Membership in the Religious Society of Friends is in the Monthly Meeting. We meet there for worship with a concern for God's work, sometimes as a whole and sometimes in committees. As we struggle with a leading, a yearning will develop to test that leading with our community of faith. The spiritual benefit of this testing is mutual. Both the meeting and the individual seek what God wants of them in a specific matter. And if spiritual clarity and joyful obedience to God are experienced in deciding to take a particular step together, spiritual connection is mutually deepened. In minding our call, our faith and practice can become integrated. As we seek, in the Spirit, to mend the world, we find that we ourselves are mended. As we seek to be mended we find ourselves required to mend the world. The experience of being in the grasp of the divine and willingly being used by God for God's work unfolds.
But in those moments of depression, my father's words flashed back into my memory. 'He who knows the good and refrains from doing it, commits a sin.' Then all doubts were lifted from me; and as our work grew and the challenges became harder, I was increasingly aware of a persistent turn of events that I at first took to be luck. It was as if we were guided and carried forward by invisible hands. Whenever we helped, help was given to us.
- Zassenhaus, Hitgunt, Walls: Resisting the Third Reich: One Woman's Story
As we are clear and our monthly meeting is clear about a leading, support may include minuted decisions by the Meeting for Business variously called a minute of support, a minute of service, a minute of travel, a minute releasing the Friend to follow their leading. These minutes may be brought to the quarterly or regional meeting and thence to the Yearly Meeting for endorsement. For travel outside the Yearly Meeting, the Yearly Meeting's endorsement is required.
For some concerns, often involving requests for practical support or for publishing a witness, the Monthly Meeting may bring a leading to a Yearly Meeting committee for discernment and then, if needed, the committee may bring the concerns to its coordinating committee for further discernment. If the matter needs early Meeting consideration, the coordinating committee may recommend that it be brought to the Yearly Meeting Business session. This movement from local to wider groups allows the concern or witness to be seasoned and strengthened by resources beyond the local meeting and encompasses both calls to come to Christ and calls to serve our neighbors. Both are understood as ministry.
The visiting or serving Friend receiving a minute carries it with them and obtains endorse-ments from Friends and Friends' bodies they have visited or served. This and the practice of keeping a spiritual journal help provide accountability. A clearness committee for decision making, an oversight committee or support committee to ground the work in spiritual community, or a companion for the work or for the travel may be named. The committees and companion are helpful when difficulties or misunderstanding arise and to balance the gifts of the individual Friend under the concern. We can expect to experience that when two or three are gathered in the power of the Spirit of Christ, requests will be answered and that the gifts necessary for God's plan will be provided.
A Friend under the burden of a concern may need to be released from other duties to perform what God requires. When Friends are in unity they find God helps them provide what is needed. This may involve collecting money and holding it for the expenses of the work, providing domestic help, educational experiences, practical assistance, hospitality or travel aid. Assistance may be needed to relieve sufferings arising from the witness. Friends at home thus experience being one in the Spirit with those who go out.
In a recent seminar on how to prepare Friends for work with Peace Teams, John Lampen reminded us that John Woolman, in his Essays on Ministry, speaks of his progress as like walking through a muddy place stepping on stepping stones and that he had to get on to each stone before he could see where the next stone lay. When we proceed as way opens we also learn that God can guide us through way closing. Friends discern our next step together in waiting worship.
The meeting for worship and the meeting for business exemplify pacifist technique applied to the relations among individuals in a small group. Such meetings are training grounds in pacific methods. They are to the Society of Friends what the drill ground is to an army, though nothing could be further removed from a military procedure. The meeting for worship requires a large measure of love, tolerance, mutual understanding and high expectation.
- Howard Brinton, The Peace Testimony of the Society of Friends, AFSC, 1966
These articles are from Resources
for Fostering Vital Friends Meetings
See also: the FGC Quaker Library
