Reflections from a Minister at Friends General Conference Gathering...
- windycooler
- Jul 17
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 21
Friend Amanda Green, a minister like all Quakers are, or should be, was deeply touched by her experience with her cohort in both the workshop Friends Incubator for Public Ministry offered on telling the stories of our calls to ministry (some of which were recorded for potential use on QuakerSpeak -- more on that later) and with her experience of Friends General Conference Gathering's many other plenaries, book talks, informal conversations, and connections. Upon returning home to her meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Amanda offered the following notes and queries to her meeting as vocal ministry via their listserv. We love this vocal ministry, and we think it is worth offering to a broader audience. At the end is a poem by another workshop participant, and member of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, David Fitz.
As you read these, we wonder if there was anything you want to bring back to your meeting from the experience of Gathering? How do you receive Amanda's offer here to labor in your own heart and with your meeting? If you feel so called, please feel free to respond in the comments. We can all benefit from your ministry.
On Who We Are As a Meeting
As Quakers, what do we hope that people will aspire to with us?
Are we a serious and trustworthy meeting?
Do we mean what we say?
Does a fetish for process lead to a shunning of authenticity?
What is our money for?
If you do outreach, what you say you will provide has to match what you can
provide.
How do you teach people to be Quakers?
How can we hold community rather than force uniformity?
What is a community of discernment?
Success is doing what you are led to do.
On Spiritual Callings and Gifts
What does it mean to be called?
What is a minister?
What is the story of your call? To what are you called? How are you being called?
What is most tender and dear that we bring to our communities?
Ministry is a quality of presence. My ministry is the specific quality of my
presence. My ministry is who I am, not what I do.
How does my experience of others’ ministry affect mine?
To have your spiritual gifts named helps you claim them.
To have your spiritual gifts named calls us to accountability and community.
An elder is someone who opens up space to spirit can enter.
An elder creates a space of safety that will encourage authenticity.
An elder listens with integrity.
Public ministers are often isolated from their meetings.
How do we support our meeting to support ministries?
On Ourselves and Others
What is the barrier between vulnerability and authenticity?
The narratives we tell to explain the world shape our behavior.
What do people require for wholeness?
Our manner of loving is often an appropriation.
Human desire is mediated through comparison with what others are or what
others have. We learn what is possible to desire by looking at others.
Can we receive, rather than require others to be like us? To be us?
Can we encounter each other without expecting the other person to conform to
our expectations?
How can I be in proximity with someone as they are, not as how I wish them to be?
How much of my action or inaction is because of fear?
On Change
How do I remain a non-anxious person in an anxious system – and allow it to
change by just being there, not by making it change?
How do we ask/require people to change to participate in our meeting?
A meeting that is led to grow is a meeting that is led to change.
There is power in identity. Our identity as people of faith empowers us to say and do things that change people’s lives.
Stand against fear and anger, and do not accept what you should not accept.
Being and doing are a Mobius strip.
A Prayer from a Friend
Live in me, O Spirit of Life.
Dance to the right for the right
Now down to the center of Life
Bow up to the beyondness of Life
Turn outward now, for the world
also needs that Life energy that lives in and flows through you and all beings.
What mystery lives in our bodies that dance reveals?
Why do we hold this mystery in?
Why store what can multiply when it is released?
🐦⬛
Amanda Green is a new Quaker and new member of Friends Meeting at Cambridge. She is the mother of three adult children who bring joy, challenge, and mystery to her life. After a career in disability rights advocacy, she is listening for God's next call and serving her meeting on several committees and groups. Amanda loved learning from others during her first Friends General Conference.
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