May 13, 2015

If we believe that all are called to ministry, should Yearly Meetings specially record some people as ministers?

When a group of meetings were set off from Indiana Yearly Meeting a few years ago and then formed the New Association of Friends, they had the challenge of working out all the arrangements (policies, processes) of a Yearly Meeting (this even if NAoF doesn’t want to consider itself a Yearly Meeting).  One of those challenges is the question of whether NAoF wants to record people as ministers. That question has particular resonance because a number of individuals in NAoF had been recorded in Indiana Yearly Meeting or in other bodies. 

Friends began recording ministers at the very beginning of our history.  Today some Yearly Meetings record ministers and some do not.  (FUM YMs generally do; FGC YMs generally do not.) In nearly all cases, whether to record was settled by Yearly Meetings decades ago. I am finding the current discussion in NAoF fascinating: it raises questions that were thrashed out long ago but also some fresh notes. 

Read the full post here.