It Takes a Meeting to Raise Ministry

Our primary expectation for the workshop is to offer a mutually respectful, engaging way to consider what each of us perceives as our part in nurturing faith-led practice. For example, who is responsible for the quality of a message in meeting for worship? Who is responsible for the quality of the listening? The speaker and listener are storytelling partners. How can we listen freshly, move beyond our regular “programming” and witness God’s presence and activity in our midst? Similarly, Quaker activists and other Friends serving publicly need partnering from listening, supportive Friends in their meeting. How can we, even when serving as listeners, foster more powerful messages and vitality in our meetings? Do we trust that we will be heard with tenderness?

Through personal reflection and interactive group exercises, we will become more aware of our underlying assumptions about our parts and how together we sustain a “meeting.” Each day will emphasize different aspects and possible approaches. Mostly, we will practice. Practice listening in ways that draw out richer stories from others. Practice storytelling in ways that witness to instances of spiritual formation/transformation in our personal lives. Practice empowering our partnerships with mutual vulnerability and tender caring.

Our secondary expectation for the workshop is to expose Friends to the value of individual and corporate spiritual formation. Storytelling and listening can occur in many shapes and sizes, such as spiritual friendships, clearness or care committees, ongoing peer groups or Faith & Play. When Laura designed and taught similar material at Pendle Hill, she needed it to be inclusive of all types of participants: the 20-year old non-theist, the retired Episcopalian minister, the evangelical Quaker pastor from Kenya, the long-time unprogrammed Quaker, and the Catholic refugee. We expect and welcome again the range of Gathering goers who are attracted to this workshop.

The typical session will start with quiet settling and opening worship (up to 10 minutes). There will be a relevant quote, queries and “the day’s agenda” on the classroom’s “blackboard.” After we introduce the day’s theme, usually we would enter into exercise(s) either as a whole group, pairs, or individually. For example, the whole group might be asked to scatter to different locations in the room that have been identified with possible answers to various experiences describing “giving a message in meeting for worship.” This exercise might be followed by personal journaling about that classroom experience as well as to capture our memory of how our individual experiences may have changed during our lifetime. After the mid-morning break, we will learn from each other in large group discussion or worship sharing about how our answers affect our lives and our faith communities. Participants will be invited frequently to share their reflections with all, or in a small group or to a pair partner. Participants are always free to sit out an exercise or not to respond to a particular query. Given the diversity of our backgrounds experientially and theologically, we will need to be conscientious, trusting, and adventurous. Concerns and queries lifted up during the discussion will enrich our closing time of worship (20-30 minutes).

Sharing what is “written on our hearts” is most important, but the workshop will be richer if participants skim the suggested advance reading (Tom Gates, “Members One to Another,” Pendle Hill pamphlet). Short handouts and/or a resource table in the classroom for the eager reader may be made available.

Here are an outline of the topics by day and some representative queries. These queries will not all be directly addressed during workshop time, but are shared here to show our underlying intentions.

Monday – Welcome, Workshop Overview, Faith and Spiritual Authority
What do I recognize, trust, and/or defer to as having spiritual authority?
What’s required for storytelling about our spiritual journeys, our faith and doubt?
Can “true community” exist if we differ about the Divine and its revelation?
To what extent am I “out” spiritually? Am I fostering the coming out of others?

Tuesday – Anxiety, Risk-Taking and Our Tolerances
What spiritual experiences raise my sense of anxiety?
What spiritual experiences increase my willingness to be more vulnerable or caring?
What is my tolerance for spiritual “highs” or “lows” in my life? In others’ lives?

Wednesday – Human Nature
Is my spiritual outlook usually indifferent, hopeful, or fearful?
What is my tolerance for other outlooks shared in the meeting’s life?
To what extent are my “walk” and my “talk” consistent with my spiritual outlook?

Thursday – Quaker Meeting
What degrees of individual freedom, community norm, or “membership” do I tolerate?
What listening/storytelling forms (e.g. friendship or peer group) may help me to “walk my talk?”
What listening/storytelling styles (e.g., lament, gratitude, or prophecy) do I need to try more?

Friday – Participants’ Testimony and Workshop Closure
“… what had any to do with the Scriptures but as they came to the Spirit that gave them forth. You will say, Christ saith this, and the Apostles say this; but what canst thou say? Art thou a Child of Light, and hast walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?”
George Fox, preaching at Ulverston

Co-Facilitators:
Kathy Miller grew up in the Midwest in unprogrammed meetings, the daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Quaker ministers. She came to Philadelphia to be part of the “Life Center “- a Quaker nonviolence-training center in the 70’s. She left active Quaker practices in her mid 20’s. She has spent the last 40 years helping people learn how to listen to each other as a way of healing old hurts as well as leading classes and workshops, both nationally and internationally, especially in leadership development and women’s liberation. When she came to Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting five years ago, she found both that she had come home to her spiritual roots and discovered that those skills in listening and helping others learn to listen changed and deepened the way worship works for her in the present. She is delighted to join with Laura in combining experiences of listening as part of deepening personal and corporate worship and following spiritual leadings.

Laura Melly is very interested in today’s wider religious renewal efforts, especially whether they are manifesting within the Religious Society of Friends. During the 2007 Gathering, for example, she co-led an interest group about then emerging “Convergent Friends” initiative, which was attended by roughly 50 individuals. Laura has previously led or eldered long-term classes and programs or shorter workshops related to Quaker ministry and spiritual formation through the School of the Spirit, Pendle Hill, Woolman Hill, Quaker Studies Program, as well as FGC’s Gathering and Traveling Ministries Program. Laura initially invited and has been blessed for more than six years by an ecumenical, neighborhood worship group which now averages 10 persons each weekday morning as well as one midweek evening. Members of this worship group keep experimenting with forms that deepen their covenantal life together. Laura's discernment for this specific workshop stems mostly from the persisting Life that these and similar experiments in individual and corporate spiritual formation have revealed to her and others.