton Friends Church, a Quaker congregation. It is a chance to explore the Quaker way. Each session includes three personal presentations by Quakers from West Newton Friends Church on the topic for the evening. There will be time for questions and answers. Refreshments and childcare are provided. Advance reservations are not necessary.
May 2 Quakers and Everyday Living
April 18 & May 9 Quakers and Jesus
April 25 & May 16 Quakers and Worship
Please come early for conversation, coffee and refreshments!
You are welcome here!
West Newton Friends Meeting, 6800 S. Mooresville Road, Indianapolis, IN 46221 – 317-856-5967 – http://sites.google.com/site/westnewtonfriends/
Quaker Quest is a series of free sessions presented by West Newton Friends Church, a Quaker congregation. It is a chance to explore the Quaker way. Each session includes three personal presentations by Quakers from West Newton Friends Church on the topic for the evening. There will be time for questions and answers. Refreshments and childcare are provided. Advance reservations are not necessary.
May 2 Quakers and Everyday Living
April 18 & May 9 Quakers and Jesus
April 25 & May 16 Quakers and Worship
Please come early for conversation, coffee and refreshments!
You are welcome here!
West Newton Friends Meeting, 6800 S. Mooresville Road, Indianapolis, IN 46221 – 317-856-5967 – http://sites.google.com/site/westnewtonfriends/
Friday, March 30, 2012
Quaker Quest:: Exploring the Quaker Way
Quaker Quest
Simple, Radical & Contemporary
Quaker Quest is a series of free sessions presented by West Newton Friends Church, a Quaker congregation. It is a chance to explore the Quaker way. Each session includes three personal presentations by Quakers from West Newton Friends Church on the topic for the evening. There will be time for questions and answers. Refreshments and childcare are provided. Advance reservations are not necessary.
April 11 & May 2 Quakers and Everyday Living
April 18 & May 9 Quakers and Jesus
April 25 & May 16 Quakers and Worship
April 18 & May 9 Quakers and Jesus
April 25 & May 16 Quakers and Worship
Please come early for conversation, coffee and refreshments!
You are welcome here!
West Newton Friends Meeting, 6800 S. Mooresville Road, Indianapolis, IN 46221 – 317-856-5967 – http://sites.google.com/site/westnewtonfriends/Monday, October 24, 2011
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