From Seeker to Quaker
August 22, 2017Uncategorized
I started seeking a faith community when I was ten years old. I knew exactly what I was looking for. I knew because I knew God; I knew God as a loving being who was beyond requiring specific ceremonies, who spoke to all His children directly, and who grieved when He saw any of His children in pain. (I was also pretty sure that God wasn’t literally male, but it helped me to think of Him with a gender, and I didn’t think He’d mind.)
It took me seventeen years to find Quakers.
It wasn’t that I didn’t know Quakers existed. It’s just that I thought they were something like the Amish. Quakers aren’t out there in theological circles—or, for that matter, in popular culture. We’re out there in the peace activism world, but I wasn’t a peace activist, so I didn’t find us. I can remember many times, especially once I’d graduated from college and become a full-fledged adult, when I wept because I was convinced that I would never find my faith community, that I would simply be alone in my journey with God.
When I finally did come to Quakers, it was a matter of desperation. I’d tried everything else! So even if Quakers did turn out to be Amish, what did I have to lose?
The first meeting I went to was entirely silent, which frankly annoyed me because I didn’t know anything more after the first meeting than I did before it. In the second meeting, someone stood up and quoted George Fox: “There is that of God in everyone.” And that was it. I knew I was home.
In time, what started as overwhelming gratitude (I’ve found you!) turned into serious anger (Where the heck have you been?) and, now, hope (We can do better. We can make sure nobody else ever has to search for us for seventeen years.)
Now, here’s the thing about outreach:
It is everybody’s job.
That’s the kind of statement that always gets some resistance, mostly because we recognize as Friends that we all have different gifts and that not all of us all called to the same things. And this is most certainly true. But outreach isn’t about a single thing. When we try to pull it out—make it the work of a particular committee or define it as a short list of tasks—we end up talking about a small piece of outreach but not actually the entire picture.
Let’s see what happens if turn the question inside out, so it’s not “How do we do outreach?” but instead, “What is the path of the seeker?” What has to happen for the seeker in order to get from person looking for a faith community to integrated member of a Quaker meeting with a strong sense of belonging and purpose?
I think there are six basic steps:
1) I know that Quakers exist.
2) I have found a Quaker meeting in my area.
3) I have decided to visit the meeting.
4) I have visited the meeting and have decided to come back.
5) I have developed a sense of belonging in the first few months of attending.
6) I am experiencing long-term spiritual nurture, and I’m providing this nurture to others as well.
Now the questions for Friends become:
1) How can we make sure that seekers know Quakers exist?
2) How can we help seekers find our local Quaker meeting?
3) How can we make it easy for seekers to decide to visit the meeting?
4) How can we make sure that the first visit helps seekers decide to come back?
5) How can we help new attenders to develop a sense of belonging?
6) How can we provide long-term spiritual nurture to all of our members/attenders and create opportunities for each Friend to provide that long-term spiritual nurture to others?
This is why outreach is everybody’s job. All of us have gifts directly related to at least one of those six steps.
In the next few weeks, my intention is to write about each of these six steps and the various tasks associated with them, as well as to emphasize the ways in which each of us plays a part in this work.
Can you immediately see where your own gifts are in this sequence?
Does it raise up other thoughts or questions?
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8 thoughts on “From Seeker to Quaker”
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Keith SaylorAugust 26, 2017 at 6:03 pm
Hello Emily,
I appreciate this series. I am sure many people will find your suggestions helpful, edifying, and serviceable to the needs of the Quaker institution. Your words have challenged and helped me in ways you would not anticipate. I appreciate this particular piece because it highlights one, among the many, fundamental differences between you and I. I have never been a “seeker for community” in the sense of seeking a people led and gathered together into a particular outward formal structure (Not that I’m suggesting everyone should conform to my experience). Literally, I intuitively sought another way. A way that did not participate in the process of identification with outward institutional forms. I have played at the edges of the institutions of Quakerism (along with other “isms”) for about 30 years. Since I was 25 years old, the appearance of the inshining Light itself in itself upon my conscience is (I use “is” intentionally) discovered to me a different way and is led me out of identification and affiliation with all outward ideological and institutional forms; discovering to me the ever living Light itself in itself is sufficient to nurture me up and satisfy my spiritual hunger without reference to or in the context of any outward political, religious, or social construct. I am gathered by the inward Impulse, just not gathered and led into institutionalized forms. The inshining Impulse is led me out of valuing Monthly Meeting, Quarterly Meetings, or Yearly Meeting or any outward formal church establishment and led into valuing the appearance of the Light itself in itself in my conscience as sufficient in itself spiritually. In this way, the inshining Light itself in itself guides the Children of Light outside of any outward institutional structure or outward Leaders.
Keith Saylor – A Gathered, Independent and Unaffiliated, Child of the inshinging Light.
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RFM.Co.Clerk@gmail.comNovember 6, 2019 at 4:13 am
Emily, a year ago I defined 12 stages in the LIFECYCLE of “attenders”. These labels are necessary to discuss & track precisely. Your six steps fall within my 3~7. Here is a link to the full document; I welcoming embeded comments from ANYONE: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V6kKhNqjqCnevasVp6mxT2sx1T5HMo9QSEKBjoTBe14/edit
There are suggested questions to engage at each stage and committee actions. BTW: We must contact those that do not return. They have the most to teach us.
0. Unconnected: one of 590,537 adults in Monroe County, New York
1. Visitor: no plans to return, e.g. a traveler, or may forever wander among congregations
2. Disconnected: was once at least a 3. Seeker
3. Seeker: evaluating if RFM might become their spiritual home, or attending months
4. New Attender: now calling RFM their spiritual home, or regularly attending 3+ months
5. Regular Attender: more than 3 months, including membership transfers
6. Committee Member: participating on a Committee, or accepting a Role assignment
7. Society Member: member of the Religious Society of Friends
8. In Ministry: having a formerly recognized spiritual gift in service to the community
9. Elder: informally recognized having deep Quaker experience & broad spiritual gifts
10.End of Life: diminishing participation in the community due to age or illness
11.Remote: was at least a 3. Seeker, but now physically relocated
Jeff Fitts, Rochester Clerk, 585-709-6478, RFM.Co.Clerk@gmail.com
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