Equipping for Ministry students. Photo: Photo: Noël Staples
Equipping for Ministry
Noël Staples reflects on being a ‘guided mystic’ at an Equipping for Ministry course
What is Equipping for Ministry (EfM)? I’ve been quite surprised at how little is generally known among Friends about Woodbrooke’s ‘little gem’ – the ‘Equipping for Ministry’ course. Perhaps it’s the nearest British Quakers have to ordination, or even to spiritual direction training. At Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) this year Woodbrooke had an EfM desk in the events programme on the Saturday. There was a good deal of interest.
What is it all about?
So, what is Equipping for Ministry all about? Well, it can literally be about equipping yourself the better to minister, to express your relationship with God through your life; or, it can be to develop your own spiritual life towards greater fulfilment. Either way, you are still likely to be able better to express your relationship with God, or the spirit, in your life. To a considerable extent it is up to you what you make of EfM. There is no pass or fail. EfMers are expected to complete a project of their own design as part of the course. Every EfMer is allocated a personal tutor for the two years of the course, who they will usually meet at the induction weekend.
There is an online learning package, which uses Woodbrooke’s Moodle software, to which you are given password-protected access. This puts EfMers in touch with each other, creates an online chat room and provides an online retreat. Participants can upload reviews of books they have read that other EfMers might find useful, or they can review courses they have attended. We nearly all uploaded interesting experiences we’ve had and/or ‘potted biographies’ to help get to know each other. But not everyone is willing, or able, to make full use of the online service. EfMers also have complete access to Woodbrooke’s library and, within reason of course, to all the staff at Woodbrooke.
A confidential atmosphere
The real group bonding has only now taken place over the course of a residential week. The intensive sharing in a caring and confidential atmosphere has brought us very close together. It is a truly extraordinary and worthwhile experience. I was on the residential part of the course from 26 July to 2 August, having already attended an induction weekend, 4 to 6 January, and completed three of the six Woodbrooke courses to which we commit ourselves. Next year there will be three more courses and another week’s residential at Easter (because of Yearly Meeting Gathering in Bath between 2 and 9 August). EfMers are free to choose any six courses from the Woodbrooke Courses and events brochure, but are expected to choose two courses that fit under each of the following three headings: ‘Experience of the Spirit’; ‘Engagement/Involvement with the World’ (sometimes called ‘Faith in Action’) and the ‘Evolving Tradition’.
A spiritual hothouse
EfM is no ‘easy ride’! EfMers are certainly challenged. You will never be quite the same again! The residential week in particular is, while totally delightful in Woodbrooke’s lovely setting and deeply spiritual atmosphere, a really tough spiritual week. It’s not a holiday! It’s a week in something of a spiritual hothouse where you are ‘up against’, if you like, your spiritual life practically all your waking (and sleeping?) hours. We are a group of highly committed and motivated Quakers who have paid good money to come here and are determined to get the most out of the experience.
The days are long. Even the Quiet Day proves tiring (though this is not everyone’s experience) if, for no other reason that the day’s silence – in which there are two periods of group reflection when we talked about issues we had thought about during the day – gave us much time to read and think. We were, of course, free to use the day in whatever way we wished.
The five ‘taught’ days were divided into Ministry, Tradition, Theology, Community and Testimony.
Ginny Wall took us through prayer and spiritual practice on Saturday morning while the afternoon saw us working as a group on the lawn, in hot sunshine, in team exercises tackling problem tasks set us by Gill Pennington. We learned a lot about working together as community members, drawing on each other’s skills and abilities to solve problems.
On Sunday Tim Peat Ashworth and Betty Hagglund introduced us to Quaker history and the experience of the earliest Christians compared with the earliest Quakers.
Each day allowed some free time in the afternoon and participants were encouraged not to try to do too much. We spent a day on diversity in the spirit, looking at the spiritual growth in the Society to the current period of liberal Quakerism and great diversity and change. We asked ourselves ‘what is it that holds us together?’ The day on discernment, clearness and threshing was particularly hard and very rewarding, ending with a ‘programmed’ Threshing Meeting in which two group members were given roles as co-clerks, while four acted as agents provocateur – caricatures of some of the disruptive behaviours that can present in real life Threshing Meetings. This was (while sometimes hilarious) very revealing of the problems faced by discernment in emotive and tricky situations.
Optional activities
During the ‘free time’ there were optional activities. The most memorable, for me, was the Appleseed afternoon led by Brenda Heales. While I’ve never taken part in an Appleseed course before, or met Brenda’s partner, the late Chris Cook, her spirit was very much present.
EfM is not a cheap experience: the course cost £3,000 for my two years. There are presently only twenty places each year and four Littleboy bursaries available, which pay up to half the cost. Local and Area Meetings may also be willing to help.
So, what does this particular ‘guided mystic’ conclude? On a purely personal front, and being a particularly intense kind of mystic, it has given me more opportunities to talk about and try to ‘come to terms’ with my mysticism and what seems to be my ‘spiritual gift of tears’. As I’ve said before, I’ve felt quite isolated by the relative intensity of my spiritual relationship. It’s not easy to talk about. I have a fear of seeming somehow ‘boastful’ or arrogant, of somehow claiming to be ‘special’, which I am most definitely not. It is a very humbling experience, of intense beauty, joy and awesomeness, with which it is sometimes hard to live and would now be very hard to live without.
We have all learned a very great deal and have all been enabled to speak from our very depths, to get to know a little of each other ‘in those things which are eternal’. I have only come part way through EfM and, already, I’ve been changed, hopefully for the better. I think I can safely say the same for everyone on the course! It needs to be much more widely known and available if the Religious Society of Friends is to rediscover its spiritual roots, which it must do as a fundamental precursor for the ‘Whoosh’ experience so much hoped for by our recording clerk Paul Parker, and by us all.
