Empty Forms? Living Waters

I am at annual session of NPYM because the Friend in Resident this year is Jay O'Hara.  This is a journey to annual session that I have not made in 7 years because of my frustration over form heavy structures in our Yearly Meeting, and an appalling experience I had with the clerk 7 years ago telling me outside of session what decisions "would be" made by the business meeting.  (Despite my protests that if we our approaching business meeting as faithful listening for the guidance of the Holy One that no one could know in advance what would be decided.)

Jay was billed as speaking about Climate Change, and although he has, he has even more called us to be a Gathered People listening to Divine Authority.  He has challenged us to examine where we have empty forms that are keeping us stuck and driving away young Friends and where to go more deeply towards our traditions of receiving spiritual guidance, and centering our actions and life together in that Power.  For me it is a very welcome eldering of our whole body.

In my last few blogs I have written about ways in which our committee structure and nominating process can become empty forms, or limiting structures.  I often hear Friends lament why are we an older, graying religion?  Why are numbers dwindling and "where are the young people?"  I often also hear older Friends attribute to the youth that there disappearance as soon as they are old enough to not go to Meeting is because they have better things to do, are more interested in hanging out with peers, or have been swallowed by wide world values.   While certainly that is true in some cases, or may even be expressed as "better things to do"...I want to say as someone who has spent time listening to Young Adult Friends in their 20's and 30's, there is a certain blindness here operating about why they leave.

The male privilege and class privilege and racial privilege is readily apparent to anyone who has those lens and enters our Meetings.  If they speak up about these things they can be treated like a "child" of the Meeting and dismissed, or because they are a distinct minority they can find it daunting to try to raise this alone.   And if they do raise for example a complaint about mansplaining (if you do not know what this is please look it up) and are responded to with defensiveness, no support by whoever is clerking and a continuation of the behavior, they can wind up feeling so frustrated and trapped as to just decide that the benefits don't out weigh the pain.

How then do we go towards Living Waters?  There is a bit of a what comes first the chicken or the egg problem.   When people experience authentic Spirit voiced ministry and the experience of a covered Meeting, they are hungry for more.  They themselves are opened up spirituality and you thus get more Spirit moved vocal ministry.  There is a synergy that moves things deeper.   But when we experience inauthentic ministry, that which is driven from head and from ego, it is dampening to the worship and to the soul.  There is a disorientation from sorting the wheat from the chaff.  There is a discouragement - like a pollution in water.

This takes me to eldering.  Eldering in its orginal and intended form was to hold each other accountable to the faithfully minding of the Light.   People were eldered if they spoke from head and ego and not from an inward prompting.  They were also eldered/mentored in how to listen to the inward promptings.   People were eldered if they behaved in ways that blocked the corporate experience of true worship.  They were given experiences of true worship so they knew what to aim for.  And they were eldered if their behaviors in the world were oppressive to the Light in others.  They were provided patterns and examples of how not to do this.  As I have written about in other previous posts, eldering has gotten a bad name among Friends.   We need to return to this as a living practice, not a badly applied censoring of something we personally dislike.

I understand that the discernment of what is a living form and what is an empty form is a confusing thing for many people - perhaps in the eyes of the beholder.  All of us have experienced somewhere empty forms that are maddening to have to comply with and feel simply like "because I said so" dictates of a power over parent.  If forms in their original creation were ever useful, ever life giving it was because they were created to try to name and protect a way of doing things that had discovered to be life giving.  But when we teach people "how to" do something, without teaching them why to do it that way (and maybe do not even know ourselves) then we teach an empty form, something which has simply become a ritual.   Some of our forms made sense before copy machines, phones, facetime technologies, internet, etc.   But they now are forms frozen in time, trying to serve a purpose which maybe better served by new forms. 

So just as I have written about our committee structures, we have to go back to questions about what are we trying to achieve and apply those to our structures to see if they do serve.   If Fox was saying to the religions of his times "These rituals are empty forms" then we need to examine carefully whether 350 years of practice has rendered us some empty forms.  If some of our forms serve valued purposes we need to start being able to articulate and practice those forms in ways that make that clear to all beholders.

Spiritual but not Religious - the "none's and Quakerism.

I am aware as a therapist that many people consider themselves spiritual, but not religious.   I in fact have listened to people long for a spiritual home, but feel thwarted as to how to find such a thing.  In asking them questions about what it is they want, I often privately feel that they are describing Quakerism (and of course as their therapist it is not appropriate to try to present that to them.)  But they will say things like “I want community with other people who believe in God”.  “I want a place without dogma – where you can believe, but not be told what to think.”  “I want a place that takes action for social justice.”  And so forth.

Because of my feeling that Quakers need to learn how to do outreach to just such people, I got last year the book: Belief without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious by Linda Mercadante.  She presents to us the fairly well know truth that the religion in America hit its high point in the 1950s with only 3% not affiliated with a religion, but that a huge decline began in the 60’s and 70’s.  Until by 2010  46 million Americans, or 1/5^th of all Americans had no religious affiliation.  (This is not across the board, some religions with immigration are actually growing in the US, as are evangelical religions.) Estimates vary from 1/3 to ¾ of young adults not choosing a church.  Increasingly young adults have not been raised with any religion, decreasing the likelihood of their choosing a church in adulthood.  65% of young adults have never attended a church service.  And there is more change of affiliation (2 or 3 times) for adults who are in religion than in previous generations.  And yet 90% of Americans, Gallop polls show still believe in God.

Certainly for many, many centuries of human history religion was the only game in town in terms of explaining why the world was the way it was.  With the rise of science there is another game in town for explaining the world.  But this also loosed the grip of superstition and the use of fear to keep people in churches.   The idea that one would fail or be outcast or die in hell all have loosened as religion became less prominent.   So if we assume that it is good that people who previously belonged to religions for those bad reasons no longer do, that still does not address the huge number of people who do not belong to a church because the obvious ones they know about are a wrong fit and they don’t have a good way of finding the right religion.  More Americans describe themselves are spiritual but not religious (SBNR) than ever. They are the "nones" the ones who write none on the checkbox that ask for religious affiliation. If they are seeing themselves as seekers, Quakerism as the original faith of seekers should be a good home for them.

Mercandante’s research shows that the SBNR very much reject dogma and see it as harmful.  If one reviews the history of religion, such chapters as the Inquistion and the many religious wars, the persecution of or discrimination against individuals for religious beliefs; it is no surprise that people would come to this conclusion.  Again it would seem that Quakerism offers a helpful stance here saying that we have no dogma or doctrine but that we engage in a lifelong search for the truth and can offer what we have found so far in the form of testimonies.  SBNR’s similarly believe that all religions have found the same core truths, and they see mystics of all traditions as transcending the specific practices they utilized.  SBNR folks tend to reject the title of religious, which they see as entangled in the downsides of churches, and favor the term spiritual instead.

Mercandante's interviewees she divided into 5 generational groups: the Great Generation (born 1901-1924), the Silent Generation (1925-1945), Baby Boomers (1946-1964), Gen X (1965-1981), and the Millennials born after 1981..  Both the Great Gen and the Silent Gen were pretty universally raised in some sort of church and would choose some sort of church because it was fairly unheard of to not do so.  The Silent Gen was more capable of leaving religion for spirituality - integrating what they had found.  Baby boomers were the largest group interviewed and where the largest percent of those who identified as SBNR.  They also tended to have been raised in a church and to remember that fondly. Their generations general tendency to question authority and to explore ideas and possibilities which made them spiritual seekers.  

The Gen X's were born into this cultural revolution and their parents tended not to raise them in churches - (less than half had formal religious upbringing) or to the expose them to a potpourri of possibilities which they found confusing.  They were left to make their own decisions and affiliations and most simply did not.  This generation is much less likely to feel a lack of religion and is also concerned for intellectual integrity in what they believed.  They can also come to religions with an open mind and with less preconceived notions.  Mercandante interviewed the smallest number of Millennials because she notes they were the least interested even in the idea of her project.  More than half had grown up with divorced parents which seemed to contribute to their not having been brought to church - even less of them had been raised in a Church than the Gen X folks.  She says:  "For this generation, they took for granted that they could affiliate or not, believe or practice whatever they wanted, or nothing at all, with little or not repercussions."  They seem however to have less theological concepts to even guide a search for religion.

Mercandante wound up categorizing all her participants (regardless of generation) into 5 categories: 1)Dissenters - those who either in protest, drifting or conscientious objection left the church.

2)Casuals - those who engage spirituality on a casual or "as needed" basis.  They taste or dabble across a wide spectrum and are not concerned about theological mismatch.  Half of all Millennials fell into this category.

3) Explorers- those with spiritual wanderlust - driven by spiritual curiosity and the desire for novelty.  She sees them as spiritual tourists who enjoy the journey but do not plan to settle anywhere.

4) Seekers are those she sees as actually seeking a spiritual home- these are the church shoppers (and whose stance most closely align with the Quaker belief that the Truth must be sought.)  She says "I heard a spiritual longing they could just barely define or articulate."   However she also says: "Religious leaders often assume that everyone experiencing with spiritual practices is a seeker.  In my work, I found fewer seekers than religious leaders hope for, but more than some research might predict".  She also points out that the highest percentage of seekers are Baby Boomers (1 in 4) or Gen Exers (1 in 5).  They are often looking for "believable" beliefs, rituals that consistently provide 'liminality', a trustworthy group, and good personal 'fit'.  

5) Immigrants are her final group: those who actually convert to a new religion.  She comments on how difficult most found this path to be.

A future post will again pick up on insights from Mercandante's work, but it clearly serves as a useful reference point for Meetings trying to do outreach.  It is helpful for us to put in perspective that we are part of the "Protestant mainstream decline" in church going folks and that the very obvious decline in Quaker membership is not specific to Quakers, but is part of an overall trend in the US where 25% of people do not have any church affiliation and where increasingly young people are being raised without church.  It is also probably noteworthy (but not particularly encouraging) to realize that Baby Boomer and Gen X's are the ones most likely to be actually seeking a Friends Meeting.   But bottom line it is important to realize that for those who are seeking we do in fact have that which they describe to be the picture they are seeking.

Bringing Spiritual Intention to our Meetings

I have for many years now been a fan of Wayne Dwyer, author of the Power of Intention, among many books (and often seen on PBS) Dwyers messages is definitely spiritual, but no explicitly Christian, and so not usually spoken about in Friends Meeting - I would like however to bring part of his Light to our on going struggle to have our Meetings support the Life we want for our Meetings.

First I would say we need to have an explicit dialogue in our Meetings - what do we want?  What do we intend for our communities?  Do we want more young families?  Do we want to keep our youth? Do we want more vital ministries?  Do we want a more active and powerful social witness?  Do we want a deeper sense of community?  Do we want our business meetings to be truly spirit led?  Do we want to know the presence of God more deeply?

Whatever the longing - first we must name it - then we must imagine it fully achieved, the spirit of it - not endlessly lamenting the "not happeningness of it" as Dwyer might joke.  Then in tasting what it might taste like we must walk our selves backward from that image.  What conditions would have to exist to allow or nurture that vision?  Would a certain committee of the Meeting be different?  Would worship be different? Would community be different?  Then peel back another layer:  What committees or other activities prepare us for worship or to learn our practice?  What removes the obstacles in worship?  Do we expect to find the Divine on the bench with us? What practices could we change that would better support our cherished intentions?  What practices do we have because "we always did it this way"... or because when we had a lot of children we did x, or because of the force of personality of 1 Friend now long dead, or because we think this is how "all Quaker" do it, etc. etc?

How can we examine our practices and release those who no longer serve.  A number of years sabbatical years were popular for Meetings- laying down all committees for a year and discerning what was essential and bringing back committees only with intention and renewed purpose.  Do our committees match our numbers?  When does a meeting grown to where Ministry and Oversite should be separated (into Ministry and Worship & Pastoral Care)   And when have we shrunk to where they should be recombined into Ministry and Pastoral Care?

Sometimes this conversation becomes a little bit of a "What comes first the chicken or the egg?" conversation because we imagine we cannot do the work that it would take to make a better meeting without more people and yet we feel that without more people we cannot do that extra work.  Here Friends I would remind us that it is not our work alone to do.  This is where it is good to remember God!  How do we invite in God's help?  How do we remember that God also wants these things we want: deeper worship, greater community, etc.  and in fact if we can notice that it is really arranging the practices of our Meetings to let the Light shine through then it is not simply empty form or endless meetings - it is the joyful work of the Holy One and us as the instruments.

Quaker Outreach - or Letting our Light Shine

Recently at my Yearly Meeting, the opening night we did a series of short exercises to help us get to know each other.  Everyone got in a circle clockwise from oldest to youngest one.  The oldest was born in 1922, and we all cheered.  The youngest were 4 HS students who were in the room.  But for me the exercise confirmed my worst fears.  We raised our hands:  "everyone born in the 20’s, everyone born in the 30’s" (both about 10 to 15 people – what you would expect in age groups diminished by death), "everyone born in the 40’s" – the largest group in the room – probably 80 of our 200, the Baby boom.  “everyone born in the 50’s”  another huge group – the tail of the baby boom.  Probably 75 people.   There I was, the very last person born in the 50’s, born just two days before the 60’s started.  As I have my whole life, I felt not quite part of that group and anxiously looking over my shoulder to see who was coming behind me.  To my dismay, I saw 4 people in the ‘60’s, 3 in the 70’s and 3 in the 80’s and the 4 high schoolers born in the ‘90s.     My heart sank as I don’t think the 15 of us will be able to run the Yearly Meeting in 25 years!

Ok, I will grant you, it may not be quite as bad as it seemed.  The people in the 60’s thru ‘80’s are all working.  Some did not take off from work and arrived later in the week.  Some may have been out of the room putting children to bed.   However, I know because all the time I try to figure out who is “behind me”….there are not that many.  I also realized during this exercise that for the oldest members they look behind and see the huge bulge of baby boomer Friends and feel assured that there are capable hands to take over from them when they die.  For those born in the boom, in the 40’s and 50’s, they stand in a thick grove of trees and see lots of comrades, healthy numbers and nothing to worry about.   For me though serving among those born in the 50’s I was always the youngest in the room.  I was always waiting for the young people to come…..and they did not come.  In the my twenties and thirties I thought “well people this age don’t attend churches in great numbers”, but my the time I hit my 40’s I felt very worried.  Now in my 50’s when I think of it, it is more of a feeling of panic- deep fear for the survival of unprogrammed Friends in the world and now also a grief.

Another way to think about this is: what was happening in the Society of Friends in the 80’s (when those born in their 60’s were coming of age) and in the 90’s when those born in the 70’s were coming of age)?  Clearly in the 60’s and 70’s Friends were front and center in the civil rights movement, the women’s movement and the Peace movement – so lots of baby boomers saw us and saw our values and joined.  The ‘80’s and ‘90’s were quieter times in the nation and in the Society of Friends – but apparently young people did not find us as a result of our low visibility.

I don’t think it is just my Yearly Meeting – I think a similar exercise could be done in Yearly Meetings around the country with similar results.  I think this sheds a whole different light on the so many State of the Meeting reports that say that nominating committees are having a hard time finding enough people to serve on committees.  It is not just because we are all “busy”; it is because there are not enough of us! I think if we all don’t want 15 people to be running our Yearly Meetings in 25 years, we need to be shining our Light to our community so that those who need and want Quakerism can find us.

Several years ago my Quarter had a theme  “Don’t hide your Light”.   I was asked to be on a panel about the subject.  Mostly it was addressed from the point not hiding our individual gifts and beauty.  But I talked about it from the point of view of Quakerism and Quaker outreach.  Afterwards, I led an interest group on outreach – about ¼ of our attenders showed up to it!  Just out of spur of the moment curiosity I asked us to start by going around the room and asking everyone there how they first found Quakerism.  (Since then I have continued the experiment by asking different Friends as I meet them – with very similar results).  The stories were interesting, but disturbing to me in one similarity – how accidental the encounter was and how hard it sometimes was to find Quakerism. 

A frequent theme was people “church shopping”.  People would describe the frustration of seeking and not finding what they wanted – years spent in churches that did not fit them.  They would describe things like going to check out the Unitarians and discovering the Quaker’s meeting in the basement.  Quite a number had found us by seeing a Meeting House sign and wondering….   But more sad to me were the stories of people who knew well some Friend – a coworker or a distant relative and being impressed or interested by what the Friend said, but NEVER being invited by the Quaker to visit their church.  (Including one story where the person broadly hinted to their coworker with no result).  In these stories usually years to decades later something made them decide to find the nearest Quaker Meeting to them and go. 

Quite commonly positive exposure to Quakers through Quaker camps, schools, relatives or the peace movement made people tuck away the idea of Quakers until some moment moved them to find us.  A number of people described how hard it was to find a Meeting while actually trying.  (They looked up Quakers not knowing it was listed under Friends, etc.)  There were only a few stories of people who knew a Quaker and were invited to come to Quaker Meeting.  But all the stories pretty much end the same way.  “When I finally came to my first meeting, I sat there in the silence, in relief and new I had finally found what I was looking for.  I was home.”

Friends, we can do a better job than this!  We can do better than listings that only a person who already knows the name of the Meeting can find.  Or Meeting houses whose sign do not speak to passers by.  We can do better than failing to invite the people we know to share one of the joyous experiences of our lives out of…shyness? Embarrassment? The fear of evangelizing?  I don’t believe anyone would fear evangelizing if they heard some of these tortured stories of true Seekers trying to find us!

In my therapy practice often if I ask people about their spiritual life, they will tell me: “Well I have no Religion, but I am a spiritual person.  I believe in God or something greater than myself…but I don’t like the dogma and rituals of the Church.  I wish there was someplace where I could go and just be a spiritual person; a place that supported my spiritual life.”  As a therapist it really is not appropriate to evangelize, so I just smile and nod.  But often I feel sad that these seekers will never stumble across the knowledge of the very thing they are looking for.  Friends we can do a better job than this.

Why should NPYM affiliate with FGC?

The first time I went to FGC was when I was 22.  I went every year for the next 13 years until my daughter was born after which I went more irregularly. I think I have been 22 times.  In my twenties like many Young Friends I moved around the country until I finally landed in Seattle at 26.  My membership remained in the Meeting I grew up in until at 36 I knew I was going to stay somewhere and transferred.  So between 18 when I left home and 36 the constant in my Quaker experience was my annual attendance at FGC.  Some of my deepest most profound experiences have happened at FGC.  Thus I would say from personal experience FGC helps keeps young people attached to Quakerism.


What was so important to me at FGC?  The format of FGC is different than a Yearly Meeting.  No business is done at the national level – that is properly left to the Yearly Meetings.  It is Sat to Sat affair.  There is 5 whole days of the mornings spent in workshop- you choose one topic from a smorgasbord of topics and immerse yourself for 3 hours a day in that topic.  The topics are on a range of spiritual and Quaker Practice topics (with a few purely recreational topics).  Most attendees rank the workshops as the highlight of their week. Children attend a very fun children’s program during the same time and also in the evening while parents are at Plenary.  The Plenaries are talks or performances given by well known Quakers or one prominent none Friend (Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at FGC during this lifetime.)  The “free time” in the afternoon is jam packed full of opportunities to go on local field trips, hear speakers from Quaker organizations or meet in any number of interest groups or support groups (Women’s Center, Men’s Center, Family Center, Friends of Color, AA, etc.)  This is why my ex-husband used to say:  “You go there every year like a dead battery and you come back renewed.”


I’m not a native Northwestern, although on my next birthday I will have lived in Seattle longer than my Midwestern origins.  I do understand the intentions of the founders of this Yearly Meeting to remain separate from the divisions in Quakerism – to perhaps be an assistance to the healing.  This is a very worthy goal. I also know that currently the Yearly Meeting is made up of unprogrammed Meetings – just as FGC is.  In fact, FGC has two United Yearly Meetings affiliated, it has Meetings that are programmed and also affiliated with FUM in its midst.  I know that when Friends move out to the west from FGC affiliated Yearly Meetings, they look up our Meetings and attend them, and they never notice the difference.   I traveled broadly among Unprogrammed Friends, and honestly I cannot tell you one difference I have been able to notice in Independent Meetings vs  Unprogrammed Friends.  For me it feels far less divisive to stop talking about Beanites and Hicksites and instead just talk about unprogrammed Friends.

This is not to sweep away the importance of the issue of what should we do about the divisions in Quakerism?  I simply would say if we want to focus on that, then we ought to focus on that, and figure out something to actually do.  Not affiliating is a non-action.  It is a not doing anything.  Given that there are other Yearly Meetings in the NW that are affiliated with FUM and with Evangelical Friends – I fail to see how our Independence has healed anything.  If those Yearly Meetings would be upset by our affiliation I would have to ask them why they affiliated long ago?

In the meantime if we look at the programs of FGC:
The Bookstore and its publications
The Annual Gathering of FGC held in July each year
Small conferences and workshops
The interfaith committee
Traveling Ministries programs
Friends Meeting House Fund
Committee on Ministry for racism
Youth Ministries Committee

There is much we already benefit from here and much more we could benefit from.  Most Meetings in this yearly Meeting have purchased books or First Day curriculum from FGC bookstore and many Meetings have benefited from the Meeting House Fund.  Many Friends scattered throughout our Yearly Meeting have on occasion (a few regularly) attended the Gathering.  Traveling Ministries offers to send Seasoned Friends to help a Meeting solve a problem or deepen its spiritual life.  Not unlike M&O of our Yearly Meeting does – but it is another resource, sometimes more neutral.  We could benefit from more exposure to the Committee on Ministry for Racism’s gentle nudges to see the racism we maybe unaware of.  The Youth Ministries Committee while new is hard at work trying to figure out how to nurture Young Friends- they are seeing to the future of Quakerism.  FGC offers all these services to any Meeting in the US or Canada regardless of whether they are affiliated which is why we have been able to make use of many of these programs.  However, I feel we need to apply the NPR standard here. I listen to NPR and because I do, I choose to pay an annual membership to it.  I could just listen- but I don’t think that is fair.

Friends rightly are concerned about whether paying for our affiliation, finding representatives and paying for their flight will be a burden to the Yearly Meeting.  For myself I wonder if we need all 4 representatives we are allowed.  I think we could get by just fine with two- its not like in consensus there is some numerical advantage to having more representatives.  I think like our other representatives some who serve will combine their service with visits to friends or family that they intend to take anyway and will not therefore ask to be reimbursed for travel.  I also think all Quaker organizations are being pressed to look in this area of declining oil and increasing carbon pollution at how we can to our business in more environmentally friendly ways.  I think Friends are increasingly trying to use technology: conference calls, skype, etc to do our business.   FGC is actively looking at how to reduce the number of committee meetings.  In fact FGC may have to look at creating a West Coast and an East Coast Gathering because of the travel cost.  If there was a Gathering of OK Friends, Intermountain Yearly Meeting, Pacific Yearly Meeting,  Alaska Yearly Meeting, and NPYM would that be something that would make you glad to be part of FGC?

I have noticed among some of my lifelong NWYM folks a sort of suspiciousness or distrust of those “East coast Philly folks”.   (Kind of like the joking maps of the US – the ones on the east coast showing some detail till you get to the Mississippi and then after that a sort of misshapen expanse.  The ones drawn on the west coast showing detail to the Rockies and then misshapen expanse with Chicago, NYC and DC drawn in.)  I’m not sure this kind of world view moves any of us forward.   We shake our heads when Americans make gross characterizations of people from other countries they have never visited.  It would be good if we could not do that about other Quakers because they come from other parts of the country.   We have things to learn from them and they have things to learn from us.  For those who feel this uneasiness about affiliating I think we must look closely and figure out is the easiness about real issues, or about a sort of unconscious distrust of the unfamiliar?

I asked my daughter, age 14 who has been to FGC most of her life what role it plays in her close identification with Quakerism.  She said:  I saw there that Quakerism is big.  (Gatherings held on college campuses tend to be about 1500 to 2000.) and the workshops I went to (children’s gathering) we did worship sharing and that’s the only place I have done that ,and I had spiritual experiences there.  I made friends with Quakers my age.”  (She stays in touch with them all year via email and Facebook.)  Like many young friends there are not enough young people her age to have that experience in our Meeting or even really in Yearly Meeting.

My greatest reason why I wish our Yearly Meeting would affiliate with FGC is the concern that I have carried for decades: the concern for the survival of unprogrammed Friends.  All my adult life I have been waiting to not be one of the youngest Friends in the room.  Sadly at 51 I’m usually still one of the youngest in the room.  There is something very wrong with that picture!   Since FGC’s whole mission is about nurturing the spiritual life of unprogrammed Friends – I feel it’s mission is something that is really, really important.  A Yearly Meeting simply does not have the resources to do the kind of nurturing that a national organization does.  I’m not sure how we will heal the splits of Quakerism by simply witnessing the slow decline decade by decade of unprogrammed Friends.

Vibrant Meetings Grow the Society of Friends

  In 2007 FWCC reports 35,413 unprogrammed Friends, about a 10^th of 1% of the US population.  FWCC also reports this to be a 3% drop in our membership numbers in the past 30 years.  I don’t wish to be an alarmist, but no group can maintain the integrity of its traditions or its viability when it drops below a certain critical mass.  It is hard to say what the critical mass is, but this is a problem we need to address now before we reach that point.  Quakers have a proud heritage of what they have contributed to US history and I believe they can play a critical role in the 21^st century as well.  It is of the utmost importance that we look seriously at and address the factors leading to a decline in our membership.  For decades now the number of our members lost through death has exceeded the number of children born into Quakerism, as evidenced by the majority of grey and white heads at any Quaker gathering.  There is no difficulty in having many long living Friends, but we need to gain at least as many new members as the number of those dying!  The problem is one of not attracting enough new members, not retaining the members we have, and not keeping our youth.

Sharing Quakerism

We must go to the heart of our relationship with each other as a community of Faith if we want to address declining membership.  The reason that people come to our church or any church is to share religious fellowship with others whom we perceive share common theological beliefs with us and choose to worship in the same manner.  It is my firm belief that if more people knew about Quakerism, more people would indeed choose Quakerism.  (In fact a popular web site which provides a quiz on theological belief to match people with the religion that best fits their beliefs, directs thousands of people a year to the Society of Friends.)  I believe Quakerism combines many elements that people long for:  a non-dogmatic approach to the Divine, an open and accepting environment, a proud history of aligning values with actions for justice, and the space to find Truth, to find one’s Inner Voice or Teacher, and a deep mystical union with the Holy One.  How many people long for just such a faith are discouraged to the point of paralysis by churches that are bound by close-minded dogmas, that have ugly histories of oppression or apathy, or that lack the space to allow for experientially found Truths?  Somehow in our historic opposition to proselytizing we seem to have forgotten that we have something uniquely wonderful to offer friends, family, and co-workers.  If we would enthusiastically lend someone a favorite book, or recommend a movie or TV show that we found enriching, then why on earth would we not recommend to them that which we find fulfilling in our Meetings?

Disturbingly, I think this is because many of us are not enriched in our Meetings.  We may go because our family does or because we have decades-old friendships there, it’s a nice group of people to hang out with, or because we want our children to have a religion.  Now these aren’t terrible reasons to go; probably all churches have some percentage of people who attend for these reasons.  But those reasons are not the ones that will cause us to enthusiastically encourage a friend to go, nor are they reasons that will draw a newcomer back again. 

What will allow us to do genuine and moving outreach is that our Meetings are, or once again will be, places of spiritual inspiration that nourish our souls; places where spoken ministry sometimes moves us to tears or stuns us by how amazingly it speaks to our unspoken condition; where we are so closely connected by Light that a message for another can come through one person’s mouth and be spoken in total faithfulness - even words or ideas alien to speaker, but clearly intended for one of the community members sitting amidst us; where souls weary and wounded from the events of the world can come and in the silence be restored again.  When our Meetings are such places, how could we fail to recommend them to those we care for, and how could a seeker finding us for the first time not be enthralled and delighted at having found what they sought?  Why would our young people want to leave such a home?

Now before hundreds of Friends take up paper to write FJ protesting that their Meetings are just such places, I want to say that I know there are many such Meetings, thank God, throughout the U.S.  But I also know that, sadly, there are many that are not.  In many Meetings that through dangerous smallness (bordering on dissolution) or through Meeting dry spells, unaddressed by the membership, there is no verbal ministry Sunday after Sunday and little happens within the silence.  There are also Meetings so large and undisciplined (or uneldered) that popcorn messages with much chaff and conflict are delivered every Sunday, leaving the recipients overfed and dull, but not nourished. 

We have work to do in our local Meetings and our Yearly Meetings if we wish to see a spiritual health in our Meetings that can again lead to the growth of our Society as a whole.

The easiest place to begin is in taking an earnest stock of why we have lost members or long time attenders from our Meetings.  Many Meetings have no process in place for even checking in with Friends who suddenly stop attending.  Such Meetings feel it is none of their business or the Friend’s own choice to make.  Such complete autonomy from each other, I believe, renders meaningless the idea of membership, having a marriage under our care, or being in fellowship with each other.  Early Friends believed that living a truly spirit-centered life was no easy matter, but one in which we helped each other achieve this in loving fellowship.  This suggests to me, at bare minimum, that our M & O’s or our Pastoral Care Committees call Friends who have been absent for several months to check on them!  Reasons may range from poor health or family crisis, (which could benefit from some Meeting support), or a spiritual crisis, or a dark night of the soul which might also benefit from some ministry by caring Meeting members, to perhaps being really angry with the Meeting or some of its members over things which have happened at the Meeting.  This last should definitely be addressed because where one is driven away by conflict, others will be too.  Two close and dear friends of mine, attending Meetings on different ends of the country, have stopped going to their Meetings to worship because of badly handled conflicts in their Meetings, and in each case no one has even called them.  (Calling a year after the person has stopped coming and after they have sent a letter declining to serve on any committees, simply adds insult to injury.)  This should never happen!  

Healing our Conflict

Our unresolved conflicts are probably one of the biggest ways we loose people.  I hate to say it, but we Quakers for all our reputation as peacemakers are not very good at conflict!  Too many come to us attracted to the peace, wishing to leave behind troubling memories of conflict elsewhere, but without having learned skills for conflict.  We don’t teach conflict skills, because one of our great myths is:  “We all get along”.  I think it would be much more productive if we said:  “Peace is our ideal and like the rest of the human race, we still have to learn how to do it.”  The next step would be to start telling the truth about the conflicts in our Meetings - the decade old conflicts between 2 parties or 2 factions (sometimes carried on beyond our memory of why).  If we put on the table the fresh, still bleeding and still festering conflicts and hurts about contentious decisions and figured out what resources to call on to create personal or Meeting wide events for healing, then there might be forgiveness and reconstruction of new ways forward!  The good news is all Yearly Meetings, as well as programs like FGC, FWCC and our retreat Centers have skilled, seasoned Friends who do know how to help facilitate and give birth to such healing!

Keeping our Youth

I want to start the topic of keeping our youth by saying no church keeps a very high                           percentage of their youth.  This is in the nature of life.  Parents’ choices are not always right for their off-spring.  As seekers we know people are drawn to different expressions.  It is part of the developmental work of teenagers to differentiate from their parents.  So I don’t expect us to keep all our youth or view it as failure when we don’t.  But I would like to feel that we have something to offer and nourish youth who are drawn to us (unfortunately I am not confident that this is what happens).  Many, many Meetings, even those with large First Day programs do not have high school (H.S.) programs.  Such myths exist as:  H.S. age Friends just don’t like going to churches; we have no H.S. Friends in our Meeting; we don’t have enough H.S.’ers to hold a program together or “they” are happy to just go to Yearly Meeting events once or twice a year.  (Does once or twice a year nourish any soul?)  Usually our Meetings have not ever directly asked the H.S. Friends what they would like.  To go on much more runs the danger of trying to speak for them, a form of ageism we practice far too often.  Instead I will stop on this topic with the encouragement that we take seriously the charge to mentor the next generation of Friends and for us to be ministered to by the passion and intensity of their Lights!  

One important part of this is allowing them to become adults in their Meeting.  I went to Earlham College and so knew many other Young Adult Friends my age.  I remember one of my Friends telling me a few years after we graduated that he felt he had to leave the Meeting he grew up in (and the only one by him) because too many people could not see him as an adult.  He said they continued to refer to him as “X’s son”, even though he was a Member.  I, on the other hand, grew up a Friend and stayed one so I know it is possible!  I have sat in a Business Meeting where a discussion was taking place about Children’s Meeting and where a young Friend home from college had come to Business Meeting.  Someone referred to the “children” of the Meeting while gesturing at him!  Routinely our nominating committees do not approach Young Adult Friends about service on committees, still seeing them as children.  Some Meetings do have some sort of ritual designed to acknowledge passage into adulthood for their teen members.  This may be more important for the members of Meeting than the young person if we have trouble seeing them as adult members of our Meetings.

Mentoring Newcomers

Much of what our youth need is what our newcomers need – a way to learn Quaker practice that does not leave them constantly feeling they are making faux pas or forever “outside” a mountain of inside knowledge and rules.  This ranges all the way from Quaker speak (our alphabet soup of FGC, FWCC, AFSC, etc.) to our historic phrases (“seasoned”, “the way opens”, “eldering”, etc.).  Yes, the ambitious new Friend may pick up a book of Quaker history or Quaker practice, but not all are so inclined to learn this way.  How do we lovingly non-critically help them learn those things as well as our practices for business and committee work?  How do you teach the history and experiences that have led to our testimonies?  How do we teach our Meeting’s unique way of doing certain things?

This is very important because no on likes feeling stupid, awkward or like an outsider and if we leave them feeling that way too long they simply don’t return.  Maybe worse yet, in large Meetings with big influxes of new Friends and a shortage of seasoned Friends to help explain our practices, newcomers simply substitute ways they have learned outside.  Sometimes this may be good – but more often can lead to poor process, more conflict, more issues to heal and more loss of what is unique and powerful in Quakerism.  Therefore, mentoring newcomers is of key importance.

Some Meetings are so small that the newcomer is attended to by every member of Meeting, which can be “too much”, overwhelming, or cause much self consciousness!  Small Meetings have to figure out how to do this lightly.  Large Meetings may have a regular Introductory Quakerism class or monthly intro talk which is very helpful.  They still may need to add intentional mentoring to that structure.  In the medium size Meetings there may be no systematic way and at this size it is when unseasoned Friends are pressed into committee service that they can really be left to navigate without a map.  It is important that these Meetings really have dialogue about how they help their newcomers.  Recent newcomers are great sources of information about what is needed and where the holes are!

The Heart of the Matter

I have talked about sharing Quakerism, attending to lost members, healing our conflicts, keeping our youth and making a place for newcomers.  Obviously this is enough to keep M & O’s busy for a long time!  However these are only structural matters unless they come from a spiritual center.  The heart of the matter is really that our fellowship be infused with a tender love for one another.  Early Friends were on fire with the mission of living a life completely faithful to God.  They saw their relationships with each other as key to that; they held each other accountable; they prayed for each other and they bathed in the Light of God together in worship.  Committee work was a joyful carrying forward of the spiritual work of the community and a time of spiritual fellowship.  It is still possible that we can infuse our nominating process and our committee work with this Spirit.  It is also possible that we can find ways to deepen the spiritual life of the Meeting and to make the silence again a living silence, not a dead silence; that we can tend to the growth of membership in our Meetings with a sense of the vital and vibrant spirituality that we have to share with each other; that we can come to a Living Center that is compelling to any seeker to return to again and again!

Published In Friends Journal May 2008