Director Chuck Fager stands outside of Quaker House, Fayetteville, NC.

ave I become a “traveling minister”? Maybe, but not in the traditional sense. Let me explain. . . . Last winter I was hired as director of Quaker House (QH), a Friends peace project in Fayetteville, North Carolina, hard by Fort Bragg, one of the major military bases for the “war on terror.”

Traditionally the QH director stuck close to the house, and focused on counseling the steady stream of GIs who contacted us with requests for help getting out of the military. But when I took the job, the board and I agreed that we had to try a new approach: Since the September attacks and the following rush to war, QH had more work than one person could handle. There were more and more counseling calls (we had more than 3200 calls in 2001, and in the first six months of this year, calls are 26 percent ahead of that!) plus an evident demand from Friends and others for help with seeking and threshing about the Friends peace testimony, and witness based on it, in the new and difficult situation now confronting us all.

Actually, this combination of counseling and peacework was not really new for QH. Back in 1969, it was how we got started, in the depths of the Vietnam War, and continued through the end of that conflict. (For more about this history, check our website at: www.quakerhouse.org) But it had been awhile since both sets of those institutional muscles had been exercised, so getting them back in shape has been something of a stretch and a strain.

Even so, we jumped right in: To take on the counseling load, we put a pair of ace counselors, who had been working as volunteers, on contract, and they have been keeping on top of the burgeoning load of calls with great skill and dedication. That left the peacework part, which has mostly fallen to me; and this is where the “traveling ministry” comes in.

There’s been no lack of requests for meeting visits, retreats and workshops, and I’ve been on the road more than half the weekends since I started. Looking at my calendar for the rest of this year, there are at least half a dozen more visits scheduled, with even more likely to be added.

So I’m doing a lot of traveling, and for the purpose of ministry. Yet this crowded itinerary differs in some significant ways from the classic image of the “traveling ministry,” at least compared to the classic model embodied by John Woolman and recorded in his Journal.

For one thing, while the QH board provides oversight for me, this is done in a much more general fashion than I read of in Woolman and other venerable journals. I report to them regularly; but we don’t do significant discernment over each invitation: it’s part of the job, and I do it. Moreover, while a board member may occasionally show up at a visit, I’m usually on my own, sans companion or elder.

Further, while I always try to get a sense of what’s up with the meetings to be visited, and work to “speak to their condition,” nevertheless, I come to them with a definite agenda. There are a couple parts to this agenda: one is a specific concern to facilitate examination (and reexamination) of the peace testimony in historical, biblical and theological perspective. There’s no one-size-fits-all peace program for Friends; but some such careful reflection is (in my opinion), a prerequisite for discerning how to apply the testimony faithfully in the particular circumstances each meeting (and each Friend!) now faces.

And more mundanely, I’m also visiting as a salesman with a product, marketing QH. Even after 32 years, QH has very little in the way of endowment, and depends on a continuing stream of donations from Friends and meetings to keep going; so part of my agenda is to remind all and sundry that this is the case. To be sure, the approach is (I hope) low-key and disarming; I don’t pass the hat or press Friends for pledges. But let us speak plainly: my travel is definitely related to the never-ending task of keeping QH afloat, and my paychecks coming.

In this latter respect, I think this form of “traveling ministry” is much less like the disinterested labors of John Woolman or Lucretia Mott than those of more recent but also venerable Friends like E. Raymond Wilson or Rufus Jones. Rufus, for instance, traveled uncounted miles among Friends and others drumming up support to get the AFSC off the ground. And Ray Wilson did likewise for decades to launch and establish FCNL.

Both were, so I am told, low-key but persistent and effective salesmen, who effectively combined a concrete ongoing ministry with definite concern for an organizational bottom line. Working thus “in the mixture” is an example I quite frankly hope to emulate.

One other dimension of this ongoing pilgrimage also deserves mention: that is, it is also a ministry to me. How so? After 36 years among Quakers, I find it invigorating to mix and work with Friends. (Well, usually; everybody has a bad day now and then.) But more specifically, I find that I need to get out of town regularly to maintain an inward balance. Fayetteville, after all, is a border town: it straddles the increasingly contentious boundary between Military America and Civilian America, with a definite leaning toward the former. The city is haunted by the spiritual and physical legacy of almost a century of military dependence, and the associated costs are in evidence almost everywhere one looks: a high crime rate, much poverty, pollution, the special plague of military-related domestic violence (and the fatal scandal of its denial). Its citizens despise the nickname of “Fayettenam,” but nothing they have thought of has been able to banish it.

I could go on. To be sure, the Light still shines, good people do live here, and there is much of value to be learned here. Carolina Friends were wise to establish a Quaker outpost in Fayetteville.

Nevertheless, especially in this time of national insecurity and trumpeting rhetoric of war without apparent end, it wearies my spirit to be here, pressed up against the belly of the beast our militarism has created, for too long without relief. So I’m usually thankful to hit the road, and breathe some fresh Friendly air.

We’ve made a button for Quaker House, which reads: “WAR IS OUR BUSINESS. AND BUSINESS [unfortunately] IS GOOD.” There’s every sign that message will be true for quite awhile. So the QH ministry will continue to need support, and as long as I’m here, I’ll keep traveling on its behalf.

To receive the Quaker House newsletter, write to: Quaker House, 223 Hillside Ave., Fayetteville NC 28301; or send an email to: qpr@quaker.org

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