On Clearness Committees for Membership

A note to my readers:

I’ve been away from this blog for quite some time while I focused on other writing. But I’m back. I still may not post as often as I used to because I’m still really engaged with these other projects, but I have a little more time these days and I do expect to post every few days or so. Thanks to those of you who have continued to check in now and then.   ~ Steven

 

Now, on membership:

Some of the articles in the April issue of Friends Journal on membership got me thinking again about the central role that the faith and especially the practice of membership play in driving and directing the trends of change in the Quaker tradition. As a community we are whom we admit into membership and we become what these Friends want from their religious life. (Of course, this is true only so far as most of our members come to us through convincement rather than by being born to us through ‘birthright.’ And we also should acknowledge the significant contributions of our attenders in this regard, who often make up a sizable portion of our meetings and often stay attenders for a long time rather than applying for membership. As a result, they end up becoming ersatz members, reflecting and reinforcing the fact that we have become very unclear (and apparently unattractive) about what membership means, what it offers and what it entails—we have given them no good reason to become members.)

Over time the influx of new Friends has brought to us many of the trends and issues that preoccupy our attention. Christ-centered versus universalist, confessional faith versus a faith defined as seeking, nontheism, Quaker ‘paganism’ and forms of women’s spirituality, abortion and other gender issues, concerns about homosexuality, same sex marriage and sexuality in general, intolerance of each other’s beliefs, the apparent dilution of spiritual vitality in many of our meetings—all these have their roots to some degree in the minds and emotions and expectations of the people we have admitted to membership.

My own experience serves as a good example. When I first joined Friends, I applied to a meeting in which I already had very close friends and they were very happy to have me. My clearness committee was anything but perfunctory, however; we all took the process very seriously, and I came with baggage that really needed to be dealt with. I was hostile to Christianity and the Bible (though I had been a zealous member of my Lutheran church as a youth and dove with relish into Bible study during confirmation class) and I told my committee so. They saw this as no impediment and soon I was a member.

Soon I was harassing Friends who brought us Christian and biblical vocal ministry. I objected to Bible lessons in First-day School. I expressed my hostility. No one eldered me. Years passed. Then I went to Pendle Hill intending to begin research for a book on earth stewardship that involved intense Bible study. This study rekindled my love for the Bible and, in short time, this renewed enthusiasm overwhelmed my hostility. I’ve never stopped studying scripture since and have been writing two books that amount to biblical eco-theology. I still am not a Christian by any of the definitions that I use, but I have learned respect for my tradition. So my meeting got lucky—I changed on my own.

But I might not have. I could have continued to hurt people and damage our fellowship. I could have continued to quench the spirit in other Friends and damage my meeting’s worship. I could have continued to reinforce the liberal shift away from our traditional Christian and biblical roots. This troubles me.

The doorway to all this damage and all the trends I’ve mentioned is the clearness process for membership and the attitudes and the expectations we bring to it. Because of my own experience, I have felt for some time a call to a ministry focused on recovering our traditions and on taking greater responsibility for the direction our movement is taking. That means taking a close look at how we approach membership.

Here’s what I think my clearness committee should have done in my case: Accept my application, certainly. I am not talking about excluding people by applying some kind of creed. But I wish they had probed my woundedness enough to anticipate more clearly my possible behavior and its consequences. Then, most importantly, I wish they had asked (really, I mean required) that I labor with them to overcome my negativity. I wish that they had reminded me that my behavior affects real people and put me on notice that the meeting would protect its fellowship and its worship—that I would be held accountable for my behavior. I would like to believe that I would have snapped to right then and there if they had made this request/demand.

Here’s the crux—the cross, really—of what I’m saying: I am proposing that our meetings consider membership as a commitment to covenant, a mutually binding agreement, an agreement in which, as applicants, one of the things we are asking for is help with our spiritual development through both nurture and loving correction if we “step through the traces”; a willingness to actively engage each other in the sacred work of discipleship, by which I mean the individual and corporate discipline that leads to greater faithfulness. For its part, the meeting would promise to nurture each member’s spiritual life and to lovingly but confidently labor with members when they threaten either the meeting’s worship or its fellowship. For this kind of eldering is, truly, a form of spiritual nurture.

Most meetings will resist this. ‘Discipline’ is a four-letter word among us now. Many of us have found our home here as refugees fleeing hurtful intrusion into our lives by a religious institution. The last thing such Friends want is similar intrusion from their meeting. Our liberality, our self-identification as a “do it yourself religion,” our desire to be nice, our position as a haven for these refugees, all these cultural traits make Quaker meetings very reluctant to build a meaningful culture of eldership. And our desire to welcome good people into our (dwindling) fold makes us loathe to do anything in the membership process that might scare applicants off. I would have welcomed this kind of engagement myself; I have always felt covenant was essential to my spiritual life. But, yes, some applicants would be scared off and many others would become wary; and rightfully so.

So we should at least probe our applicants deeply enough to find out what they want from us in terms of spiritual nurture, including eldering—how far are they willing to let us go? Just raising the question will be useful. Meanwhile, meetings need to examine themselves to see whether they are clear to provide such nurture and eldering. Clearness for membership is a two way process of discernment: are we clear to accept the applicant as a member, and are we clear as a meeting that we can answer their spiritual needs? Very often, our applicants won’t really know what they want. If we are going to help them find out, then we need to know what we want as a meeting, and who we are.

If we do not clarify what we want from our members, if we do not consider the consequences of inattention and reticence in our clearness committees, then we relinquish any chance of discerning the future of our tradition, of furthering our tradition rather than gradually and thoughtlessly abandoning it over time. We relinquish any chance of choosing the course of our history and we thus relegate our fate to arbitrary forces that are mostly invisible to us until we reap the consequences. Bereft of a vital culture of eldership, such a rudderless ship will inevitably founder on the shoals of the world’s values.

Most important, by not asking for more from our members, we fail them in their search for spiritual fulfillment. Presumably, this is one of the reasons people join, that they believe the Quaker community will give them the environment they need to enrich their inner lives. They hope to find God among us, whatever that might mean to them. They join—and then we often leave them to their own resources after all.

Finally, as sociological studies of religious communities have repeatedly shown, asking more from your members actually attracts people and grows membership. A community that really knows what it is about shines like a light on a hill. A wishy-washy community with no clear definition or boundaries hopes that people will somehow find their way to its doors by their own perseverance in navigating the world’s spiritual labyrinths.

So this new approach to membership requires that our meetings search themselves more deeply to discern what, in fact, they are about. What do we have to offer new members besides opportunities to serve on committees, community with good people, and an hour a week of relatively peaceful silence and heartfelt sharing? How can we offer them experience of the Divine in ways that nurture their souls?

I am trying here to define the mission of a Quaker meeting and the meaning of Quaker membership. Our mission is to serve as God’s agents in furthering our members’ spiritual lives. Membership is entering that covenant, the mutual agreement that working together to nurture each other in the Spirit is what we are all about.

 

Comments on PYM Annual Sessions

Part Three — Discernment, Minutes and Quaker Business Practice

In the two sessions of PYM that I attended last week, clerk Thomas Swain used two slightly different variations on the practice of discerning and writing/approving minutes. Both were an improvement, in my opinion, and in my experience, on the way Friends’ meetings usually conduct business; the second session came fairly close to the practice I personally think works best. I would like to outline the practice I prefer (which I’ve only seen used a couple of times) and compare it along the way with the one we usually use:

1. Background phase.
   1. A committee has prepared a presentation introducing the matter and someone from the committee lays it out, often describing who was on the committee, what their process was, including sometimes how often they met and how they divvied up the tasks, and then he or she introduces their conclusions and recommendations for actions. Good presentations of this sort are very helpful.
   2. The clerk asks for questions aimed at clarification before inviting contributions to discernment in the ‘discernment’ phase. This is not always done.
2. Disernment phase.
   1. The clerk opens discussion from the floor. There’s often a little confusion here about whether to address the clerk or the presenter, who is usually still standing or still at the podium, and about who has authority to recognize speakers and respond. I would have the presenter sit back down, but near to the podium or microphone, if the size of the body has required them, so that it’s clear that things are back in the hands of the clerk, and yet the presenter can answer questions, if needed.
   2. Often the matter breaks down into several issues or aspects and it’s helpful when the clerk can focus the body’s attention on them one at a time. As the clerk feels that a sense of the meeting is beginning to emerge around one of these issues, s/he echoes this back to the body with preliminary reflections and queries, along the lines of “I sense that we might be saying, ’xyz’. Am I getting this right?”
   3. At some point, the clerk will sense that a sense of the meeting is emerging about the matter as a whole. Here again, it’s useful to float preliminary minutes along the way and invite further ministry.
3. Decision phase.
   1. If the body is struggling to find unity, the clerk may call for an extended period of worship, or choose to lay the matter over to another session. If the Spirit seems to be moving the body forward into unity, the clerk offers a final ‘minute’, a clear, concise expression of her or his sense of the meeting. Still standing (or however s/he signals that s/he’s NOT recognizing new speakers, s/he allows a little time for Friends to think about the minute.
   2. Here’s where the practice I’m proposing diverges decisively from our usual practice. Usually, the clerk states that s/he senses that the meeting is ready to hear a minute and turns to the recording clerk, who reads the minute s/he has crafted. Then the clerk asks, “Do Friends approve?” Members of the body say, “Approve.” Then the hands go up. Not everyone approves; or Friends ‘approve’, but they still have questions, comments or tweaks to propose. We end up sinking into a deeper level of discussion and discernment as the urgency of approving the minute calls out the deeper objections, and, to complicate things, we now do this through the process of editing the minute, which skews the discussion, warping it around the text under discussion rather than leaving it open to new leadings. This often descends into an iterative process of revising and rereading new drafts that then evoke new comments, creating new drafts, etc. Ultimately, we approve a final draft, often after a confusing and repetitive process that, in the worst case, is dispiriting and exhausting.
   3. Here’s what I would do instead, which I learned from a source I can no longer remember (I think it might have been Jan Hoffman at a conference at Powell House, New York Yearly Meeting’s conference center; but I no longer remember for sure):
1. The presiding clerk presents a final minute for consideration (not necessarily a crafted text, but a clear expression of the decision s/he believes the body is making) and leaves a little time for reflection. The recording clerk is writing this down, as s/he has been recording any earlier preliminary minutes, and s/he’s thinking of slight modifications that might help clarify and simplify the actual text.
2. Then the clerk asks whether there are any objections. Pointedly asking for objections raises the bar for comment. Friends will comment anyway, even if they do not have what amounts to an objection, but it deepens the process a bit.
3. Once all the objections have been uttered, which has been signalled by some time without anyone calling for recognition, the clerk invites new ministry toward discernment.
4. When the clerk feels s/he understands the new sense of the meeting, s/he presents a new minute and asks for objections.
5. When, finally, there are no objections, the clerk asks the recording clerk to read what s/he has to make sure the actual text reflects the presiding clerk’s sense of the meeting.
6. If there still are no objections, the presiding clerk asks: “May the clerk then accept your silence as approval?”
7. Now the body finally calls out its approval.

I like this process for the following reasons:

1. It maximizes the chances for true unity without hidden objection.
2. It conducts the discernment process in open worship for as long as possible, rather than shifting it into the process of editing a text.
3. It does not fragment the clerk’s discerning role from her or his ‘management’ role at the critical moment of decision: Throughout the discernment phase, the presiding clerk has been helping the body answer to the Spirit at work among them, by choosing who will speak in what order, by providing opportunities for deepening silence, by floating preliminary ‘minutes’, by feeling the movement of the spirit. All along, his or her discernment of the movement of the spirit in the body has been integral to her or his conduct of the meeting. Then, when it comes time to offer a minute for approval, suddenly that integrity is fractured: someone else presents the sense of the meeting. Recording clerks used to record minutes and the presiding clerks used to draft them. We have almost universally abandoned this practice. Recording clerks are often chosen for their writing skills; presiding clerks are chosen for their discernment skills. I have myself served as a recording clerk who has been called upon to draft the minutes, and it often works out just fine; being a passable writer doesn’t mean you lack the gift of discernment. Furthermore, it’s true that the recording clerk sometimes sees things that the presiding clerk doesn’t, caught up as he or she might be in the process of conducting the meeting. But I would prefer that the recording clerk simply speak to the presiding clerk ‘offline’, as it were, bringing such things to the presiding clerk’s attention. Expressing the sense of the meeting should be in the hands of the person who has throughout the process been helping the meeting discern what God wants them to do.

Comments on Friends’ Practice Prompted by PYM Annual Sessions

Part One — Acclamation of Friends’ Service

Background

Annual sessions of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting opened last Wednesday night, July 27, and ended Sunday, July 31. I attended the plenary sessions in the morning and workshops and interest groups in the afternoon on Thursday and Friday, and the experience prompted some thoughts.

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is going through hard times. As is often the case, in the Yearly Meeting as in the United States government, budget woes have precipitated a deeper searching about mission and priorities. On Thursday morning the YM treasurer, TylaAnn Burger, gave an extremely well-designed presentation on the YM’s finances, budget, the issues driving the crisis, and the issues revealed by the crisis. And crisis it is: the approved budget calls for drastic cuts in staff, and more will probably be needed next year, as well. Sessions considered and approved the proposed budget on Friday morning.

The problems are systemic. Steady, unavoidable increases in fixed costs like healthcare for staff and upkeep for buildings are colliding with decreases in investment income and contributions, both covenant giving from monthly meetings and individual giving to the Annual Fund. Some of the deeper issues involve disconnects between individual Friends and their local meetings and the yearly meeting and its staff and services; a disconnect in the way the budget is developed between who develops it and who spends it; widespread ignorance and misinformation about the yearly meeting’s finances and financial and accounting terms and practices; and the sheer complexity of the yearly meeting’s financial operations.

My observations cover the general conduct of the sessions as well as some of these issues related to yearly meeting organization and finance. First, on the practice of clapping and including thanks for service in our minutes.

Acclamation of Friends and Friends’ service

At times, Friends did or contemplated doing a couple of things that I thought contrary to our tradition: they clapped and they considered including thanks for service to individual Friends in the minutes. For hundreds of years, we did neither of these things because we believed that service was prompted by God and given to God as a form of ministry, and so God deserved the thanks and the acclamation. We were glad that the individuals were faithful to their call to service, but for a number of reasons, we did not divert our thanks and praise from the Caller.

Both practices are so common nowadays that I suppose we have to consider that we are laying down our tradition in these areas. Both reflect the inroads that the “ways of the world” have made in our practice. They also reflect a corresponding abandonment of the original Quaker understanding of service as a form of ministry, as service to God prompted by the Holy Spirit, rather than as service to the community prompted by—what? community spirit? a spirit of responsibility? I’m not sure that we have really thought much about where service comes from, now that we no longer think it comes from God. I suppose that it comes from “that of God” within us or from the Inner Light. But both practices seem to me to redefine religious service as community service, to relocate its source in the individual and the community rather than in a divine Source, and to accept the world’s ways of acknowledging such service accordingly.

It’s natural for us to appreciate the work that Friends do, especially when they do it so well. And, believing as we do in ‘continuing revelation’, it’s natural for our practice to evolve and take on new forms. However, I think this shift needs our attention. So far, it’s been mostly unconscious, the result, I suspect, of many Friends just not knowing that clapping and minuting thanks are not our tradition and why they are not our tradition, so they do it because it’s the right thing to do in the wider society; and it’s the result of many clerks either sharing that ignorance, or being unwilling to bring it up when it happens in meeting, or believing that it does no harm.

And maybe it doesn’t. I don’t like it. It feels unseemly to me, and I get very uncomfortable when it’s me they’re clapping for or thanking. Then I sometimes have to speak up, though it feels awkward and ungracious to do so. But obviously, many Friends feel otherwise

On the surface, it probably looks like I’m a traditionalist, but that’s not quite it. I do not feel responsible to the tradition, meaning that I feel I must adhere to it. But rather, I feel responsible for the tradition: I feel uncomfortable when we abandon it without thought, without discernment, without consciousness of what we are doing.

So, if this really is new ‘revelation’ that we simply have not yet subjected to discernment, then the yearly meeting and our monthly meetings should, I think, take the matter up and formally acknowledge that clapping and minutes of thanks are now our practice, and at least informally acknowledge that this represents another dimension to our shift toward secularization, from a Religious Society of Friends to a Society of Friends, or at least to a Society that no longer thinks of God as the source of ministry. (And by “God” I mean the Mystery Reality behind our religious experience, whatever that experience is. I’m not evangelizing here for any particular definition of God.)