A ministry of encouragement

I love opportunities to get together informally with Friends – this was the original basis of the convergent Friends dinner parties I organized a few years ago. In the last year, the Quaker Revival and Nursery of Truth had some of the same characteristics of taking advantage of the presence of a visiting minister to gather local Friends for worship and conversation and a shared meal. I think the most important part of these gatherings is the opportunity to share our joys and concerns with other Friends, some familiar and some new faces, and the encouragement we take home from them, knowing we are not alone in walking the Quaker path.

I recently had the opportunity to visit with several small groups of Friends while traveling for work. In each case, the gathering was around 15 people from multiple monthly meetings in a local area. In each case the conversation somewhat naturally turned to the future of the Religious Society of Friends. And the message I was given to share with the group in each case was

“Do not be discouraged.” 

I understand that the state of the Religious Society of Friends and of any particular local group can be discouraging. I think that is par for the course. In life. At least in this lifetime.

So if Quakerism  and Quakers are just going to be discouraging, what are we supposed to do?

The answer is perseverance. Forgiving 70 times 7 times. And coming back, and showing up, and not letting the tedious or the insidious or the pompous get you down so much that you give up and go away and don't come back. That is the Tempter speaking to you: telling you it’s not worth it; these people will never change; there’s a better group out there somewhere.

Just as God and grace frequently become present to us through other people, Evil becomes present to us through other people, sometimes in the most banal ways. C.S. Lewis said that better than I can, but he was right. Evil is not always grandiose. Even the biggest evils, for example, apartheid, are made up of a lot of small pedantries.

This is different from Way Closing. There can be a sense of rightness in something ending. People, and all animals, die. Campaigns end. People change religions. Meetings in a particular place are laid down. This can be rightly ordered. Sometimes it’s hard to know the difference between this and giving up prematurely. That’s advanced discernment, for sure.

In any case, this is not a new phenomenon.

Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged*
Take it to the Lord in prayer 

That's an old song, written by Joseph Scriven in 1855. Isaiah 42 was written long before that, and it's a whole chapter on the same theme.

As far as positive advice for Friends who are feeling discouraged, I have two thoughts. One is that we have to encourage each other, in living rooms and at kitchen tables, in meetinghouses, on street corners and in the pickup line at preschool. This is one of my favorite parts of my calling to ministry, which is further enabled by my current employment, but certainly didn't start with getting hired and I doubt will end when the paychecks do. If you know someone who is doing good work, encourage him/her and be encouraged by her/him. It's not actually all that complicated, and it's really important.

I actually think this is my personal answer to what the Religious Society of Friends needs right now. On my better days, I practice a ministry of encouragement. I aspire to humbly and boldly follow in the footsteps of Margaret Fell as a nursing mother of Quakerism. If you have ever felt that you weren’t getting enough encouragement among Friends, consider whether instead God is calling you to encourage others.

Second, and here I'm cheating a little because this is really seven things, read Chuck Fager's article, The Seven Ups, courtesy of Western Friend magazine, and follow his advice:

Show Up.
Read Up.
Speak up.
Ante up.
Smarten Up.
Toughen Up. And
Don’t Hurry Up. 

Amen.

Keep up the good work, all of you.



*I wanted to quote this song in the title of this post, but I found that I had already used the most relevant line as a title of a previous blogpost. Here is a set of other blog posts by me referencing the same song: http://robinmsf.blogspot.com/search?q=take+it+to+the+lord+in+prayer [This was just a simple search, but I think it produced a fascinating cross-section of this blog.]

FWCC from A to Z

I've been entertaining myself today with a single handed game of "I'm going to Grandma's house and I'm taking a..." Did you play that when you were a kid? Or with your own kids?

Well, I'm going to the Friends World Committee Section of the Americas Meeting of Representatives next week, and I'm taking

an Agenda
a Bible
some Crayons
Donation Envelopes
Friends
a Glossary/Glosario
a Hymnal
Ideas
my Journal
Knitted hat
Laptop
a Mission
some Nominations
I hope to find some Opportunities when I get there
a Pencil
a QUNO report
Respect
Socks
Thermal Underwear
Vision
Workplan
Xtra paper
Yahweh
and Zeal.

Are you coming? What are you bringing?

If you're not coming, what are you carrying with you wherever you are?

The Tools We Need

It is not a new statement that among Friends, we are all ministers. We have different gifts and experiences, but we all have some. And we can all use some basic tools in our ministry. But we don’t all get the basic training that would help us to live up to our potential as ministers. Last weekend, I attended a basic training workshop, called “The Nursery of Truth.”1

The event began with a large gathering of Friends from about a 50 mile radius for great music by Adam Sweeney and friends and an introductory message from Zachary Moon.

Zach's message was about the importance of loving our enemies and learning to understand the people we think of as our enemies. His own spiritual journey has taken him from counter-recruitment community organizing to ministering to a Reserve Unit of the U.S. Marine Corps as their Chaplain. I can not say that I understand his leading, but I do believe that

1. God works in mysterious ways 
2. Jesus’s commandment to love our enemies is both clear and hard 

So we all need all the encouragement and inspiration we can get, and Zach brought both in abundance.

On Saturday, three Friends taught specific skills applicable to any Friend. The group that was invited to attend the full day session were intentionally a younger and more economically diverse crowd.2  Let’s be clear, in this group, I was old, and maybe ¼ of the people were older than me. I was invited to attend as an elder, not in the chronological sense, but as a grounding and experienced presence and resource person. I will admit that I currently fit none of the requested categories (see note 2 below), but I’m glad I was there, nonetheless. My favorite description of my role (I didn’t make this up): to serve as “an agent of contagion for the Holy Spirit.” I pray that I may have served that role in ways I don’t even know.

So the first session was on Spiritual Storytelling with Kathy Hyzy. She encouraged us all to see ourselves as storytellers. She reminded us that a wide swath of the stories we tell about our lives are spiritual and exhorted us to use our stories in our vocal ministry. Then she told a powerful story from her own life, of coming to Friends as a teenager after her mother’s death. And then she divided us into small groups to practice telling our own stories. Of course there wasn’t really enough time, but in my small group, the stories were profound, personal, brave and short.

The second session was on Quaker Remix with Wess Daniels. It was a better developed version of a bit he did at Quaker Heritage Day in 2011.  I think this is a key element of his doctoral research and I look forward to reading his final version. Essentially he gave us a framework for how to become effective ministers. We have to steep ourselves in our tradition, learn it deeply as apprentices, and then remix it with our contemporary (postmodern) culture in order to have it be accessible and relevant and then test that in a participatory community. Wess did a great job of posing questions and drawing the answers out of the group. How did we see this as true or not, how did it apply to our own lives and our Quaker Communities? 

My personal question is do we have/are we creating enough apprentices in our tradition to have a sustainable chance for our religion? And if not, is there anything we (meaning I) can do about it? Again there wasn’t enough time (like a whole week) to get into it really deeply, but it was an introduction and food for much thought and conversations that could continue for years.

One advantage of having a lot of local folks coming together is that many of them will see each other again. A further advantage was how many different churches and meetings were represented so the conversation can be replicated in many places.

In the middle we all went out for lunch, most of us to Burgerville in Camas. This was a chance for me to get to know some of the other young-ish women at the event, particularly three I had met before, but never really talked to. The four of us were not only from three different churches, but three different yearly meetings, and the discussion exposed shared values and concerns that were both fun and heartening to discover.

That's a big Bible.

The third session was about using the Bible as a bridge, not a battering ram, with Peggy Senger Parsons. She reviewed many of the ways people use the Bible and encouraged us to take the time to figure out how to articulate how we use the Bible (or would like to). And then she encouraged us to practice telling the story of a positive experience we have had with the Bible that we can launch into at any moment, in any company, if only as a non sequitur kind of jujitsu move to shift a discussion and to diffuse the tension when necessary. Her third practical tip was to choose a favorite verse or commandment and to deflect attempts to draw you into unproductive arguments by focusing on your chosen verse. As in “I know you want me to get wound up about _________, but you know, I’m still working on how Jesus said ‘Love your enemies,’ and it’s taking all I’ve got for now. When I get that down, then I will work on your suggestion.” These all seemed very useful for staying in relationship with people who have different uses for the Bible without compromising your integrity or getting caught up in arguments with a lot of heat but not much Light.

Plumb bob from Wikipedia Commons

 The last part was Sunday morning worship at Camas Friends Church (a Quaker Meeting).  Peggy brought the message and a plumb bob.  Have you seen one before? It’s a heavy weight on the end of a string that helps to determine the vertical straight line that carpenters use to determine if a building is going up straight. It works because the weight always points to the center of the earth. She compared it to the Love of God, which can help us to orient our lives. The message was also about Truth and Compassion. And I didn’t take very good notes because it was an awe-inspiring message that captured my full attention. When I grow up, I want to know how to preach like Peggy. The Lord knows I will never be that good, but I am taking lessons starting now.

So now what? I know that the ministers who pulled this together are hoping that this Nursery of Truth idea might catch on. And if it did, I think that would be a good thing for the Religious Society of Friends/Friends Church. But how? Would it work to transport these ministers out of their local environment and invite them to speak at your meeting? Yes. Individually or as a group? Yes. Would it help to be conscious of how they went about attracting a not-the-usual-suspects crowd? Yes. Would it work to invite the ministers who are already in your local area to share their practical skills with Friends near you? Yes.

Would it be the same? No. I think that is the catch. God works in those mysterious ways, remember? Trying to replicate specific events or constellations of events becomes discouraging. We need to be open to how the Holy Spirit is leading us every time, all the time, and that is hard.

I think this is the lesson of Quaker open worship – it is different every time, but we need to keep coming back and experiencing the opportunity, even through dry spells, even when you know that people are going to talk about the latest political crisis (in our yearly meetings or in Congress), because we don’t know how or when the Holy Spirit will reach in and grab us by the scruff of the neck and take us to a new place.

Are you ready for that trip over Jordan? I don’t mean dying, I mean going to a strange land where we will have new responsibilities and new opportunities. This “new” land may look surprisingly like the neighborhood where you’ve been living all this time, or it may be thousands of miles away, but it will require new strength and courage to live there. And the basic skills of storytelling and relationship-building and a framework for understanding our place in the Divine story.

For these, I am grateful to the Nursery of Truth, and to Wess, Kathy, and Peggy for having the vision and the courage to bring us together.


All photos from Wess Daniels' Flickr set for Nursery of Truth unless otherwise noted. If you’d like to read more of the real-time commentary, search the Twitter stream for #nurserytruth.

1. Nursery of Truth was one of the names for the island of Barbados where many Quakers coming to the Americas in the 1600s stopped for rest and instruction before arriving in the northern English colonies. To read more, visit  Wess's blogpost.

2. Here is the list of attributes that were sought: Under 30 – AA – NA – LGBTQ – military service – never attended a cross-Quaker event – Work an hourly wage job – attend a Spanish language Friends Church – Rent your home – New Quaker – HS diploma or Associates degree as highest degree – Single parent – have ink or a bike that drinks fossil fuels…

Necessary but Not Sufficient

I went to a Quaker Revival the other night. Organized by a small group of Christian Friends in the Eastern U.S. and held in West Philadelphia. It fit my idea of a good time.

First, a potluck supper with some Friends I don’t see often enough and some new-to-me people. The house was packed. I didn’t count but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 50 people there.

Followed by two hours of semi-programmed worship. I would happily have continued in worship much longer – I don’t think the Holy Spirit was done with us by any means. But I had to take my kids home, so I was glad it ended at 9 pm anyway. Well, the meeting for worship ended. The conversations were still going strong when we left.

On that note, why am I (and my husband) the only one who brings her kids to stuff like this? In fact, it worked out pretty well for them. They got to eat what they wanted at the potluck, see and talk to some people they know, sing with the group, pet cats, do their homework and stay up a little (but not too, too) late. On the whole, not such a bad deal from their perspective. It’s important to me that they ARE part of the Quaker community, and the only way to really be part of something is to show up.

For me it was nice that I went, not as a part of my job, but just as a Friend in the community. So I feel like I can write about it here in a different way than if I had been working. On the other hand, I don’t go anywhere anymore without my official (but metaphorical) hat and I know that. Still, probably half the people there didn’t know I was wearing it, and the ones who did know, didn’t care. I’m glad that’s possible.

But, back to what actually happened. There was some singing at the beginning, and then there were three visiting Friends who were asked to prepare a message, and then the rest was unprogrammed worship, with some Bible reading, some more singing, and a variety of messages. It was nice. I enjoyed it. I was not transformed in any noticeable way. Other people seemed generally pleased, some more than others, of course. I think the difference is that it wasn’t exciting to me in the way new things often are, because I’ve done stuff like this before. I asked Chris, “So am I just jaded?” And he said, “Yes.” It reminded me a lot of the convergent dinners that I helped organize over the course of a few years, or the dinners after Quaker Heritage Day. (See SF, LA, Newberg, Berkeley, Boston, Indiana, Baltimore, Berkeley, Philadelphia).

Another key is not to have too high of expectations. As George Fox learned, when we are hoping for too much from other people, we are often disappointed and disillusioned. If calling it a revival means you’re expecting Azusa St. all over again, you’re going to be sorry. But if you’re open to what the Holy Spirit has to offer in the moment, you will be refreshed.

The important point is that evenings like this shouldn’t be a one time event. They should be a semi-regular event in the life of all Quaker communities. Any time a traveling minister is visiting – the community should gather like this. And that is how we revive ourselves. Revival is not a once and for all kind of event. It is the regular infusion of energy, not in the slow trickle of everyday life, but in cloudbursts of the Holy Spirit among us.

The long-term transformation of lives really happens in the steady flow of service and forgiveness and patience and commitment that we experience in our local meetings. But we need the little jolts of enthusiasm that come from really inspired preaching. We need the friendships and connections that are built in an evening like this. It brought together Friends from several worshipping communities in the area, who live too far apart to do this every week, but ought to know one another in the way of extended family. That too makes a difference over time. The ministry that comes out speaks to different people each time.

It may have been a little gimmicky to call it a Quaker Revival. But it got people to come – a wide range of Friends from 20 miles around. Plus the Holy Spirit. For that, let us be truly thankful.

Why don't you write more?

A couple of weeks ago, a Friend suggested that I should write a blogpost (100-1000 words usually) expanding on a tweet (140 characters) that I wrote. I said I'd like to write more, but this darn full-time job keeps getting in the way.

I am actually writing quite a bit these days, but it's all for work, not for play. But just for today, I thought I'd post links to some of the things I've written in the last few months.

First, I write a little introduction to the monthly newsletter for the Friends World Committee for Consultation in the Americas. And then usually I write some, but not most, of the other articles. Here you can read the latest one, titled "Let the Living Water Flow Through You!" If you'd like to read our archive of newsletters, including every bit of it that I wrote in the last year, you can go here: E-news Archives.

A few weeks ago, I wrote up a few reflections on the 6th World Conference of Friends for a report-back conference call. You can read my report, the notes from the other speakers, or listen to the call, all on this page of the FWCC website.

In the months before and after the Conference, I wrote a series of letters in English and Spanish to delegates, to yearly meeting clerks and to donors to the Travel Fund, but those are not archived online. In April I rewrote the description of our Visitation program for our website, but I see now that it needs to be updated again. I also write quarterly letters to the Representatives of Yearly Meetings who are members of the Friends World Committee. That is also due again in the next month or so.

I'm currently working on a longer explanation of the theme for our local gatherings in the coming year, "Let the Living Water Flow! Friends Serving God's Purposes." The short description on our website is a collaborative effort.

In August I've been invited to speak on a panel about leadership in the age of social media at the Earlham School of Religion Leadership conference. So I still need to write something for that.

And last, but not least, I write fund raising appeal letters. Here's the latest one, featuring the work of young adults and younger Friends in the Friends World Committee. If you'd like to make a donation to support that work, I'd be very grateful. 

FWCC in Philadelphia - Y'all Come Now

So there's a series of interesting things happening in Philadelphia this month. I'm just sorry it's taken me so long to actually write about them. Keep going to the end to read about the convergent dinner party!

First, and the reason that I'll actually be in the area, is the Annual Meeting of the Section of the Americas of the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC). I'm a representative of Pacific Yearly Meeting, and a member of the Wider Quaker Fellowship committee, which is officially a program group of FWCC, and so I'll be attending the business meetings at Friends Center on March 17 and 18.

Following that, there will be a public gathering on Friday, March 18 in the evening and most of the day Saturday, March 19, This is one of a series of local gatherings on the theme of the 6th World Gathering of Friends (that will be April 2012 in Kenya): Being Salt and Light: Friends Living the Kingdom of God in a Broken World. There is a cost of $40 for dinner, lunch & snacks during the sessions, and they are requesting free will donations to support the gathering and the work of FWCC. Child care is available by advance request.

The speakers are Linda and David Kusse-Wolfe, recorded Friends ministers from University Friends Meeting in Wichita, Kansas. Here's the description from the website,

"Linda and David carry a ministry of reconciliation among peoples of different races, classes and cultures. This led them to live and study in Qom, Iran, where they were the only publicly-declared Christians in a city of over one million inhabitants. The Holy City of Qom is the center for education for Shiite Muslim clerics. Linda and David will provide opportunities to relate their experiences to current issues of ‘brokenness’ that Friends are facing in their communities. We hope Friends will take away something that is relevant—both practically and spiritually—to our lives today.

An FWCC program provides time for worship in the manners of Friends, small group sessions and time for fellowship, within the framework of FWCC's mission to bring Friends of varying traditions and cultural experiences together in worship, communications and consultation, to express our common heritage and our Quaker message to the world."

If you'd like to attend, or you know someone else who would be interested, whether they are Quakers or not, you can register online or by mailing in the form that's available from the same page on the FWCC website.

And last, but by all means not least, there will be a convergent Friends/blogger get together on Saturday night at Eileen Flanagan's house!
(info on Facebook) (info on QuakerQuaker)

This is the first time that I'll be in the Philly area for more than a day or so, so I'm grateful that Martin Kelley is helping to organize things. And I'm very grateful to Eileen for having us over. She'd like to have a rough idea of how many people are coming, so please RSVP on one of the above event pages or leave me a comment, or email her directly.

I think that we're going to order pizza for dinner, so be prepared that we'll take up a little collection towards that, and if you would like to bring something to share (to drink, a side dish, dessert, an alternative that you prefer to pizza...) that would be great.

Over the last five years, I've been to little gatherings like this in San Francisco, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Newberg (OR), Baltimore, rural Indiana, Greensboro (NC), and Boston. They have ranged from 4 to 24 people, in homes, parks and meetinghouses. They have all been different, but they all featured interesting conversations, usually with people from 2-8 different yearly meetings. The best have included a time of worship sharing on some query that helps us to see how each other is wrestling with the question of how to be Friends in the 21st century. The amazing thing to me is how often unexpected people show up who enrich and expand the conversation just by being there.

If you'd like to join this conversation, you are invited. You can find more details on how to get there on the QQ or Facebook pages, or you can email me at the address in the sidebar. If you have questions, please leave me a comment on this post, or email me or Martin Kelley directly.

And if you're not going to be in the Philadelphia area this month, maybe we can talk about how to organize something like this in your area - both the Salt & Light gatherings and the convergent Friends dinners are a mobile feast!

Follow up on QHD 2011

The short version is "It was great." Here's the link to my list of hopes and expectations, and I think I can say the whole event lived up to most of them.

The longer version is, by definition, more complicated and some of it is still reverberating in my brain and will therefore take longer to write about. But I didn't want to wait anymore to write a little bit about it.

As I've said before, Quaker Heritage Day is an important annual event in my spiritual journey. This year, the speaker was C. Wess Daniels, released minister from Camas Friends Church, in WA, near Portland, OR. I first met Wess in person at QHD in 2006. He is still a Ph.D. candidate at Fuller Seminary and he presented some of his material from his dissertation research. It was challenging in a intellectual way, like a college level class on Quakerism. Here are the slides & other documents from his presentation. It opened up new connections between Quaker history and postmodern culture, in a way that offers me hope for the relevance and vitality of Quakerism in the future. The four points I'd like to highlight (and write more about) were the redefinition of mission, the role of the church as midwife to the spiritual life of a community, Quakers as exemplars of fan culture, especially as remixers and participatory producers, and the role of faithful betrayal in spiritual matters.

I think my role in this event is as an engaged fan of QHD, in the technical sense of fan culture that Wess described. I helped spread the word; I encouraged more young Friends from a wider geographical area to come; I helped support the child care, and I coordinated the after-party. I am enthusiastic about the stimulation I receive from QHD and I just assumed that I could help in some way. Which may be irritating to the real organizers at times but I think overall it makes for a better event. Or I'd have stopped by now.

There are some photos on Facebook. Lisa H. wrote two good posts on Quakers and Remix Culture, (part 1 and part 2) and Chris M. shared some of his own further reflections. I hope to write up posts on the four points I mentioned in the next week or six, in between everything else that I have going on. God willing, and the internet connection doesn't bail out again.

And next year, you should really think about coming. It's not a balloons & facepaint type of party, although I apparently gave that impression to some local Friends, for which I apologize, but it's a good time for Quaker thinkers.

Quaker Heritage Day 2011!

What: Heralding the New Creation: Mission as Participation in the Quaker Tradition
C. Wess Daniels will help us think about the renewal of our tradition through a renewal of mission. He will touch on the first Friends’ understanding of their mission, the way that 20th century evangelical Friend Everett Cattell thought about it, the ways that convergent Friends today are building new communities online and face-to-face, and how our local meetings and churches can live out the new creation by fostering a participatory culture. (download flyer)

Who: C. Wess Daniels (Wess is the released minister of Camas Friends Church, a father of two (really cool) little girls, a husband and a doctoral student at Fuller Theological Seminary. Among his many interests are nourishing Christ-centered faith, encouraging cross-branch friendships in the Religious Society of Friends and trying to start what he calls the “Quaker Revolution.” But since things happen closer to the pace of evolution among Friends, he spends the rest of his days enjoying tasty locally roasted coffee, reading books that make him look smarter than he really is, playing imaginative games with his daughters, and learning how to watch for unexpected moments of grace. He blogs at gatheringinlight.com)

When: February 12, 2011, 9-4 (plus optional dinner on Saturday night and worship on Sunday morning)

Where: Berkeley Friends Church 1600 Sacramento St Berkeley, CA 94702
Corner of Cedar Street, 2 blocks north of North Berkeley BART station.
Telephone (510) 524-4112 www.berkeleyfriendschurch.org /qhd

Why: Because it could change how you think about the future of Friends


My own spiritual journey has been forever changed because of my experiences with Quaker Heritage Day. You can read what I’ve written about it over the last five years here and in the October 2006 issue of Friends Journal (my article is not online).

Okay, I don’t want to raise people’s expectations beyond what Wess could possibly meet. But I do want to encourage everybody who reads this to come. Especially if you have any hope of being around Friends for the next forty years or more.

Here’s what I expect:

I expect to be engaged more than just sitting and listening all day. Wess is good at creating interactive and worshipful exercises.

I expect to be challenged. My horizons have been broadened a lot already in the last five years. I first met Wess at QHD in 2006 and he had already made me think outside my usual boxes just from reading his blog. But I still expect to hear things that make me question them and myself.

I expect to make new connections between the past and the future – how Quaker traditions can speak to us today and transform us for the future.

I expect to laugh. Wess has a dry and self-deprecating sense of humor and a fine appreciation for the absurdities of life and Quakerism.

Here’s what I hope:

I hope it will be an intergenerational event. I hope for equal numbers of people over and under 40. [Note to YAF: Come and bring your friends!!!]

I hope it will draw Friends from a wide range of geography. I think it would be worth coming from out of town for the weekend. If you need help finding a place to stay, let me know.

I hope it will draw Friends from a wide range of theology. I think Wess’s presentation will appeal to many Friends, even as it challenges each of us in different ways.

I hope Wess is brave in sharing what he really thinks. One of the previous QHD speakers didn’t go far enough, I think he pulled his punches, so to speak, and the Day suffered. It was still interesting but it wasn’t amazing.

I hope that someone in the Berkeley area will want to host dinner afterwards. We can order pizza delivered, so no cooking is required. But a place where folks can hang out, where kids can be safely, where we won’t be bothering the roommates or the waitstaff, that would be great. If you or someone you know could host, call or email me. I’m in the College Park Quarterly Meeting Directory and my email is in my profile in the sidebar. I’ve had a couple of offers in SF, but it would make more sense to stay in Berkeley.

Registration is by mail or by phone to Berkeley Friends Church. The event is free and open to all, but the suggested donation is $20 with lunch; $15 without. Donations are gratefully accepted and support this annual event. Make checks out to Berkeley Friends Church with ”Quaker Heritage Day” in the memo line. Child care is available with advance registration. I expect that my kids will be there, so they'd be really grateful if you would bring yours.

Fall Workshops at Ben Lomond Quaker Center

This fall there are some great workshops at Quaker Center:

Silent Retreat
November 5-7 with Robin and Terrill Keeler

"A weekend for silence, reflection, and renewal, facilitated by a skilled and compassionate Quaker couple who have developed their own daily spiritual discipline over many years."

[I am seriously thinking about going to this. I need more time for reflection in my life. ]

Spiritual Exploration through Drama, Movement, and Improvisation
November 19-21 with Victoria Shaskan

"Finding new ways of exploring spiritual and religious beliefs, with the guidance of a skilled and experienced theater professional. For persons 14 and older. Young adults will find this program particularly stimulating, but persons of all ages are welcome. Families are encouraged to participate."

[Tory Shaskan is a young adult Friend. She grew up in San Francisco Meeting, but is now a member of Westminster Meeting, in London. She led a mini-version of this at our meeting retreat last year and people said it was really good.]

A Music and Dance Weekend
December 3-5 with Gretta & Jacob Stone will host, joined by many participant-leaders

"In response to many requests we are happy to repeat a joyful weekend of music and dance at Quaker Center. Participant-led, with singalongs, contra dance, a drum circle, English country dancing, Sacred Harp singing, instrumental jams, and anything else brought by the participants. A potluck supper on Saturday night too! A family-friendly program; kids welcome!"

[Gretta and Jacob are the co-directors of Quaker Center but they are leaving at the end of the year to move back to the East Coast. Come and see them in California while you can!]

December 27-January 1, 2011
Year-End Retreat
Farewell to the old year, welcome to the new!
[The leader and theme are still to be announced. Last year, it was Dan Seeger.]

Download the flyers or contact Quaker Center for more information about meals, accommodations, fees and scholarships. If you haven't been to Quaker Center before, it's beautiful and rustic and well worth the trip.

Worship on the Grounds: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival 2010

The fourth annual (unofficial) meeting for worship on the grounds of the free Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park will be Sunday, October 3, 2010, at 10:00 am in front of the main stage, which in previous years was called the Banjo Stage. (If you’re standing there looking at the stage, there’s a little hill to the left. We’ll be near the top of that, and as close to the stage as I can get when I arrive.)

We’ll have an hour of unprogrammed worship. I’ll bring my blanket, my picnic basket and a bucket of Legos. If you don't know me, look for my dark blue SF Friends School sweatshirt. If you bring your blankets, we can stake out more room for the rest of the day. It will be elbow to elbow people by noon. Food is available at the festival.

EDITED 9/28/10:
The exact lineup for Sunday has just been announced, and the Banjo Stage will feature Hazel Dickens, Emmylou Harris, the Del McCoury band, Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson. More details about the festival at http://www.strictlybluegrass.com/.

You can read all about the previous meetings on the grounds on my blog.

Two May workshops at Pendle Hill

More stuff I wish I was going to, but I’m not. Just because I live in California and I have a full time job and a family to take care of, and not an unlimited supply of money or frequent flyer miles or vacation days.

But you. If you can make it to either or both of these, let me know. I could offer you a guest posting gig right here on this blog. Inquiring minds want to know how it goes.

First, New Monastics and Convergent Friends, May 14-16, with Martin Kelley and Wess Daniels. Martin and Wess I count as personal friends as well as public Friends. They are two of the most innovative thinkers about Quakerism that I know and I’d love to spend the weekend hanging out and talking Quaker stuff with them, no matter what the specific topic. Plus I co-led a workshop with the two of them last year and it was fun.

Second, The Practice of Simplicity, May 28-30, with Erin Rooney Doland. She’s a member of Herndon Meeting in Virginia and the Editor-in-Chief of Unclutterer.com, an awesome blog about how to deal with stuff. I don’t follow many non-religious blogs, but this one is on my frequent reading list. And she reads my blog, at least sometimes.

Erin says that “the theme behind the weekend is ‘Making room for Light.’ We practice simple living (and I mean practice in the same sense you might practice a sport or practice the piano) because we want God to have room in our lives. When we fill our schedules, homes, offices, lives with stuff, Stuff, STUFF, the Light gets pushed aside. Through this weekend retreat, my hope is that people can take time to reflect, pray, and listen in the silence to help them reconnect with the Light and make room for it to grow in their lives.”

She also has a new book out, How to Unclutter Your Life in One Week, so if you can’t go to the workshop, there’s another possibility. But I think the weekend will have more spiritual content than the book, which is more on the very practical end of things. In my experience, you can get rid of a lot of physical stuff, but if you don’t sort out your spiritual and emotional life, the physical stuff will just pile up again.

There's more information about both workshops including registration and scholarships on the Pendle Hill website.

Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism

A review and further reflections on Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism by Carole Dale Spencer

I’m trying to remember where I first heard of this book, and I can’t recall. I do know that I asked for it for Christmas in 2008, and thanks to my beloved Chris M., it’s been sitting on my shelf ever since, waiting for me to finish it.

I finally did it, because Spencer is coming to Quaker Heritage Day in Berkeley next week. It’s a tough read, if you’re not used to the academic style, but it gets easier near the end. And I’m really, really glad I read it.

A lot of the book is Spencer running through a series of individuals through Quaker history and showing how they are or are not exemplars of Quaker holiness. There’s more than 20 of them over 350 years, so if you want to know who they all are, read the book. Some of the history doesn’t agree with what I’ve learned – but then I only know what others have said about most of them. I agree with her interpretations of the ones I’ve read first hand: Hannah Whitall Smith and Richard Foster and Thomas Kelly. Elias Hicks, Joseph John Gurney and John Wilbur, these are three I’d like to read more of. (I’ve got the new version of Hicks’ Journal, which I understand addresses some of her criticisms.) I wouldn’t call myself a Beanite Friend, partly because I think that sounds silly, partly because I don’t think of myself as a follower of a particular Quaker ancestor, and partly because I don’t know enough of Joel Bean’s actual work to have a valid opinion. More and more I think I should read his work myself.

But I’m less interested in the historical aspects than in my own affinity for the key elements of Quaker holiness. I think this could be a key to what holds convergent Friends together in my mind. Or maybe it’s just the key to my own spiritual journey.

I think it’s important to separate the current iteration of non-Quaker holiness movements from what Spencer and I are talking about. Apparently, Quakers have always had a slightly different definition of holiness from the religious mainstream. Meaning we don’t have to equate holiness with American rightwing politics and religious fundamentalists. Actually quite the opposite, in some cases.

Spencer teases out eight separate elements of traditional Quaker holiness. I’ll list them here, because I’m copying them from the book: Scripture, Eschatology, Conversion, Evangelism, Charisma, Suffering, Mysticism, Perfection.

Spencer also explains how these elements relate to evangelical concepts like justification and sanctification, but I can’t keep them straight. Frankly, I think that Conversion and Evangelism are two parts of the same thing, and that Suffering and Perfection are another inseparable pair. And if you’ve got an hour or two, I’d be happy to sit down and explain why I think so and discuss it with you. I could use the help in working it all out in my own head. But for the purposes of this book review, let me just encourage you to read Spencer’s explanations of what each means.

Personally, I can only manage to keep three aspects in my head, in part because I think they are all inter-related and they all cycle around to each other.

1) Perfection, meaning holy obedience, spiritual growth, acting like Jesus, living up to the Light we’ve been given, actually doing what we know is right
2) Mysticism – listening to God, hearing Christ Jesus speak to my condition, cultivating and holding close to the intimate relationship with God
3) Witness, which in my mind includes spreading the word, sharing the Good News, working to improve the world, teaching and healing like Jesus.

The desire for holy perfection and faithful witness, the understanding of their meaning, and the strength to accomplish them come from our mystical relationship with God. I think that when Friends have kept close to that guide, then we have avoided falling into the rigid and rulebound forms of religion. I think that scripture is a tool to be used with our mystical interpretation. The Bible may not be perfect, but it’s the best description of Jesus’s teaching and actions that we’ve got.

I have three examples of how perfection and witness are related, but none of them comes from Spencer’s book so don’t blame her if they don’t speak to you. One is that we know that having a low flow showerhead isn’t going to save the world, but it helps to have your own house in order before you try to change farmers’ wasteful irrigation practices. Second, you can’t effectively protest factory working conditions while wearing clothes made in sweatshops. Third, people are more likely to listen to you tell them how Jesus is a blessing in your life if you are a blessing to your family and friends.

Now I know that these aren’t strict rules, and it’s not true that we can’t say anything about the wrongs of the world until we’re free from all our sins. But we have to be actively examining our own lives for the seeds of war and continually doing something about our own lives as we go along. And then we can speak with Truth and Power. Part of this is the confidence that comes with not feeling like a hypocrite and the recognition from one’s opponent that one is walking the walk. But I truly think there is something divinely inspired that makes a person a better advocate who has removed the beam from her own eye without getting bogged down in that process. Jesus offers us some good examples of looking at rules, and acting with love, even if, on occasion, that contradicts a generally useful rule. (Like healing on the Sabbath, for example.)

I think Spencer is right that our various forms of worship are culturally and temporally specific, not divinely mandated. What’s important is that our worship enables us to achieve communion with God – to hear God speaking to us. Hours and hours of silence seem intensely important to me, and absolutely fruitless to others. I’m willing to accept that other people experience God in other ways. (I don’t believe this is divided along lines of race, class or geography, but I know that what we’re used to makes a big difference.)

What is missing from this book is the growing holiness movement among unprogrammed Friends in the last ten to twenty years. That’s probably because we don’t call it that usually. But I think that Lloyd Lee Wilson’s book, Essays on a Quaker Vision of Gospel Order, fits all of Spencer’s criteria for Quaker holiness. I think some (not all) of our Quaker environmentalists are actually part of a holiness movement. In my local world, I think that the reason that Chris Moore-Backman’s and Carl Magruder’s ministries are so attractive to some and so off-putting to others is because they are actually preaching Quaker holiness. They’re just not using that word.

And then there’s me. Not that I am such a stellar example of Christian perfection. But I want to affirm that I’m really trying, on all these points. I’m just now understanding that this Quaker holiness is what calls to me in the Friends that I would call convergent. Do you feel the same way?

In all the branches of Friends, in all eras, there have been examples of Quaker holiness, real people who have touched the lives of the people around them, even if they didn’t publish any books or start any new movements bearing their names. Think about who you know that you admire as a Quaker. In what ways do they exemplify Quaker holiness? In what ways do they contradict my theory? You don’t have to name them here on this blog, but I’m really curious whether this idea resonates with other Friends or not.

FWCC and Convergent Friends, v.2010

Three years ago, I went to my first FWCC meeting. It was quite a production to leave my family for a week and go all the way across the country. I'd like to write more about how things have changed for me since then, but for tonight, I'll just offer some quick notes. I know more about FWCC now. I actually have less responsibility this time than that first time. But the biggest change is just that my sons are three years older now, and I'm less worried about leaving my family to fend for themselves. And I've gotten some good advice in the last few years about traveling in the ministry and the re-entry process, including Watch What You Fill Up On.

I will blog some from the sessions and then probably write more when I get home. Plus my review of Philip Gulley's If The Church Were Christian... will be published here on March 25.

And if you're anywhere in the mid-Atlantic region, join me (and Martin Kelley) in visiting the Oldtown Friends Fellowship on Sunday, March 21, 2010 in downtown Baltimore. Read more about it on QuakerQuaker.org Here is an old report from an earlier gathering like this, in Boston.

Opportunities in Spring 2010

Whenever I’m going to an interesting Quaker gathering, I try to write about them on my blog to encourage others to come. There are two such opportunities coming up in the next few months.

The first event is the Annual Meeting of the Section of the Americas of the Friends World Committee for Consultation. This year it’s being hosted by Baltimore Yearly Meeting, at a camp near Reistertown, Maryland, a little northwest of the city of Baltimore. The dates are March 17-21, 2010. Registration is still open through February 22. For local Friends, there are opportunities to attend the evening sessions without registering for the whole thing or staying overnight. The website has more details.

As long time readers of this blog know, my appointment as a representative of Pacific Yearly Meeting to the Friends World Committee for Consultation has been a great gift to me. The opportunity to travel each year to a different part of the Quaker world has opened many new doors. This all began four years ago when I was invited to help lead a workshop during the sessions about convergent Friends, with Wess Daniels, Shawna Roberts, and David Male. You can read more about these prior events – click on the tag FWCC at the bottom of this post for more of my blogposts.

The second is Quaker Heritage Day on April 10, 2010. Every year, Berkeley Friends Church hosts a day long seminar with a well known Friend (or two) on a topic that connects Quaker history with our contemporary practice. This year the speaker is Carole Dale Spencer, author of Holiness: the Soul of Quakerism, from Northwest Yearly Meeting. Here’s part of the description from the flyer:

“Holiness is an idea that has been more divisive than uniting for the Society of Friends. Yet it was unmistakably important in the experience and faith of the first Quakers. Carole Spencer maintains that holiness, while neglected by many Friends today, provides an ‘ongoing thread that serves as the common denominator of normative Quakerism’. Nor was holiness solely the domain of nineteenth-century revivalist Friends. In fact, we can see various aspects of holiness in the lives of Quakers throughout our history and in each of our divergent traditions. What's more, understanding holiness as a ‘spiritual quality in which human life is ordered and lived out as to be consciously centered in God’ opens the way for us to see the possibilities for our own lives, whether we might consider ourselves to be evangelical, liberal, mystical, or some other kind of Friends.”

The program opens with breakfast and a book table at 9:00 with the speaker beginning at 9:30 am, lunch break at 12:45, and closing worship begins at 3:00 pm. The event is technically free, although the suggested donation is $20 with lunch, $15 without. Child care is available if requested before March 21, 2010. (I’ve already put in my request for two boys, ages 8 and 11.) The registration form is now online or you can call 510-524-4112.

I can clearly trace the origins of the phrase convergent Friends to a dinner party after QHD in 2006 that radically changed my understanding of the Quaker world. I met Wess and Emily Daniels, Max Hansen, Margery Post Abbott and Peggy Senger Parsons. I wrote about that experience in Friends Journal in the fall of 2006. You can find more of my blogposts about previous QHD events by clicking on the QHD tag at the end of this post.

One thing that I have treasured in addition to the regular conference experience of these gatherings is the opportunity to meet with local Friends, readers of this blog, writers of other blogs, local Friends who are interested in meeting Friends across the Quaker spectrum, and random guests of the Holy Spirit who have joined us each time. I have called these convergent dinner parties, and there have been several that I have attended over the last four years.

I believe there will be one in Berkeley in March (email me at the address in my profile if you’d like more details as they become clearer).

I’m certain that there will be a convergent gathering on March 21, 2010, in Baltimore, hosted by Friends of the Old Town Friends Fellowship. (You can read more about them at their website.) I’ll be joining them for their regular Bible study at 5, semi-programmed worship at 6 and potluck dinner at 7. Rachel Stacy and Kevin-Douglas Olive are part of the hosting group. I think that Martin Kelley is likely to show up and Tatiana is still looking for a ride from the Eastern Shore. If you'd like to know more, leave a comment here or email me directly.

If you can make it to any of these, COME! It will be fun.

[An early version of this post had the wrong date for the convergent dinner in Baltimore. March 21 is correct.]

The Convergent Conversation Continues

This post began as a comment on Liz Opp’s blog about pride and privilege.

Lord knows I have plenty of opportunities to work on my own struggles with both. But what I really wanted to address was her admission that it surprised her to read about people she doesn’t know talking about convergent Friends.

It’s funny how we come to this sense of ownership of a word. Liz herself used to think it didn’t apply to her. I have struggled with this same concern since I realized that there were other people for whom "convergent Friends" was a resonant phrase. My (unpublished) report to my anchor committee from July 2007 includes a reference to the fact that the phrase has already taken on a life of its own. It was very odd for me to read Rachel Stacy’s term paper on the subject back in 2007. It felt strange to read in someone else’s words about work I was doing. This summer, Angelina Conti wrote an article about a workshop that Wess, Martin and I co-led, and it felt much less strange to hear her take on it. Maybe the difference is that I had already met Angelina when I read her article, and I didn't meet Rachel until quite a while after she wrote her paper.

Over the last four years, the phrase “convergent Friends” has come to mean different things to different people. People are using it in different ways and projecting their own interpretations onto it, both positive and negative. Earlham School of Religion used it in their newsletter and Friends Journal in their fund raising appeal. Articles have been published in meeting newsletters, magazines and journals in the US and UK.

Discussions (that I know about) have happened at Pacific Yearly Meeting, Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative), North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative), Friends General Conference, Friends United Meeting, and Friends World Committee for Consultation gatherings. I have organized some of them. Wess and Martin and Liz and Chris have been part of some, with and without me. Betsy Blake and Stephen Dotson, Scott Wagoner and Tony Lowe, Shawna Roberts and David Male, Will Taber, Erin McDougall, Micah Bales, Anthony Manousous, Rachel Dean and Rachel Stacy have been part of others. These are just some who have been in dialogue with me at various points. There are others who have read or attended something and gone on to organize or write something else with other people. Probably more than I know of. I think this is a sign of health in the Religious Society of Friends that this cross-branch, cross-country conversation is taking place.

But is it a movement? Is there a common thread? Is there a leadership cadre? Are there just humble servants of the Lord taking it day by day? I don't know.

I personally struggle with my own participation. Over the last couple of years I have gone back and forth between wanting to be a leader of something and feeling content with just being a footnote in history. It was about the time I quit my last job that we had the first convergent dinner at my house. Then I had two and a half years to travel and write a lot. Even then, there wasn’t enough time to do everything. Now, I have even less time and energy for this ministry. But it’s not all up to me. It’s not about me. I’m not in control. I’m not alone. I’ve said this before and it is a good reminder.

What originally got me into this was an opportunity to meet other blog readers and writers over dinner. I’d like to propose another convergent dinner party, possibly to include take out pizza and homemade chocolate chip cookies but they’re not required, in the Baltimore area on March 21, 2010, Sunday night, after the FWCC gathering.

Would anyone else be interested? Know a good place where we could meet? Leave a comment or send me an email!

October 2009 worship at HSBF

Just a reminder that there will be an hour of unprogrammed worship this Sunday, October 4, 2009, 10:00 am, in front of the Banjo stage at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco. You can find more details (map, schedule, etc) at www.strictlybluegrass.com. The whole point is that you don't have to choose between going to worship and getting there early.

Three years ago, I wrote about how bluegrass gospel brought me to Christ, sort of. You can find it here.

A couple of years ago, I put together this half-page/double-sided outreach flyer. I still have most of the ones I printed then, I'll bring them on Sunday, but this is what they say:

Welcome!

You’re welcome to join this informal meeting for worship in the manner of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). It is being held here in order to allow Friends to worship together and not miss any of the wonderful music here today. We expect to end around 11:00 am.

---

Regular meetings for worship are held Sundays at 11:00 am and Tuesdays at 6:00 pm. For those new to Friends or unprogrammed worship, we offer an orientation to meeting for worship at 10:40 am every Sunday. All are welcome.

San Francisco Friends Meeting (Quakers)
65 Ninth Street, between Market and Mission, near Civic Center
www.sfquakers.org
www.quakerfinder.org

[other side]
Our meeting for worship, which is at the core of Quaker practice, is focused on the response of the human spirit to the call of the Divine. Worship begins when the first worshippers settle into the silence. This meeting for worship will end when the host of the meeting shakes the hand of another person seated nearby. At that signal, everyone may shake hands and greet each other.

You may find it helpful to close your eyes for most or all of the worship hour to reduce distractions and increase your focus on the presence of God among us. During worship people may meditate, pray silently, inwardly offer praise or thanksgiving or confession to the Spirit, or reflect on a passage from the Bible or other spiritual reading. In our corporate worship, we seek communion with God. We wait and listen together, seeking divine guidance or inspiration from a source known among us by many names: Wisdom, the Light, the Inward Christ, the Seed, the Word, Jesus, the Lord.

All present share in this process. At times an individual may be moved to speak, to offer a prayer or a message that has come out of the silence. All are welcome to do this. Listen to the ministry of others with an open spirit. If it is not God's word for you, it may be for others. After a message has been given, allow time to ponder its meaning and to let the Meeting return to silent worship.

The responsibility for the spiritual depth of the meeting rests with each attender. Those who keep silent as well as those who give a vocal message do their part when they yield their minds and hearts to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Friends hope that in the meeting for worship a consciousness of the Divine Presence will be felt by every attender, and will be a source of direction, strength and comfort after leaving the meeting.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Worship 2009

For the third year in a row, there will be a Quaker meeting for worship on the grounds of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.
(First year report) (Second year report) (Original inspiration)

October 4, 2009 at 10:00 am.

I'll get there early with my blanket and save some seats - if you bring your blankets, we can share.

I'm especially looking forward to these fine musicians:
Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder
John Prine
The Del McCoury Band
The Flatlanders featuring: Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore & Butch Hancock
Buddy Miller
The Chieftains
Doc Watson & David Holt
Boz Scaggs and the Blue Velvet Band
Emmylou Harris
The Claire Lynch Band
Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands
Lyle Lovett & His Large Band
Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys

among many more fine acts over three days. The exact schedule has not been announced yet, but more information is available at www.strictlybluegrass.com. The concert is free and open to the public - thousands of people will be there. For more exact details on where the meeting for worship will be, bookmark this post and check back in the comments.

Come early on Sunday for worship and be doubly rewarded with great seats for the rest of the day!

Part-Time Quaker

This was the tenth year in a row that my family has attended Pacific Yearly Meeting's annual sessions - and the first time I only went for part of it.

This year, because of the limited vacation time I have in my new job, I was only able to attend the final 48 hours of the sessions. It turned out that during that period, a major decision was reached by the Yearly Meeting and the sun finally came out both afternoons, after what had been a cold and damp week. So I'm glad I went when I could.

I think this is the first time I've ever gone to PYM and not spoken once in plenary or in worship. I recognized in the business sessions that others had stated my piece of the truth - maybe not as eloquently as I think I would have expressed it, but sufficiently that I would have just been repeating what had already been said. This is also in keeping with my current silence in my monthly meeting - not intentional silence but rather I haven't been given words to share. I think this also has to do with coming to meeting for worship less frequently and less prepared than I used to when my daily occupation was various forms of Quaker ministry.

I missed the interest group around the new document on supporting Friends with leadings that is being circulated by the PYM Ministry and Oversight subcommittee on Ministry and Leadings. But I had a chance to tell the outgoing clerk of that subcommittee that I thought it was well done and that I had shared it with my anchor committee so that they might share their comments with the subcommittee.

It was a little overwhelming to arrive in the middle of the week, so many people, so much going on, and the sense that I had missed most of the week. However, I was warmly greeted by many people, reaffirming my sense that I have a place in this community - even if I was only there for a short time.

Twitterpost: What WOULD Jesus Twitter?

robinmsf: Going to What Would Jesus Twitter? with @breyeschow http://tinyurl.com/dd74mr on April 1 in SF!9:47 PM Mar 24th from web

breyeschow: @w2e Just a reminder, "What would Jesus Twitter" at the web2open, help spread the word, 9:00am on the 1st! http://tinyurl.com/cdr3gb #w2e6:01 PM Mar 30th from TweetDeck

breyeschow: #w2e twitters are starting; hope I'll get a spot at the #web2open 2morrow; do folks care what JC would twitter? http://tinyurl.com/cdr3gb 11:39 AM Mar 31st from TweetDeck

robinmsf: RT @breyeschow #w2e hope I'll get a spot @ #web2open 2morrow; do folks care what JC would twitter? http://tinyurl.com/cdr3gb I hope so too 12:24 PM Mar 31st from web

breyeschow: Just arrived at the Web 2.0 Expo, Geek quotient way high. #w2e

robinmsf: waiting for Web2Open session on WWJTwitter? at #w2e

breyeschow: "What would Jesus Twitter?" Got a slot! 12:40-1:20, room #1 at web2open #w2e http://twitpic.com/2ojmk

mortond: @breyeschow Hate I'm going to miss your session., but I would love to hear your thoughts and outcomes.

breyeschow: @mortond I'll post some kind of relfectin afterwards @ http://www.reyes-chow.com/. Thanks for asking.

robinmsf: RT @breyeschow "What would Jesus Twitter?" Got a slot! 12:40-1:20, room #1 at web2open #w2e http://twitpic.com/2ojmk I'll be there!

breyeschow: Jesus Twitter board http://twitpic.com/2ot9m from Tweetie

breyeschow:Thanks all who came to the "What would Jesus Twitter" session, just guessing there were 12 of us ;-) #w2e from TweetDeck

robinmsf: WWJTwitter at #w2e more an intro 2 how churches & non-profits use social media. Not enough audience overlap to drive discussion?

robinmsf: Churches use social media for internal work (organize potlucks) and external credibility (read our reviews on Yelp) not evangelization

robinmsf: Does having your church life and work life integrated online make you more likely to practice integrity? Could this be part of formation?

via Facebook: Interesting question. There is the opportunity here (some people choose not to do this) to share from all parts of your life. Raises the question if we live our lives as a seamless whole. from Bill Samuel

robinmsf: So what WOULD Jesus Twitter?

via Facebook: One son stayed home, one left and did bad. Came home and father thru a party. from @funnel101

via Facebook: b@itudes? from Lisa H.

robinmsf: Thank you @breyeschow for hosting the What Would Jesus Twitter? web2open session at #w2e Good food for thought.

wikileon: @breyeschow I missed the Web2Open session on WWJT. How did it go?

breyeschow: @WikiLeon I think it went well, had a dozen or so folks, good conversation.

breyeschow:@robinmsf you are very welcome, great to have a little more face time as well #w2e

chadstep: @robinmsf I think I just posted on this but didn't realize what I was posting and you hit it on the head

bobpearson: @breyeschow Don't be discouraged by only 12, Jesus started that way also...#w2eabout

breyeschow:@bobpearson not discouraged at all, actually about 6 more than I thought would sho up ;-) #w2e

[Actual Twitter stream regarding What Would Jesus Twitter? Web2Open session at Web 2.0 Expo April 1, 2009 in San Francisco. If you also twittered from this event, please add to the comments!]

[Thursday am: I added a few more tweets I found plus other reactions.]

What Would Jesus Twitter?

I'm looking forward to this open session at the Web 2.0 Open
UnConference on April 1, 2009 in San Francisco. It's free but you have to register in advance.






TITLE: "What Would Jesus Twitter? The convergence between church, religion and social media"

TARGET DATE: April 1 Session

FOCUS: In this session we will look at some of the ways social media has simultaneously rocked the world of the traditional religious establishments as well as unleashed an amazingly vibrant new expression of spiritual life. Social networking has become an integral part of many religious traditions as they build community and attempt to be a positive presence in the world. Focusing mostly on Christian church movements be ready to hear and/or share stories of resistance, fear, embracing and liberation that are all pointing to a new manifestation of church today.

This session will be convened by Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow [Blog | Twitter | Facebook ] who is the pastor of Mission Bay Community Church in San Francisco [Website | Twitter | Facebook ]

If you want to follow me on Twitter: robinmsf