From the Road to What’s Next: Ministry, Books, and Fall Gatherings

An escaped cow in Adam-ondi-Ahman

This season has been full of travel, conversation, and discovery. Our Wednesday evening course on prophetic imagination just came to a close, and the final session lingered into a rich after-class conversation on Zoom. I want to thank Jim Webner for teaching it with such depth and care. That class gave us tools and language for seeing prophecy not only as loudness but as vision, and as I traveled in ministry in the weeks that followed, I found myself reflecting again and again on how prophetic imagination shows up in the ordinary and the extraordinary.

Community Life That Matters

In that last class conversation, we began by talking about the ordinary practices of our meetings. First-day school, simple lunches, spiritual formation groups, and even family nights with pizza and board games. These things may look small, but in a culture that fragments us, they become a kind of quiet resistance. Eating together and holding space for our worries is not nothing.

From there, the conversation stretched wider. How do we live as communities that feel genuinely different from the world around us? Some Friends spoke about resisting consumer culture, about teaching children that worth is not measured by what we buy. Resistance, we remembered, is often not a grand gesture but the ordinary shape of our daily lives.

The Prophetic Edge

Quiet resistance is not enough on its own though. Prophetic ministry asks us to name what we see. Someone shared the story of a Friend who travels by train, sparking conversations with strangers through simple, thoughtful questions. That story reminded me of John Woolman, who lived his prophetic witness in how he related to people and money, even paying enslaved people for their labor. His ministry was not about shouting but about quietly living the truth.

Others reminded us that prophecy does not stay safe inside the meetinghouse. It asks us to stretch, to travel, and to meet others face to face. This is why support for public ministry matters so much. One of the harder truths named that evening of our last class in the series on the prophetic imagination is that Friends have often fallen out of practice in supporting ministers. Many who carry a call feel they are doing so alone. The Jeremiahs among us too often bear their burdens without accompaniment. This is part of why the Friends Incubator exists, to help meetings remember how to nurture prophetic imagination and hold ministers with tenderness and accountability.

Traveling in the Ministry

These reflections stayed with me as I set out on a long loop of travel in the ministry that began with a visit to my son in Minnesota and carried me through Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and finally back home. Along the way I met with Friends in Minneapolis, West Branch, Kansas City, Memphis, and Nashville. These visits were filled with hugs, tea, and conversations that reminded me again of the goodness of traveling in ministry.

I've been to Minnesota many times. Iowa was a surprise. I used to think of it as flat, but I discovered rolling hills, wide skies, and a sepia-toned history of Quakers and other religious dissenters of an earlier time.

Herbert Hoover's boyhood meetinghouse, where his mother often gave messages and was known as a minister.

I visited Friend Harold and his son, stopped at (Quaker American president) Herbert Hoover’s childhood home, and stumbled into the story of the Amana communities, German-immigrant Christian-pietist communitarians who eventually built the refrigerators that many of us grew up with.

The remains of the great barn and a view of a field at the Amana Commune.

I learned that here in Iowa three groups of radical Christians were close neighbors: Quakers, Mennonites, and the Amana communities.

There were also moments of trial. I drove through a storm with hail and flooding while my GPS insisted I turn into a cornfield. That night ended in an emergency choice of a motel that looked like a 1970s movie set, but I was safe and grateful.

David Lynch or a Coen Brothers set?

Kansas brought John Brown’s history in Lawrence and then a workshop on love in Independence, Missouri, where the barbecue was persuasive. Memphis and Nashville added music, porch air, and kindness (and packed lunches) that traveled home with me.

In Lawrence, Kansas I spent time with my friend Stephanie and we reflected on the resilience of a city so often torn apart yet still standing. It was like us, as we both have labored for right relationship in our home communities, often to our hurt. In Memphis, Tennessee, I was able to reconnect with my seminary friend Mallory.

We had not seen each other in more than four years, since our days at Earlham School of Religion. Seminary friends remain some of my most trusted companions. Bonds are forged in that crucible the way they are in war. The friendships made in those years of testing, discernment, and shared struggle are ones that endure. Reuniting with Mallory reminded me how deeply ministry depends on companionship and how much we need peers who can remind us of our call when the way feels heavy or lonely.

The road was also a time for books. I listened to James, Percival Everett’s retelling of Huck Finn from Jim’s perspective, a novel that ends in brilliance and fire. I delighted in Raja the Gullible, tender and funny in equal measure. And I enjoyed Adam Bede, a nineteenth-century novel centering on a Methodist, but Quaker-like, woman and public minister. Love took many forms in these novels and I needed them all.

Travel these days also reminds me to care for my body as well as the Spirit. I am no longer twenty (or thirty), and long car rides leave me stiff. I once even managed to injure myself simply from sitting too long. Now I make myself stop to walk, and I find a bed rather than curling up in the car. Ministry asks us to tend the whole of our lives.

New Books and Projects

I am delighted to share that Christy Randazzo has a new book out. Christy is a friend and collaborator whose work always makes space for clarity and depth. The book explores Quaker theological metaphors and offers a new one, the metaphor of ecosystem, to describe the way sources of theology overlap and influence one another. It helps us see the richness of Quaker tradition while honoring the many ways Friends experience the sacred.

Jay Marshall, who serves on the Friends Incubator advisory board, also has a new book, Spice Up Your Life. It is described as an invitation to bring creativity, intention, and joy into the everyday rhythms of life. Jay draws on his long life among Friends, his years as a seminary dean, and his storytelling gifts to help readers discover how simplicity and attentiveness can open the way to deeper meaning. His reflections on Quaker testimonies, silence, and travel all shape the book.

It is good to see this wisdom offered more widely.

Kody, who has been featured on this blog before, has launched a new project as well. They are offering pay as you are able coaching sessions for trans, nonbinary, and questioning youth and their families. These sessions create space to talk about transition steps, gender affirming care, navigating family, school, and religious settings, and staying safe and informed in a challenging political climate. This is beautiful and needed work.

Fall Programming

Despite the weeks of travel, the Friends Incubator’s fall programming is taking shape. Two conversations are already scheduled, with more in the works alongside partner organizations. We're so excited about all the irons we have in the fire!

Grief and Creativity in Public Ministry: Grief is one of the most universal human experiences, yet it often feels hidden in our religious communities. In this conversation, public minister Lynette Davis and I will explore how grief shows up in ministry, both as a burden and as a source of unexpected strength and creativity. We will reflect on the challenges of carrying grief publicly, the ways communities can support and be supported by ministers, and the transforming power of lament and love.

The Gift of Eldership: Eldership is at the heart of Quaker tradition, yet it is often misunderstood or left unspoken. In this conversation, elder Deborah Shaw and I will reflect on how eldership can nurture and sustain public ministry. We will share stories of the joys and challenges of walking alongside ministers and invite Friends to consider how to reclaim eldership as a living practice of mutual care and accountability.

Both events are offered on a pay-as-led basis. That means you are invited to contribute what feels faithful, whether nothing, a few dollars or more. All contributions go directly to supporting the Incubator’s programming and to sustaining the public ministers who give their time and gifts to this work. We pay for the labor that goes into the Friends Incubator. Ministry is freely given, but other things are freely given as well.

A Season at Haverford

This fall also brings a new kind of adventure. I am honored to be serving as Friend in Residence at Haverford College. From late October through early November, I will be on campus for a series of events and conversations, including the Family and Friends Weekend panel on November 1. The Friend in Residence program invites Quakers to engage with students, faculty, staff, and the wider community, enriching the College’s connection to its Quaker roots and its living ties to the Religious Society of Friends. It's a great way for the world to get to know public ministers.

During my time there I will be offering accompaniment, listening, and conversation, drawing from my work in trauma-informed ministry and public witness. I am looking forward to the chance to walk alongside the Haverford community, to share stories of Quaker life, and to discover together what the Spirit may be asking of us in this season. It is a gift to be welcomed into a community for a concentrated time and to learn together in that space.

Coming Home

After all the miles and meetings, I returned home to my husband and our cat. The familiar rhythms of the house welcomed me back. It was a relief to set down my suitcase, to sit quietly at our own table, and to be reminded that home itself is a kind of ministry. The cat twined around my ankles as if to make sure I remembered my place, and the simple act of being with my husband after so many days apart carried its own deep joy.

Travel opens the heart to new encounters and unexpected lessons, but coming home teaches me that prophecy is not only about being out in the world. It is also about what is tended quietly in our kitchens and living rooms, in the way we speak to those who share our daily lives, and in the choices we make about how to love and sustain one another.

For me, coming home after ministry travel always feels like another layer of faithfulness. The work of speaking, listening, teaching, and traveling is only possible because of the rootedness I find in the love and care of those who wait for me. That rootedness steadies me so that I can be brave when I am away, and it reminds me that the prophetic work of healing and justice is meant to flow back into the intimate circle of family and community.

So I return, both tired and grateful, creaky from the road but also renewed. Prophetic imagination hums not only in classrooms and meetinghouses but in the quiet evenings of being with loved ones, in the purring of a cat, in the laughter and small conversations that ground me again. It is here that I am reminded that the Spirit is not just out there waiting to be discovered. The Spirit is already at work here at home.

What Stays with Me

Whether on Zoom or on the road, what I keep noticing is that we already have what we need. We have the tools: shared meals, prophetic voices, stories from our history, and a willingness to try new experiments in travel and witness. The task is to practice them together with love.

We do not resist empire alone. We do not live prophetically in isolation. We do it by showing up for one another, telling the truth together, and daring to be the kind of community the world does not quite know what to do with.

A Closing Invitation

As you finish reading this, I invite you to pause and notice where prophetic imagination is alive in your own life. Where do you see quiet resistance? Where do you feel the tug of truth asking to be spoken? Where is the Spirit already at work in your home, your meeting, your community?

May we find the courage to listen. May we find the tenderness to walk together. May we remember that the prophetic imagination is always waiting for us to practice it, side by side.

Next week's blog will return to Tom Hamm and his tour of Quaker public ministers throughout our history. We'll talk about Joseph Hoag. Are you ready for the contention? I'm always ready. :)