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Primitive Christianity Revived, Again

The necessary tripod?

Back in the day, and I mean way back, I was given a tripod and transit and sent out to do some surveying. I was never very good at it, at least not as good as I should have been to be a professional surveyor and fortunately for the world of construction I left that field for another. However my lack of aptitude was a result of my lack of skill and focus and in no way should be laid at the feet of the time tested tripod which even today serves as a practical and reliable means of supporting delicate instruments whether they be used in the field of surveying or photography. All of which brings me to what I believe the Spirit is telling me about the much discussed decline in Quaker membership in some of its more traditional areas.

I believe the Spirit is saying that for our Society to prosper it needs to rest on its own tripod. We must recognize that any prospering church ( church refering to a body of believers not a building) is more than a well oiled organization. It is a living organism with various body parts all contributing their various gifts to the body (A jewish pharisee wrote something about this relationship years ago). As a living organism it is as delicate an instrument as any man made optical device and must sit on as stable a foundation as possible. Now as a Christian it's easy for me to just say that that foundation is Jesus - the Rock of my salvation. However that is not explicit enough for even the christians among us and certainly not for the many meetings who's members prefer not to be classified by their individual members' personal beliefs. So let me share what I believe I'm hearing.

The three parts of our spiritual tripod are identity, community and mission.

Every individual meeting must settle on exactly what it's identity is. You have to know what and who you are and be comfortable with who you. Once you know who you are you can tell others who you are and those who can identifty with you will have a comfort level that will encourage them to "taste and see". But few stable people are going to buy a pig in a poke.

Again every meeting must become a community. Being a community is what makes a group of people a church fellowship and not a building. It's what sends forth that feeling of love and caring that visitors can sense and what allows the Spirit to linger with a body. It's the difference between a solid wood musical instrument and a plastic musical instrument. Not only is it capable of making musical notes but each note made is sustained by the resonance of the material. Think of a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone.

And finally the third and final leg that a living meeting needs is a mission. Each individual meeting needs to find it's own mission. If a meeting is to be a light on a hill or the salt of the earth it needs an area to light or salt. I don't mean adhering to a general testimony such as Peace or Simplicity. I mean a specific mission for your neighborhood. A soup kitchen. A real prision ministry that helps raise bail, support prisoners' families and assists those who have served time in getting back into the job market. A mission that springs out of being a community that knows who and what it is.

If you have ever used a tripod you know you have to set its legs one at a time. So it is with this spiritual tripod. I believe each meeting is different. In some cases the meeting's identity might be established by its mission which arose from its location or the vision of a spirit led member, and its sense of community is a result of working together to achieve the goals of its mission. In another, a meeting might draw it's identity from the gifts of its members and a community might grow around those gifts and a mission might come from that community's natural desire to reach out as birthed by the Spirit. And in still another, a meeting that has met for years with its members being there for one another through good times and bad might sit down and discuss where they have come from and where they are and reach a conclusion of who and what they are and from that see their gifts and strengths and decide to reach out to those outside their community in an area that they see as a natural place for them to light or salt.

The bad news is that we can't write a check or draw up a program or bible study that will give our meeting our own spiritual tripod. The good news is we don't have to. We just have to be honest with ourselves, openly discuss where we believe our meeting is in these areas and pray that a way open to set our meeting on it's own tripod. I read somewhere that if we ask we shall receive.

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Comment by William F Rushby on 9th mo. 23, 2013 at 9:59am: Hello, James!

Wise words!

Bill Rushby

Comment by Forrest Curo on 9th mo. 24, 2013 at 7:56pm: My father used to use a 'unipod' to anchor his camera; the other two legs were his own...

Having a Mission (like the church in Acts) is helpful -- But human beings, choosing their own favorite missions, don't always agree on what they should be called to do or how. (& if it isn't God calling them, whatever they're doing isn't going to add up to much.) A Meeting's participation would have been a great help in my own project a few years ago; but mostly they provided a time and place where someone potentially could wait for God.

"Identity"? How about 'NPR Quakers For Reasonable Injustices'?I don't think we're any more ready to enforce a group identity on each other, even locally, than six-year olds are to get married. If God were to write his name on a group, now, that would stick. But are we ready for that to happen?

Really, a Meeting is a lot like a stapled-together family, with all the crazy uncles you might have imagined -- and I don't know anymore what holds a Meeting together except mutual forbearance and a sense that God has thrown us odd people together for some inscrutable reason, TBA.

Comment by James C Schultz on 9th mo. 24, 2013 at 9:34pm: Forest your points could well be taken as reasons why many meeetings of the Society of Friends are languishing. The point is God probably has created or is creating an identity for each meeting. But the meeting has not or will not recognize it for what it is. Furthermore too many people are doing what they think is a good idea and not listening to what God is telling them is needed. It all comes down to:

Paalm 127:1 - Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.

if a meeting isn't going to be the salt of the earth it is of no use and should be tossed out and trampled under foot. (Matthew 5:13)

Comment by William F Rushby on 9th mo. 24, 2013 at 11:12pm: James:

I still think that you are on the right track! A sense of identity, a genuine and caring fellowship and a common mission seem to me to be essential elements of renewal (and I hope Christian renewal!) in a Friends Meeting.

Simply drifting along is not good enough!

Bill Rushby

Comment by Forrest Curo on 9th mo. 25, 2013 at 12:25am: James, if we're both right then we probably have been putting something wrong...

If we have Meetings as dysfunctional as you say -- and we do -- the other interesting thing about these Meetings is that God is at work in them.

So, whatever we can find wrong with these Meetings, God can also find wrong with them. Yet they don't get 'trampled under foot', at least not rapidly.

That is, something they do is helpful to the people who attend, even though it isn't the triumphant march of the Kingdom we might rather see. I would say that (even though this isn't God's ultimate intention) it is, for now, what God's intends.

What God might be able to do with people other than the ones we've got -- isn't really the important thing. Seeds come up, in their time, develop into what they're supposed to be. And God isn't done with them. Tomorrow maybe we'll be redwood trees...

Comment by James C Schultz on 9th mo. 25, 2013 at 9:05am: Forest, speaking of seeds - Mathew 13:3. I believe the meeting is like the soil. Ground can be tilled just like a meeting can be dunged. Check out Luke 13:6 to 9. It's good to discuss this with you. I think it's a fruitful discussion.:)

Comment by William F Rushby on 9th mo. 25, 2013 at 10:51am: Forest Curo wrote: "If we have Meetings as dysfunctional as you say -- and we do -- the other interesting thing about these Meetings is that God is at work in them.

So, whatever we can find wrong with these Meetings, God can also find wrong with them. Yet they don't get 'trampled under foot', at least not rapidly."

I think that unprogrammed Friends are in much worse shape, probably with some exceptions, than Forest suggests in these remarks. A friend of ours from one of the largest eastern yearly meetings told us several years ago that the yearly meeting has mostly "old grey heads". Observers of Britain Yearly Meeting often comment on its precipitous decline. The ranks of Conservative Friends in Ohio are much thinner and older than they were 40 years ago.

My conclusion is that, for Friends, its either up or down; in the modern world, Friends cannot drift along in neutral!

Comment by Forrest Curo on 9th mo. 25, 2013 at 12:59pm: Actually we have two Liberal-Friendist Meetings in San Diego, and while mine is currently losing significant numbers to old age, the other is large and doing just fine. Due to some ugly interpersonal politics we now have also a Liberal-Friendist house church that's grown to larger than my own Meeting via not calling itself Friend or Quaker, but merely inviting the neighbors.

Comment by James C Schultz on 9th mo. 25, 2013 at 2:17pm: I would suggest you look at the difference as I suggested above. The growing meeting has changed it's "identity" by not calling itself Friend or
Quaker - it must claim to be something though; it's improving it's community leg by meeting in a house which more people find welcoming than a church building and which in fact is how early Quakers and most successful churches start; and its inviting neighbors could mean its mission is that of "evangelizing". Just a suggestion on perspective, that's all. Or it could just be a charismatic leader which can never be underestimated - See the gospels, the Koran, the book of Mormon, etc. .:)

Comment by Forrest Curo on 9th mo. 25, 2013 at 3:51pm: Does the expanding splinter group "claim to be something"? Hardly: "Meditating in silence", "contemplation"?

Several of the group really don't like the word "worship" and the bulk of us are LiberalFriendists who wouldn't want to think there was anything to "worship." (There's nothing beyond themselves they'd admit to respecting, is that what this implies? Oy!)

No, the group isn't claiming to be anything, and that's my point.

The largest group is, and will probably remain, the other Friends Meeting (which by virtue of sheer numbers includes a few highly spiritual people).

When I (once, for a few months) filled up the space around City Hall with sleeping homeless people it wasn't my charisma or the fact that some people there were protesting; it was the fact that this was a safe place for them to sleep as long as I was suing the City. The members of the every-other-week nonworship group get something from an hour of silence followed by two hours of munchies & idle chatter.

People have a number of complex reasons for gathering, when & where they do. God makes use of that regardless of what they say their intentions are. (& so does The Competition!) The meaning of this, as I see it: "The well have no need of a physician." If you collect some good people under some specific self-definition, fine -- but God is also elsewhere collecting other good people with less obvious explanations and not necessarily doing less with them.

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