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.
