Guest Post: Marcelle Martin On Discernment

Every so often we invite a Quaker public minister or elder to take over our weekly blog. This is one such week! We're so happy to be welcoming Marcelle Martin as this week's guest blogger in anticipation of her workshop for us on January 7th, Listening Together: The Role of Discernment in Ministry.

Among Friends, we have always sought ways to listen together for the motion of the Spirit. Our tradition offers many names for this shared listening—clearness committees, anchor groups, care committees, meetings for discernment—but at their heart they are all attempts to walk faithfully in companionship.

In the reflection that follows, Friend Marcelle Martin, whose ministry has helped many of us learn the practice of faithfulness groups, describes what this kind of ongoing companionship can look like. She reminds us that spiritual life is not solitary; it ripens in the company of others who are also listening and learning to trust the Inner Guide.

As you read, you might hold these queries:

• What practices or relationships help me return to the awareness of God’s presence in my daily life and public ministry?

• How do I invite others to walk with me when discernment becomes difficult or lonely?

• What might a “faithfulness group” look like among my own circle of Friends, and how might it renew our meeting’s capacity for care for public ministry?

Marcelle's Testimony

Faithfulness Groups: Ongoing Companionship for a Spirit-Led Life

Following a call to ministry has been a great adventure. God calls me into tasks and situations that stretch my sense of who I am and what I can do. I am often led out of my comfort zone to confront what I fear. There are parts of me that don’t like this and have other agendas, so it is helpful—perhaps crucial—to have companions who are also seeking clearness and faithfulness and who can help with discernment.

I’ve had several clearness committees in my life at critical moments, such as discerning a call to ministry with my meeting (three different meetings over the years), as well as for membership and marriage. But a clearness committee requires many people-resources. Most of my discernment is done either one-on-one (with my husband, spiritual director, or a friend) or with my faithfulness group, or with the committee of three Friends from my meeting who have oversight of my ministry.

A faithfulness group provides ongoing mutual support and accountability for all its members and meets on a regular basis—usually once a month, year after year. The support committee from my meeting helps connect me and my ministry to my meeting, which is deeply helpful. But the three faithfulness groups in which I have participated—which have lasted between three and seventeen years (one still ongoing)—have brought a deeper understanding of what it means to hear and seek to be faithful to a call or leading.

Participating in an ongoing faithfulness group helps me hear more clearly God’s call on my life and discern next steps in faithful response to that call. We offer each other a form of prayerful attention and companionship that helps us remember, again and again, that God is always present—ready to guide each and all of us. Participating in such a group is a spiritual discipline. When we are in the role of supporting and listening to another, we must set aside our own curiosity and opinions to listen openly with the focus person to their sense of divine presence, guidance, and leading. Our task is not to offer advice, but to help them hear and follow the guidance of the Spirit.

My group includes six members and meets once a month. For decades, we began by eating supper together, which we took as an opportunity to check in with everybody. Then we settled into the two-hour faithfulness group format, devoting one hour to two people each time we met. During the hour, the focus person talks for about fifteen minutes about some area of life in which they are seeking to sense divine guidance more clearly and respond faithfully. After each presentation, the group asks questions to help the presenter look more closely at how the Spirit has been at work—both inwardly and in the events of their life. Over time, our group has learned not to hurry with our questions or rely too much on mental analysis, but to wait prayerfully for the questions that rise from the Spirit. After a question is posed, we hold the focus person in prayer as they look within for the deep knowing that resides in the heart.

Usually when my group settles to engage in the faithfulness group process, I find myself moved to a deeper place of inward calm—a place of reverence. My busy mind slows down. Then I’m better able to attend to a subtle awareness of the divine Presence among us. When I hear stories of the particular ways that others have experienced the Spirit at work, my faith is strengthened.

When friends share their longing to be of true service and their deep desire to know how God is guiding them, that same longing and desire are strengthened in me.

It is a blessing both to witness the faithfulness of others and to share my own journey honestly. Something in my heart relaxes and opens wider when people listen lovingly as I speak about the ways I sense Spirit teaching and leading me. Trust has grown over time, and gradually, my ability to be deeply honest has increased. It is freeing to be able to speak the truth in my heart that contradicts the norms of society. Revealing my secret fears, hurts, and places of resistance has helped me allow God to heal those things. When I speak to others about my intimate walk with the Spirit, the truth of it becomes revealed to me in new ways.

Sometimes during a faithfulness group meeting, I can feel the Light within me shine more brightly. I see it happen in my companions, too. Gathering with our faithfulness group each month is a practice that helps all of us remember our faith and find the firm ground of God’s steadfast love.

A faithfulness group meeting on a sunny day.

Each person has the group’s attention about four times a year. Because we accompany each other over a long period of time—often years—we get to know each other’s inner, spiritual lives in a very intimate way. We can help each other notice the ways we resist God’s leadings and call. Through prayer, deep listening, questions, and loving support, we help one another overcome the hidden internal barriers to a life of faithfulness. A clearness committee helps a person discern a leading; a faithfulness group helps discern each small step along the path and find the way back after a misstep or distraction.

Each month, our group rotates the role of convener, whose primary task is to keep time so that everyone has a fair share of attention and so that we finish punctually. When we veer into problem-solving, advice-giving, or telling our own stories, the convener gently reminds us of the guidelines for our group.

Our intention is to provide “holy accompaniment” to each other and to let the Spirit guide our sessions.

The format of these groups is adapted, with permission, from the Shalem Institute’s peer groups for spiritual directors used in their program on spiritual guidance. The format has been opened up so that people can provide companionship to each other for many forms of faithfulness—following a leading, living out a call, engaging in service or ministry, or being faithful in one’s job or family commitments. The ideal number for faithfulness groups is four to six members, although three participants can be sufficient. It is not necessary to share a meal; in fact, the two-hour format makes it easier for busy people to fit a monthly meeting into their schedules.

The current guidelines for Faithfulness Groups are available here.

What is your testimony?

Marcelle’s description of faithfulness groups is both practical and tender—a reminder that discernment is not a one-time event but a way of life. Clearness committees may help us name a leading; faithfulness groups help us stay close to it, step by step, year by year.

There are many ways Friends might live into this practice. Some will find a small, steady circle of companions. Others may gather occasionally for clearness around a particular question or calling. Some meetings may wish to renew their care or ministry committees to include this deeper kind of listening.

Whatever form it takes, the invitation is the same: to create the conditions for faithfulness to flourish.

• Who are the companions you might ask to walk with you?

• How might your meeting offer steadier, more prayerful accompaniment to those carrying ministries or heavy responsibilities?

• Where do you sense the Spirit inviting you toward deeper listening, courage, or surrender?
  

These are living questions—ones we’ll continue to explore together in January when Marcelle joins me for a conversation on discernment, faithfulness groups, and the many ways Friends are learning to listen together for the next faithful step. You can register here: https://www.friendsincubator.org/event-details/listening-together-the-role-of-discernment-in-ministry.

Join Marcelle Martin and Windy Cooler for a rich conversation about discernment as the living center of ministry. Drawing from Marcelle’s long experience with Faithfulness Groups, this discussion will explore how discernment takes many forms in the life of a minister and a meeting.

Faithfulness Groups offer one pattern for shared listening and accountability, but what other forms of discernment sustain our callings? This Zoom event is free; donations very welcome.

Marcelle Martin has led workshops at retreat centers and Quaker meetings across the United States. She teaches practices for hearing divine guidance, discernment, and being responsive to calls and leadings. For four years she was the resident Quaker Studies teacher at Pendle Hill. The author of Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey, and A Guide to Faithfulness Groups, she has also written four Pendle Hill pamphlets and many articles. Her most recent Pendle Hill pamphlet is Guidance and Revelations in Dreams, and her blog is A Whole Heart. She is a member of Swarthmore Friends Meeting, which has recognized and supported her ministry of spiritual nurture among Friends. She lives in Chester, PA with her husband, Terry.