For me the two most important aspects of being a Friend are meeting for worship and meeting for worship with attention to business.  We talk a lot about meeting for worship, but I think we often overlook the importance of our business as a communal religious experience and a center of our lives together.  I still remember Lloyd Lee Wilson’s talk to Illinois Yearly Meeting in 2001 about doing business.  He said, “…meeting for business is when community is made manifest…This is where community is forged—absent thyself at thy own risk.”

One of the things that I have noticed when sitting behind the table as clerk is the two-part aspect of it.  Most business comes to the meeting after having been seasoned by [discussed and considered by] a committee.  When the committee is in unity, the convener or someone designated then brings a report with recommendations to the meeting at meeting for business.  The first part of the process is then to be sure everyone has clarity of what is being recommended and Friends ask specific questions during this time.  For the second step, the committee convener could sit down while the meeting searches for a sense of the meeting on how to move forward on the issue.  For most straight-forward recommendations, the way forward is clear and the process is short.  However, some we need to hold more carefully in the Light for confirmation.  When we reach a sense, we then try to record it in a minute.  Often the process of writing down the sense of the meeting is when we gain clarity about exactly what it is.

Some people confuse consensus with sense of the meeting.  I think that consensus is a secular word referring to a process of getting everyone to agree with a certain point of view.  This process may include trying to persuade people before the meeting so that they “vote” a certain way.  A sense of the meeting is a process where we give over our individual needs and wants in order to listen to how the meeting is led as a group to act at that time.  It is not easy and it is often very slow.  However, when the decision is reached in this manner, the meeting is strongly united behind it.  We are not perfect, sometimes we misread the sense, and there are always ways in which we could improve our process.  Still the basis of our business decisions is very strong AND we are always glad for the possibility of having a religious experience as we search together for guidance in the Light.

If Friends would like to talk more about meeting for worship with concern for business, please let me know.  I have some written resources and we could do some forums or discussion groups about it.  Also, Lloyd Lee Wilson published his talk to Illinois Yearly Meeting, “Gathered with One Accord” in Wrestling with Our Faith Tradition: Collected Public Witness, 1995-2004, (Philadelphia: Quaker Press 2005), pages 125-140.