‘The community should carry its appropriate share of the responsibility.’ Photo: Photo: jared/flickr CC:BY.
No easy answers: appointments and oversight
Roy Stephenson reminds us that individuals in the nominations process require our support
When we consider, and usually appoint, a person to service in Britain Yearly Meeting, our common practice in Friends in Britain is to then leave them to get on with it. This is a practice and a cultural tradition, which I think dates back to the time when most Friends were the children of Friends and membership by convincement was comparatively unusual. In such times this could work, because Friends appointed to service had a ready-made support network in the form of their [extended and often extensive] Quaker families and friends. However, there are probably now more convinced Friends than at any time since the 1670s, and they do not necessarily have an understanding and Quakerly-supportive network about them, which may lead to increased feelings of isolation in the service undertaken on Friends’ behalf. This has wide-ranging implications for the care we offer to those who we consider, and usually appoint, to service on our behalf. We need to change our cultural presuppositions.
There is a need for more oversight and support for all nominated Friends, appointed or not. My sense is that as soon as someone is nominated to service we make them vulnerable – to the possibilities of rejection, in the first place, and then to the possibilities of a sense of isolation, of burden and so on. Service to the Society should be undertaken in a spirit of joy and with the expectation that one’s spiritual life will thereby be enriched: so it’s a good idea for the Nominations Committee to approach a nominee’s overseer as soon as the committee has agreed to nominate that Friend, to let the overseer know that there is a need for ongoing support. The overseer might suggest the formation of a support group at this point, especially if the role is a major one.
In the case of a nomination that is not accepted, I think it is not right for the Meeting to hide all its thinking behind a cloak of confidentiality and refuse to let the Friend know something of the reasons why they seem to have been rejected. After all, this may be more apparent than real. It may be felt by the Meeting that the Friend concerned is doing enough for the Meeting already; it could be that the Meeting cannot agree on what is required for that post at the moment. The Meeting may wish to broaden the ‘pool’ of names from which it draws those who do its business, or it may be felt that the nominated Friend would not work well with one or more of the Friends already serving, and a committee that is paralysed by clashing temperaments does no-one any good. There could be many other reasons, all of them rational and caring, why a particular nomination does not go forward. Whatever these may be, they should have been considered with a degree of openness in the Meeting in which the appointment was expected to have taken place. If they have not, Quaker business method is not being followed, because no one person has a veto on any piece of our business. It is not enough to simply say ‘that name would not have occurred to me…’ or whatever, without explaining why. The Meeting needs the opportunity to test the Friend who says this; are they perhaps responding to their own prejudices, recognised or not? Explaining the reasons why one has objected to a nomination not only tests the discernment of the objecting Friend; it also gives the opportunity for the discernment of the nomination committee to be tested, and clearly that testing will be known to all those present at that Business Meeting.
Under these circumstances it would seem to me to be right for the clerk, or, better than the clerk, someone else deputed by the Meeting, to share with the ‘disappointed’ Friend something of the reasons why that appointment did not go through, and to offer them support. If the nominated Friend was not at the Meeting when the nomination was considered it could be the clerk, but if they were actually present at the Meeting then it should be someone else, because in that case support will be needed absolutely immediately, before that person returns to the room. It would need to be a Friend of tact and understanding, able to offer prayerful help to the Friend whose name did not go forward. They would also need to be able to explain that the failure to appoint has occurred because of a failure on the Meeting’s part to achieve a congruity of vision between the Nominations Committee and the appointing body about whether the person concerned was right for this Meeting at this moment. This Friend would then need to contact the overseer of the non-appointed Friend as soon as possible thereafter, to ensure that ongoing support and holy listening could be put into place.
It’s probably inevitable that any Friends who find themselves in this situation are going to be hurt. One cannot go through a Quaker life, any more than through any other, without being hurt – and some of us have a great capacity for being hurt, just as some have a great capacity for causing it. But it feels to me that the community should carry its appropriate share of the responsibility for the pain it has caused and should put in place networks of support to minimise the damage that hurt does and so that the Meeting community can grow through it. Whenever things go wrong in Quaker groups, it’s the responsibility of the Quaker community. Sometimes this is because the community itself has caused the hurt: whether this is the case or not, it always has the responsibility for mending hurts and for taking the group forward.
It’s also worth pointing out that the old pattern of not thanking Friends who have served the Society has outlived its usefulness. A group of people who had grown up with this practice, but who may be thanked in private for all they have done, is a different group to the one in which we now are. Convinced Friends bring with them the expectations of society, some of which are harmful and others of which are not. Perhaps in the abstract we should not be thanked for trying to do Divine work, but do we actually forward that work by not thanking people? It’s more likely that we avoid hurts, and teach ourselves to look for how God has worked through a certain Friend, if we make a Spirit-led habit of thanking them for what they have done.
Nominations work sits in a difficult place: this is why it is potentially so creative. To do it effectively, and thus to ensure the Society is well served, one must be part elder, part overseer, part priest and part prophet. But all of us, whatever our level of participation in the formal work of Friends, can make the Society a more effective force for good in the world by doing our share of caring for those who carry the Society’s functions on our behalf.
Roy is the author of Freeing the Spirit’: Nominations in the Society of Friends in Theory and Practice – a Personal View. Sessions, York 2009.
