Worship sharing focuses on a particular question and helps us to explore our own experience and share with each other more deeply than we would in normal conversation. It seeks to draw us into sacred space, where we can take down our usual defenses, and encounter each other in “that which is eternal.”
The guidelines for worship sharing have been evolving among Friends for many years, drawing on a number of different sources.
The convener or leader should define a question as the focus for sharing which is simple, open ended, and oriented toward individual experience. It might be a question about the spiritual journey. (How is God moving in my life today? Where do I experience beauty most intensely?) It might be related to an issue that is exercising or dividing the meeting. (What is it that frightens me most about this controversy? What do I most long for in our community?) It might relate to a book you have been reading together. (What touched me most deeply? Which character seems most like me when I was a child?) The question should be chosen prayerfully, to meet the particular needs of the group at that time. There are no stock questions.
The convener then explains the basic rules for sharing:
- Reach as deeply as you can into the sacred center of your life.
- Speak out of the silence, and leave a period of silence between speakers.
- Speak from your own experience, about your own experience. Concentrate on feelings and changes rather than on thoughts or theories.
- Do not respond to what anyone else has said, either to praise or to refute.
- Listen carefully and deeply to what is spoken.
- Expect to speak only once, until everyone has had a chance to speak.
- Respect the confidentiality of what is shared.
Some leaders feel that going around the circle makes it easier for everyone to speak. Others prefer to ask people to speak as they are ready. Explain which practice you would like to follow. In either case, participants should know that they have the option of passing or not speaking.
Allow at least half an hour for a group of five or six to share their responses to a single question, and at least an hour for a larger group. If you have more than a dozen people, it would be better to divide into smaller groups to make sure that everyone has a chance
to participate.
Enter into worshipful silence and begin.
Queries for Worship Sharing
Prepared by Michael Gibson, 2006
- What has been my experience of worship (in and out of meeting for worship)? What does worship mean for me in my daily life?
- What were my earliest experiences of corporate worship? How have my understandings and experiences of worship changed over the years? What about meeting for worship is most important to me now? Where do I hope to grow now in relation to worship?
- What, if any, are my expectations of the First Day worship hour?
- How do I prepare for meeting for worship?
- What can I do (or how can I be) to foster or nurture a living silence?
- How has my week affected meeting for worship, and vice versa?
- Who or what calls me into worship? How do I experience this call?
- What are we as a meeting community doing to prepare our children for corporate and private worship?
- What am I as a parent, grandparent, teacher or concerned adult doing to nurture the spiritual lives of children within my spheres of influence, and how do I honor or nurture their sense of wonder, prayer, and worship?
- When I receive a message or prompting in worship, am I faithful in my response to that prompting? How or how not?
- Do I receive the vocal ministry of Friends free of cynicism, bitterness, jealousy, impatience, aggravation, or comparison of my own gifts and abilities to those of others?
- What do I “do” with messages I hear that speak to my condition? How do I deal with what I do not find helpful?
- How do I treat myself in meeting for worship? What adjectives might I use to describe how I am with myself? How do I relate to others in meeting for worship?
- What, if anything, helps me to experience the Presence in the midst? How do I respond to that Presence? (If “Presence” does not have meaning for you, what word(s) might you use that has significance for you?)
- What does a covered or gathered meeting ask of me? How does it affect me? How does it touch my understanding of community? Of God, Christ, or the Spirit?
- What are my responsibilities to myself, to the community, and to the Spirit in meeting for worship?
- How does my experience of meeting for worship compare to my experience of private prayer?
- The early Friends repeatedly spoke of “the power of the Lord over all,” often in relation to meeting for worship. Some Friends today experience this power as coming from. Someone with whom they are in relationship. Others experience this in a more abstract, impersonal way. Some may find the language of “power” and “Lord” off-putting or entirely irrelevant. How do I hold in my heart, particularly in worship, those within the meeting community whose experience may be radically different than, or seemingly
contradictory to, mine? How do I hold meeting members between meetings for worship?
For personal reflection: What might my daily routine and my relationships look like if I fully and consistently carried the attitude of meeting for worship throughout each week? (There is an assumption here that no one does this all the time. Please be honest, but gentle, with yourself.)