quackquack

I decided to try to learn a new kind of ministry: outreach—being welcoming (coming out of a shy and reserved self) and learning how to be strong and steady (while feeling quixotic and pessimistic). I…

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.

The group discussions were always eye-opening, especially to someone like me prone to hastily judging Christian beliefs; while there have been small disagreements between participants (I once got into a heated back-and-forth about science and the existence of logic), the atmosphere was nothing but respectful. We shared anecdotes about our spirituality or lack thereof, talked about restorative justice, considered alternatives to violence and explored the idea of Jesus as (depending on who you talked to) a historical figure or the son of God.

John 4:35+

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.

What worship among Quakers has brought to me has been a maturing of my faith. I often say that Quaker meeting for worship is church for adults. We don’t have the programming and the pomp and circumstance, the readings, the sermons,  etc provided for us. We have to make our own magic happen.

On finding Friends, vocal ministry, worship and more!

An interview with Raye Hodgson of Ohio Yearly Meeting Conservative, who serves on their Electronic Outreach Committee.

This Quaker meeting sits along Philadelphia’s Main Line suburbs and is making special efforts at outreach. They wanted a design refresh that would allow the heads of committees direct access to…

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.

The Convincement of John L. of Michigan’s Crossroads Friends Worship Group

John shares the story of his family’s journey to Friends. They are members of Crossroads Friends Worship Group, a group of Christian Friends in Michigan, USA, under the care of Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative). Recorded 6/21/09 at the Conservative Friends Gathering in Lancaster County, Pa.

Note from Martin: my apologies about the quality here: the sun’s glare made the screen almost invisible and I didn’t realize I was videoing my neck for part of the interview!

Originally I was born LDS, into the Mormon church. My parents were there but they fell away from it about the time I time I was eight, right before the time I would have been baptized. We spent some time in a First Christian church but quit going. I had a friend at school who asked if I would be interested in going back [to the Mormon church] right after I got my license at 16 so I started doing that. After a period in there I found Christ and was baptized. I was attached to a very small portion of their doctrine, but the basic way I lived my life matched what they said for the most part. Then my wife converted… well, before she was my wife, I converted her, got married, had five children then quit going for no particular reason.

We homeschool and try to eat right. We did a lot of research on the schooling and on the eating and on a lot of other things we do in our life and we realized we had never actually done any research on our religion. We had seen Quaker Jane and some other people primarily due to my daughter looking for modest dresses. They were very hard to find anyplace. After a period of time my wife decided we should really start researching the church we belong to. The more we researched it the more we realized it didn’t match our beliefs.

We started to actively looking for a group that did match our beliefs and started going back to some of the Quaker websites. After a period of time we found that truly was the path we were being led on by God. We became “anonymous” Quakers. We had no meeting, we didn’t know any other Quakers. We just started dressing plain and effectively became Quaker. I was transferring from my job in California to my job in Michigan and we got here we decided to find a Quaker meeting that was Christ-centered and un-programmed. There aren’t a whole lot of them out there. It just so happens that when we moved to Michigan we were an hour and a half of a worship group that was un-programmed and Christ-centered. After another year and a half we became members—that was just a few weeks ago.

Luckily we moved right by it, as far as the distances I’m used to traveling. We’ve been attending there regularly now and are very happy with the choice and the children are doing very well.

Photo Outreach?: Phil H of Crossroads Friends Worship Group taking the official group photo. I was in this shot but had to get out my own camera when I saw what was happening behind Phil: a tourist couple stopped at the site of all of the Friends in front of the meetinghouse. Chip Thomas reacted quickly and went over to invite them in. To our surprise they accepted and spent half an hour with us. A few minutes later another couple stopped, was invited, and visited!

See the full set from the Conservative Friends Gathering 2009.

Text:

Worship, according to the ancient practice of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) is entirely without any human direction. A group of devout persons come together and site quietly with no prearrangement, each seeking to have an immediate sense of divine leading and to know at first hand the presence of the living Christ.

It is not wholly accurate to say that such a meeting is held on a basis of silence: it is more accurate to say that it is held on a basis of ‘holy obedience.’ Those who enter such a meeting can harm it in two specific ways: by advance determination to speak, or by advance determination to keep silent. The only way in which a worshipper can help such a meeting is by an advanced determination to try to be responsie in listening to the still small voice and doing whatever may be commanded.

Meeting for worship is always a high adventure of faith. It is to this adventure that we invite you this hour.

Via Britain Quaker Meetinghouses on Flickr.

Some Days / Thinking about Quaker outreach approaches

Looking at some of my various Quaker sites and thinking about how to kick-start some more outreach with younger seekers. Quakerquaker.org, my most prominent community site, actually gets around half the visitors of my quakerranter.org blog and has an audience that skews quite a bit older.

Quakerquaker.org: 509 weekly people, median age: 50+ (quantcast.com/quakerquaker.org)
Quakerranter.org: 962 weekly people, media age 18-34 (quantcast.com/quakerranter.org)

“Quaker Outreach: Am I Crazy Here” (bit.ly/13xOjG) explains why I think our outreach efforts should be focused on the 18-35 year old demographic and be largely web based. “The Not So Young Quakers” (bit.ly/2SG82) is more recent update. “Quaker Testimonies as Our Collective Wisdom Wiki” (bit.ly/pfN3a) is a video from last November that someone recently thought might a useful approach for younger Friends. If all this isn’t enought the quakerranter.org/outreach category is bursting with posts.

For those confused about my multiplicity of sites, quakerranter.org is the oldest blog of mine still in existence (I’ve sold nonviolence.org). It had kid pictures, kid pictures and a “links blog” of interesting Quaker things I had found on the net that day. The links blog evolved into quakerquaker.org, the random “life stream” blog function is being handled by quackquack.org (a tumblr.com powered site).

Just a quick post to alert you to an interesting Quaker project (I’m not supposed to call it a blog, although it runs on blog technology): Watford Friends Sharing. Watford Meeting’s Outreach…