To Gather a Great People

This weekend more than twenty Quakers gathered in Chicago from across North America. We were brought together by Friends General Conference to become Quaker Quest trainers. Quaker Quest is a dynamic outreach program conducted by Meetings for Seekers. For those of you new to Quakerism, I’ll explain why I think this moment is so important.

For many years, Quakers in unprogrammed or “Silent Worship” Meetings have been reluctant to do outreach. Many Quakers have viewed outreach and proselytizing as the same thing. It’s grounded in a noble impulse to correct the perceived overreaching of other faiths. Most Quakers believe there are many paths to God and many have been upset by the “hard sell-- my way or you’re going to hell” recruiting methods of many fundamentalist religious groups. In recoiling from this, many Quakers have recoiled from any outreach whatsoever. Some Quaker Meetings even removed their phone numbers from the public directories. As this impulse settled deep into the Religious Society of Friends, many in the public came to see Quakerism as a closed society. This was never true and Quakers have always have welcomed newcomers. However, because of Quaker’s invisibility for the past few decades many people who might have found a home among Quakers either didn’t know they could become Quaker or simply didn’t know that Quakers still existed. In my travels, I constantly meet people who express amazement they’ve just met a Quaker. As a young woman in Dallas said to me last month, “You’re Quaker? I thought you were all gone.”

Many in the Society now feel called by Spirit to make wide the door to our faith. A growing movement is emerging to do outreach in America, to let the world know that there is another way to experience the Divine. As members of this movement, we all continue a deep acknowledgement that God will find people through many paths and religions and that the Quaker way may not speak to the needs of some. However, to hide Quaker process and Quaker community from Seekers is to abandon many people to loss and suffering. To offer spiritual hospitality to seekers is now a mark of our faithfulness to Spirit. We can do nothing else. Withdrawal from outreach, withdrawal from speaking, publicly and vibrantly, about our faith-- Quietism as some call it within the Society—is impossible.

For those of you who’ve been working faithfully in your Meetings to open the Society or who feel this calling now rise within you, know that your faithfulness is and will bear fruit. Understand that you have brethren who share your calling and who are creating services and systems to support you. The first part of this is Quaker Quest . However, Quaker Quest is just the beginning.

For those of you who are new to Quakerism know that you have arrived among us at an auspicious time. The renewal movement does not depend simply on those within the Society. It rests with all of you who seek Spirit. As Seekers you are the reason why we are throwing wide the doors of the Society. We need your help to gather us all as a great people who can transform our own lives and manifest the values in the world that we so earnestly share— joy, simplicity, integrity, equality, community, and peace.

Some of you, as seekers, live in places where Quaker communities already exist. You simply need to find them . For others you may live in places where there are no Meetings. Do not let this hinder you. Quakerism is a set of practices, shared in community, designed to help you hear the stirrings of Spirit in your own heart. If no Quaker community exists near you, be the seed that creates one. You can be the heart of the renewal movement and you have Friends to help you.