Afterwards, I co-facilitated a workshop on clerking for about 20 Friends. It was organized by the meeting’s Outreach and Nurture Committee (great name!). It was a good experience, and so I share…
When I hear about “revitalization”, I think it would be helpful for us to also consider what inspires us and excites us about how the world could be that flows from our passions for our beliefs….
New-to-me site, though I think I’ve stumbled on it before. Stephen Dotson was over today and recommended it. Below is part of it’s manifesto. Sounds like a useful outreach project. They seem to have a lot of funny taglines.
Killing the Buddha is a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches, people embarrassed to be caught in the “spirituality” section of a bookstore, people both hostile and drawn to talk of God. It is for people who somehow want to be religious, who want to know what it means to know the divine, but for good reasons are not and do not. If the religious have come to own religious discourse it is because they alone have had places where religious language could be spoken and understood. Now there is a forum for the supposedly non-religious to think and talk about what religion is, is not and might be. Killing the Buddha is it.
Quaker musician Jon Watts just left from a nice visit to the Convergent Friends South Jersey HQ (aka my dining room table!). Jon’s become world famous as the musician behind Youtube’s most watched Quaker video, Dance Party Erupts During Quaker Meeting for Worship (embedded below). Good conversation about Quakers inside and out, and the tensions between “what Quakerism is” versus “what it can be” and what that means for outreach. The discussion was too good to interrupt with a video interview, but the sketch we made while talking (above) should give you the gist. You can check out his QuakerPoet blog here. Those confused/offended/elated by his video should pay special attention to Dance Party Reflections Two Months Later.
Evangelical Friend AJ Schwanz writes about a new book from Mike King called Presence-centered Youth Ministry: Guiding Students into Spiritual Formation:
In my history of being part of faith communities I realized that those who are “group”-oriented seem more clubish, more “come in, be one of us”, more fractured, more self-interested. Those that were “ministry”-0riented thought of the bigger picture, had more awareness of the each other, practiced more over-arching hospitality. And in my faith gathering we have many ministries, but not a lot of groups … but the places where there are groups, we seem to have more lack of communication and conflict with each other.
Martin Commentary: On her post I asked AJ to tease out this distinction between “groups” that separate youth and “ministry” that keeps them in the church body.
I wonder if there’s some lesson for liberal Friends in this and not just for youth ministry. It seems like we have a tendency to compartimentalize our activities. Every purpose needs its own committee and we spend a lot of time starting and laying down committees. Why is “peace and concerns” separated from “earthcare” separated from “outreach” separated from “racial justice”? They’re all loving our neighbors.
My impression is that earlier generations of Friends did most things through two “committees”: ministers and elders. By divorcing our good deeds from ministry, we often secularlize them. How might we pull these functions together? Have any liberal Friends read out there Mike King’s work? Here’s the Amazon description:
How many programs does it take to change a youth group?
That question has bothered youth workers for decades, and the cracks in its logic are beginning to show. In place of the contrived, artificial mechanisms employed so widely in modern youth outreach and discipleship, Mike King proposes a ministry centered in the presence of God.
Young people encounter Christ not in the flash and pop of arena ministry, but in the sacred shadow of his presence. They learn what it is to love and follow Christ by observing others loving and following Christ—letting Christ shape their worldviews, their habits, their virtues. Presence-Centered Youth Ministry gives shape to such ministry through the classic disciplines and potent symbols and practices that have sustained the church over the centuries.
The sound and fury that has characterized youth ministry for so long has left too many youth workers tired and too many young people disillusioned. Come explore the deeper terrain; your students are sure to follow.
Another once v active liberal Quaker outreach person has drifted away http://snurl.com/47pbq Will the last one here plz turn off the lights?
No outreach by Methodists. 4 hist. churches merged as awkward traveling congregation last yr., sigh… http://pinelandsumc.org/history.aspx
The line that seems to be working is this: ‘Weâre not trying to convert anybody whoâs not interested. Weâre just trying to make it easier for the people who are looking for a faith community to…
I recently applied for a position at a well-known Quaker social justice organization and decided to put together something of an activist resume. The resume I usually circulate understandably focuses on my tech work and professional experience and tries the impossible task of downplaying the Quaker connection (I’ve almost heard the application being crumpled on the other end of a phone interview when I’ve tried to explain what an “Advance and Outreach Coordinator” does!). I should have known…
