1.--Elders are charged with the duty of ensuring "the right holding" of meetings for worship, and are encouraged "to cherish an interest in the spiritual welfare of all their fellow members." How can this counsel be put into practice?
2.--There is great need for a living ministry. Do we, as Elders, concentrate upon the development of that spirit out of which such ministry will arise?
3.--Do we represent the vocal ministry as a call to a splendid and joyous vocation? Do we realise the essential "costingness" of ministry?
4.--Is the ministry shallow, casual, lacking grip and conviction? Has it become too humanitarian, or bordering too much upon politics? Is it sufficiently related to our experience of God--to his self-disclosure in Christ--to what He has done and is doing in the lives of men and women?
5.--There is an important place for vocal prayer in our meetings for worship. Do Elders
sufficiently realise this and give wise encouragement to any who may have a gift in this way?
Elders have been considering the Questions prepared by the Executive Committee of Yearly Meeting Elders, and asked to give them careful consideration. It is hoped to have an open discussion at next Y.M. on subjects related to Eldership.
The questions are naturally and rightly concerned with our Meetings for Worship and the Ministry in those meetings: this is the main of Elders. They emphasise the need for a living ministry, deep, searching, springing from our experience of God in his self-disclosure in Christ. They raise the important point of the value of vocal prayer in our meetings, and urge Elders to realise this and to give wise encouragement to any who may have a gift in this way.
We may perhaps single out Question 3 for consideration in this article, because of its balance and comprehensiveness, and because it is a real challenge: "Do we represent the vocal as a call to a splendid and joyous? Do we realise the essential 'costing' of ministry ?" And while the "we" in question is primarily addressed to Elders, all of our Society can take it as applying to themselves, whether technically Elders or not. Not one of us can really evade this issue.
Let us take the second part, of the question first--the "costingness" of ministry. Time was when there was no need to emphasise this aspect of ministry in our Society. Readers of Neave Brayshaw's book, The Quakers: Their Story and Message, will remember the instances he gives in that remarkable chapter, "The History of Quaker Ministry," to show the positive fear of being led to take vocal part in the ministry that was characteristic of in many Friends in the early part of last century. He reminds us that an atmosphere of unnaturalness and even of weirdness had come to cling round the idea of ministry. "Those on whom the awful gift had descended came to be regarded as a separate of men and women, forever marked off others."
Some of the extracts given from the journals of ministering Friends of that time sound strange today. Thus, Lydia Ann Barclay writes: "I feel now ill with conflict, and the dread of meeting days," thus vividly depicting her distress at the prospect of ministry. William Allen, on being recorded as a minister in 1820, writes:
"I am now placed in an awful situation. May the Great Preserver of men be near to support and sustain under every trial, and prevent me from doing anything which may injure His great and good cause. I am indeed very low and in much fear."
Another Friend, Mary Burtt, who, after twenty five years' struggle, at last yielded to the call by quoting a single text, wrote a few weeks afterwards in her diary: "My heart is saddened by the recollection that to-morrow will be meeting-day again."
Others, like Thomas Pumphrey, Elizabeth Fry and John Yardley, felt that the call to the ministry might be a temptation of the devil, the first named telling us that he "struggled against the call, fearing it was a suggestion of Satan to bring dishonour on the precious truth," and the last named writing: "I have often secretly said, 'Get thee behind me, I will not be tempted with such a thing'...Such was my dislike to the work that I suffered myself to be lulled into a state of unbelief as to the rectitude of the concern."
Now the idea underlying this fear was undoubtedly good, and we can understand and sympathise with it. "In all this," says Neave Brayshaw, "we see the concern of the true minister that his life shall commend his words." Or, in the phraseology of our question, these Friends realised the essential costingness of ministry. They distrusted the easy flow of speech, the shallow casual utterance that so lightly runs off the tongue, and they feared above all things "to outrun the Guide" or "to exceed the measure." We can respect their position without wishing fully to adopt it. Of the two extremes, reserve and verbosity, this is the less harmful.
The Friends of a century ago had not coined the expressive phrase descriptive of voluble speakers as being "too light on the trigger," but they evidently knew the dangers attaching to volubility. As far back as 1717, Thomas Story had described the Yearly Meeting as "a crowding time, there not being, for the most part, one minute's time between the end of one testimony and the beginning of another, an indecency I have ever disliked."
Now, to balance this, and to prevent the sense of the costingness involved in all true ministry from paralysing us and reducing us to the bondage of fear, let us turn to the first half of our question. "Do we represent the vocal ministry as a call to a splendid and joyous vocation?" "Splendid" and "joyous" are glorious adjectives, not perhaps reflecting the Quaker caution of a hundred years ago, but just the right words in this setting. What indeed is more splendid and joyous than the gospel of God's love revealed in Jesus Christ, and what vocation can be more splendid and joyous than that of sharing with others our experience thereof in our own hearts? We do not hesitate to appeal to the young to dedicate themselves to high and heroic tasks: what work can be higher or more heroic than to live and to preach Christ to a world that is "rattling into barbarism" for want of him?
It is this positive and triumphant note that we need to sound to-day--if indeed our own experience warrants our sounding it, and if our faith in God is strong enough. Are we inspired enough to lay on all our members, ourselves included, the great claims of the Christian ministry, by example far more than by precept, but not excluding the latter? This of course does not mean asking our members to specialise in theology or go to college or give up business: it is simply emphasising our fundamental position of the "Priesthood of all believers," and urging upon all of us our individual and collective responsibility for the life of our Meetings. "In the Light," said Fox, "everyone should have something to offer."
Whether in silence or in speech, we lay our gift on the altar, and the fire kindles. We worship as individuals, but not selfishly, for we worship also as a group: we "feel the power of God in one another" as we "meet together and know one another in that which is eternal which was before the world was."
In such an atmosphere ministry cannot be shallow or casual or lacking conviction and grip. Even if it becomes "humanitarian or bordering on politics" (see Question 4), it will still be "in the life," based upon the Unseen, and uniting rather than dividing: a humanitarianism or a politic with its roots in God cannot lead us astray. In praying and working for such an atmosphere in our Meetings, Elders will be "concentrating on the development of that spirit out or which a living ministry will arise" (see Question 2). The ministry largely reflects the spiritual life of the group, and for this spiritual life we all--Elders and non-Elders equally and alike--are responsible, "that all may be as one family, building up one another and helping one another."
1. 1.. The Friend (London) Vol. 92, No.15 (12th of 4th Month,) (April) 1935.