Thoughts On Outreach

You may be aware that I recently posted some written ministry concerning outreach, asking why we are so quiet. I didn't mean in worship, of course; silent worship with contributions moved by the Spirit is at heart of the Quaker way. I mean how we are in the world beyond our little Meeting communities. I have written somewhat about this before, concerning the spiritual and moral imperative I see in outreach. It seems timely to put down some other thoughts on the matter.

I can understand a lot of reasons for reticence to engage in outreach. I can understand less the reticence I have seen among some Friends for others to engage in outreach, in general. You might be unsure of how to talk about Quakerism. You might not be generally socially outgoing. You might feel awkward at the idea of talking about your faith tradition as being a good thing. These are all valid. Some of them can be overcome, but none of them are things that you should feel you must overcome. Just because outreach is something that should happen, doesn't mean that everyone should be engaging in it. Indeed, I've sometimes seen people doing outreach who I would much rather weren't, but that's a whole other matter.

What Are "The Things Which Are Eternal"?

“Seek to know one another in the things which are eternal”. It's a popular phrase, made particularly well-known by it's inclusion in Britain Yearly Meeting's Advices and queries, number 18. It falls easily from our lips, and a lot of people seem to put a lot of emotional investment in the idea, but what does it mean?

In my experience, Friends often seem to use the phrase in a way that is rather non-specific. Much like “that of God in every one”, its meaning seems to be in the moment, in whatever form is useful to the speaker. Usually, it seems to add a sort of warm fuzz to the idea of getting to know one another, that it means getting to know one another in a deep sense, rather than a superficial one. You might know what someone does for living, but it is knowing them in a deeper way to find out that they paint landscapes, or write poetry. This is a reasonable distinction to make, and the idea that we, as Friends, should know one another well is a laudable one. Is this really “the things which are eternal”? Certainly, there's a degree to which meanings change with time and context, especially as society changes – or as our Religious Society changes.

Doing It Ourselves

I've heard it said, many times, that Quakerism is a “do it yourself” religion.

People usually seem to mean it one of two ways. In one of those ways, they are usually being broadly positive about the idea. In the other, people tend to give it a negative connotation.

The first, positive way refers to our lack of separate, particularly paid, clergy. We are all in it together, we all muck in to do the jobs that need doing. Whether it's spiritual nurture, pastoral care, administration or looking after our property, everything is a communal task. This is, I think, usually seen as a positive both in the sense of having thrown off the authority of the “hireling priests” and in the fact that it enriches our sense of community. It is also often used as an encouragement, even admonition, to encourage members of our community (whether in formal membership or not) to get involved and take on voluntary roles within the community.

What Do We Seek?

What do we seek, we Friends of Truth, we Friends of the Light, we Quakers?

We were Seekers first, before we were Quakers, after all, in the genetic origins of our Religious Society. But then, we were also Ranters, in part. Both strands of thought in that chaotic time of the mid-seventeenth century are seen in us, today. There is even a soupçon of the Levellers and Diggers about our origins, I am quite sure.

If we were Seekers, did we find, and stop Seeking? To suppose that search is over strikes me as the most profound religious hubris. So it is that we continue, as a group, to seek.

What We Do In Silence

From the outside, what happens in a Quaker Meeting for Worship is fairly simple, if unrevealing. We sit in silence, and at some point, someone may be moved to stand and speak. But there's a lot more to it than that.

As we sit in our “expectant waiting”, we are not generally entirely passive – not least because absolute passivity is not something that comes easily to people. For centuries, faith communities have developed strategies to help people learn various forms of passivity, leading their way towards it through prayers, mantras and meditation. Not only that, but not all Friends find the best way to make that contact with the Divine is through passivity at all.

In this post, I will be exploring what it is we do in the silence of worship – different ways we bring ourselves to the right state of mind, what that state of mind might be (different for different Friends), and what we do once we have reached it. That is a chronological order, and it might seem appropriate to explore things that way, but I find it most helpful to consider the state of mind first, before looking at how we reach it.

Quakers as a Community of Practice

When I was studying educational research, there was a particular model, generally applied to informal education, that I became particularly taken with. From the first, I though that it may be applicable to liberal Quakers. Communities of Practice are a theoretical model developed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, hereafter referred to as Lave & Wenger. It is a model of what is called situated learning, wherein learning is not considered the transfer of knowledge and skills from those who already possess them to those who do not, but rather the development of knowledge and skills within a social situation.

A community of practice is, unsurprisingly given the name, defined by commonality of practice. Where a community of practice has many units, such as local branches, one characteristic that determines that it is truly a single community of practice is that someone who normally participates in a single branch could participate in any branch without special notice or preparation, and that practice would be sufficiently similar between the two that the visitor can fully participate. It is this compatibility and centrality of practice that differentiates a community of practice from a community of interest, which the community is bound primarily by a common interest of some sort. In addition, most knowledge is tacit, gained from some sort of experience, rather than delivered in a didactic manner or reified in documentation.

What is the Quaker Way?

You may ask, what is the Quaker way?

It is a path through a forest, thickly grown, yet with shafts of light breaking through the trees. The path branches often, it loops back upon itself. It brings you to quiet glades, and leads you through brambles. It crosses babbling brooks and roaring rapids. It is sometimes wide, and sometimes narrow; sometimes smooth, and sometimes strewn with roots and rocks.

Sometimes it takes you where you expect, and others it leaves the forest in unexpected direction; sometimes, you end back where you began, but you are never unchanged.

A thousand people can wander it, and each find a different route. And yet, as we each walk our separate way along the path of many paths, we can always reach out our hands and touch one another, support one another, tell each other of our journeys.

Though the path is different for each of us, we talk it together and in unity. Though we see different things and reach different destinations, we share the path. Even where we cannot agree what may be found in the forest, we know that there is one forest, and one path.

Written May 2016