# 1 Thing That Drives Me Crazy About Quakers

“Ministry and Oversight is a secretive bunch of bullies on a power trip with a hidden agenda and ulterior motives.”

Actually, people seldom say this out loud for fear that the M&O mafia will find out.

Just kidding.

But I have heard all of these words used to describe the otherwise nice folks who have agreed to serve on a committee with serious responsibilities, whether at the local or yearly meeting level.

Full disclosure: I’m currently serving on the M&O committee of my monthly meeting. So from my insider vantage point, let me say that really, these folks are just trying to do the best they can.

I think that several 1960’s slogans have mutated into a single “Don’t trust any authority.” This makes it difficult to find Friends of a certain age who are willing to serve in a position of responsibility. It makes it much easier to criticize than to suggest solutions. Some Friends fail to distinguish between their relationship to our national government and their relationship with spiritual leadership. Martha Grundy wrote a pamphlet called Tall Poppies about this problem. I commend it to you.

#2

“We don’t proselytize.”

Since when? Since about 1800 I think. Or maybe 1960.

But clearly George Fox had no trouble preaching with the express intention of reaching the unconverted: to bring them out of their light and chaffy minds and lead them to the feet of the true inward Teacher and leave them there.

I’d like to propose another; perhaps more modest, perhaps more ambitious, goal: that in five years, no one in America would say, “Quakers? I thought they were all dead!” But then we’d have to deal with #4.

# 3

“Good Quaker process can’t be effective and efficient.”

Does it have to be excruciating?

In fact, good Quaker process is very effective: it achieves the goal of uniting a community and committing them to right action.

And done well, it is very efficient, in that resources aren’t wasted on trying to jolly along the disgruntled minority after you thought you’d come to a decision.

Is it always fast? No.

And it can be derailed or detoured unnecessarily. But then, that isn’t good process, is it?

# 4

When we're afraid to say we’ve found any answers about God for fear of offending anyone with a different answer.

And so we don’t share our spiritual lives very deeply and we don’t hold on to attenders who are looking for answers instead of just being content with empty questions.

This showed up in the fact that a Friend recently called a proposed workshop for folks who’ve been attending meetings for a couple of years an “Inquirers” class.

Plenty of bloggers and others have written more eloquently than me about the need for meetings full of convinced Friends to move from the refugee model to an immigration model.

# 5

God doesn’t just speak in epigrams.

Although a Friend, in a meeting I used to attend, did.

Why do we have such a bias against vocal ministry that lasts more than two minutes?

Is it for fear that some one will preach a sermon with a scriptural reference, three points and a conclusion?

Is it because too often vocal ministry is not truly inspired and it bothers us when bad ministry goes on and on?

I think this is connected to the expectation that all vocal ministry will be completely spontaneous, without preparation or prior reflection needed or wanted.

# 6

“Unprogrammed Quaker worship wouldn’t appeal to low income or ethnic/racial minorities."

This is an excuse for why our meetings are not more diverse. Mostly I hear this as something “other people think,” not the person speaking.

All I can say is that unprogrammed Quaker worship speaks to my condition. Or rather, unprogrammed Quaker worship allows God to speak to me. Or maybe it’s that Quaker worship assists me to hear God speaking to me.

However you want to phrase this, the real problem is that most people in low income or ethnic minorities haven’t heard of unprogrammed Quaker worship. Oh, kind of like the majority, huh?

Who was it that said that the real problem isn’t that Christianity has been tried and failed, but that Christianity has been found difficult and therefore not tried? Unprogrammed worship can be like that too.

# 7

We don’t use the tools we’ve got, i.e. the little book folks spent ten years writing and revising.

I think that it is a shame how infrequently PYM Friends use their books of Faith and Practice.

At the first and last meetings of my clearness committee, we benefited a great deal from the judicious reading of the sections on what is a clearness committee and what is its purpose. Had any of us read them before? Some.

But what really bothers me is how little we use the advices and queries. A committee spent over ten years of time and talent and spiritual lifeforce preparing them. We read them out in meeting for worship once a month. We don’t actually answer them in any coherent way. I have suggested that they ought to be used more explicitly in writing our State of the Meeting reports, but other Friends said it would be too much work to answer so many questions.

And when I suggest using them for worship sharing, I am always shushed by people who would rather write their own for the occasion. Why do we bother reinventing the wheel? Is it an innate distrust of the authority that anything more than 15 minutes old might have?

# 8

“My meeting doesn’t offer enough social opportunities, but I don’t have time to go to the ones they have.”

I used to think this paradox existed because the events our meeting organized didn’t appeal to very many people. But now I think that the real problem is that most people don’t want to make the effort to be part of this community, in all its complicated, cozy, messy, tedious, transformative glory. Which sometimes means showing up for stuff that you’re only tangentially interested in, just because your Friends are going to be there.

Or maybe I’m the crazy one, but I always have fun at Quaker stuff.

# 9

We’re embarrassed to talk about people who have money but overly casual in referring to people who don’t.

Friends have so internalized the ideal of voluntary poverty that they are ashamed to admit it when they have money.

Ten years or so ago, my meeting had a capital campaign for the renovations of our meetinghouse. Not so big by the world’s standards, but a very significant goal for us. Someone invited a locally well-known fundraising consultant who specializes in grass roots campaigns to come in to train the committee members. But few of the techniques she recommended could be used, like publicly acknowledging major gifts when they come in, because the organizers kept saying “Quakers don’t raise money like that.” (If we already knew how Quakers SHOULD raise money, why did we ask for advice?)

It struck me that no one was at all hesitant to say, “Well, we won’t ask Margaret, we all know that she doesn’t have any money since she works part-time for the AFSC…” But heaven forbid we should talk openly about the fact that George saved a lot of money from his days as a (doctor/lawyer/professor) and has invested it well and is regularly giving it away to progressive (but non-Quaker) causes.

I think this violates our testimonies of practicing equality and plain speaking.

Top ten things that drive me crazy about Quakers

This is a direct copy of Gregg Koskela’s Top 10 lists. First he did the ten things he loves about Quakers, and then the things that drive him crazy. They were published both on his blog and on Barclay Press’s Conversation Café.

When he started, I sat down and made my own list, just to see if they would overlap. They didn’t much, although I would agree with him on each point he made. So here is mine.

If I still have any readers left after offending you all with this list, I might try and finish the post I started a year ago entitled, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…”

#10 If it’s rundown, it must be more spiritual.

Friends are too often unwilling to invest in the care and upkeep of the buildings we own.

Not too long ago, a Quaker retreat center near me built a new building. Actually, they added on to an old building. It’s now safe and up to code, with an efficient kitchen, handicapped accessible bathrooms, and a beautiful, open, airy meeting room, especially if you include the view out the back windows and the deck on the side overlooking the stream through the forest. A non-Quaker visitor to the center donated his hand-made entryway cubbies and window seats with storage in a beautiful light wood. But an attender at my meeting said to me last year that he doesn’t like it, it seems too “corporate” to be Quakerly.

I suppose some Friends think we ought to spend “our” money on more important things, like feeding the hungry. But I believe that one of the important things that we do is to make our buildings available, in a Godly, functional and attractive manner, to people who are feeding the hungry and visiting the prisoners, etc.