Constellation of Witness Project
This book will be a resource, an exploration, a celebration of courage, an invitation, and a collection of art all in one.
Our Kickstarter was fully funded! Thank you so much!
We are making a book!
This past spring, we launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to create a beautiful book of stories, poems, essays, and art celebrating Quaker public ministry.
The compilation is being edited by Windy Cooler, nova sturrup, Tom Hamm, and Bec Cormack, with art and design by Joey Hartmann-Dow.
We are so excited to bring this book to life, which is now expected to print in spring 2027.
Meanwhile, if you want to support the book, please check out this new site where you can read more about the project, pre-order a signed copy, and also purchase prints and cards or donate directly to help us offset the printing cost.
Sharing the shop page also helps tremendously!
Author Ben Pink Dandelion on the diversity of Public Ministry experiences
This book will include first-hand accounts from public ministers themselves, reflections shaped by grief, sacrifice, joy, risk, endurance, and daily labor. These are not abstract theological essays but lived testimonies about what it costs to follow a call, what sustains a minister over time, and what it means to be accompanied or to stand alone. Alongside these voices, we will hear from Friends both familiar and less widely known, drawing lessons from our 400-year history as Quakers about recognition, authority, rupture, courage, and care.
Taken together, these voices form a constellation. Different lights, different contexts, different temperaments, yet a shared commitment to faithfulness beyond the meetinghouse walls.
If this vision resonates with you, I invite you to consider contributing to the project. Your support will help us gather, edit, illustrate, and publish these stories so that the Religious Society of Friends may remember what it knows about ministry and imagine what is still possible.
-Windy Cooler
(Convener of Friends Incubator for Public Ministry)