What I Fear

I have fears, when I write things like this. When I write down what I am led to write, or when I sit down to write deliberately, certain worries are always on my mind.

There are the usual worries of anyone writing things others will read, of course. Have I written this well? Is it understandable? Will people criticise harshly, perhaps even mock me?

When writing down ministry, there are extra worries. Have I faithfully rendered that which has been given to me? How sure am I of the leading?

Coming Soon – Maxims and Aphorisms

Thanks to everyone's feedback, largely on Facebook, I've come to a decision about how I'll be sharing the very short ministry I mentioned recently.

For the next 16 weeks, or longer if more come to me, I will be sharing one of these pieces, what I call “maxims and aphorisms”, each week. I will aim to do them on Saturdays, around lunchtime (UK time). Hopefully this will mean a lot of you get to digest and reflect on them at the weekend, though that of course supposes that Friends (and others who are interested) tend to have Monday-to-Friday jobs, which is a bit of a problem. However, I have to pick some particular time to do them, and that's it.

What To Do About Very Short Ministry?

Good things in small packages?

What originally drove me to start this blog was my written ministry. This came to me, as I have previously written, with as much compulsion as any spoken ministry in meeting, and after writing it down in obedience to that leading I was led to share it. Once I came to the conclusion that a blog was a good way to do this, it made sense to write what I chose to write as well. I refer to this as “deliberate writing” in order to differentiate it, on the basis of the primary differentiating factor. Such writing has become slightly numerically dominant on the blog, though it swings the other way when I'm going through periods, as recently, with not much time for deliberate writing. Written ministry comes as it will, and I write it down and share it when I have it. Deliberate writing needs me to choose to do it rather than something else.

There is a set of written ministry that I have not yet shared, however, and the leading to do so is generating a considerable amount of discomfort. The problem is that I also know that I should share it in the most effective way that I can, and I have no idea what that would be.

Why I Write a Quaker Blog

It's an interesting time to be a Quaker in Britain – and many other Yearly Meetings are having their own interesting times, albeit over different issues. Here in the UK people seem to worry about theological diversity, about falling numbers, about how we attract and nurture newcomers, about whether we are really giving all the spiritual nourishment we can. Among some pastoral Meetings across the Atlantic, there are also divisions on theology, and on how gender and sexual minorities are treated – welcomed, affirmed, or scorned. Of course, the latter point has a connection with the former, but which is at the forefront varies somewhat.

Here in Britain Yearly Meeting, we are faced with a call to revise our Book of Discipline, which some fear will bring painful differences to a head. We have a declining, ageing membership – where anecdotal reports suggest that many of our newly convinced Friends join us, as members or attenders, in middle age or later. We have quiet, but increasingly vocal concerns being expressed about the quality of our discipline in Quaker processes.

In this context, then, I will answer the question – why do I blog?

What Is Ministry?

One of the hardest things, in my experience, about trying to explain Quaker practice to those unfamiliar with it, is getting down and detailed about Meeting for Worship. Okay, so we sit in silence, and wait for the spirit to move someone to speak; that much sounds simple. I've written before, in some detail, with thoughts on how to tell if the spirit is moving you to speak. After that, though, once someone is speaking, how do we understand what has been said in that spoken ministry? Even assuming that everyone who stands to speak is genuinely moved to speak, there are several ways to think about this.

The most obvious one is at one extreme, that these are genuine, literal messages from God/the Spirit/the Divine/whatever you're calling it. That the words themselves are chosen for you, and the speaker is merely a conduit, with no responsibility for what is said. At the opposite extreme, perhaps the Spirit only gives the germ of an idea, and the compulsion to share it. Then the words are the choice of the person speaking, as they try to express an idea, possibly a very nebulous idea, that has been placed into their mind. I have spoken to Friends who view ministry at each of those extremes.

As is usually the case, however, when there are extreme points of view, there's also the possibility of ideas that lie between them. I suspect that most Friends lie somewhere in that in-between space, as indeed do I, but there's a lot of variation possible. Ultimately, however, all such positions amount to something of the form that ministry is a collaboration between the individual and the Spirit.

Ownership of Ministry

Since I first started writing down and sharing written ministry, something has been troubling me. It may sound shallow and trivial, but it's a really complicated question with real implications on what I can and should do in future.

To what extent can I, or should I, claim ownership of the written ministry I produce? The law is very clear, because the law doesn't take into account claims of divine inspiration in writing. It came from my head, through my hands, onto paper (or keyboard), and its my intellectual property. What happened to get it into my head in the first place, the law doesn't care about (unless I was literally copying from existing creative work). When it comes to spiritual writing, however, there's so much more to it than that.

What is "Written Ministry"?

You'll notice that, at the time of writing, the majority of posts on this blog are in the “ministry” category. As noted in the About page on this blog, this category contains written ministry. As also noted there, this means

“…it is not something I have carefully thought about and written down, revised, and optimised to make the point I'm trying to make; rather it is something I feel compelled to write down, and make very limited choices about myself. In short, it is the same as the Quaker tradition of spoken ministry during Meeting for Worship. I feel called to write it, and like any ministry in Meeting for Worship, I believe it to be divinely inspired.”

However, even to other Quakers, this may still be a very strange and unfamiliar concept, so I will try to write some more about what this means, and what the experience is like.

When we talk about “ministry”, in the Quaker context, there are a range of possible meanings. The most obvious, often, is that of speaking in Meeting for Worship. However, we also talk about the ministry of a person, or an organisation, in terms of the service it does for the Religious Society of Friends, and for wider society. A ministry of teaching, or of hospitality, or of outreach; of service to the poor, or engagement with government. These are all ministries, and some produce written results. In that sense, a great deal of writing by Friends is the product of their ministry, including some names that many would recognise writing today, such as David Boulton, Derek Guiton, and Pink Dandelion. I do not deny the validity of any of that as ministry, but it should be distinguished from what I speak of when I say “written ministry”, as will hopefully be clear from this post.