'Nurturing the flame can mean feeding it – feeding the spiritual capacity and energy of the Meeting, and the individual Friends there.' Photo: Markus Spiske, Unsplash
Everyone’s task: Carrie Comfort says all Friends should play their part in eldership
‘It’s a ministry laid by love, not by appointment.'
Eldership is everyone’s task. As one of Britain Yearly Meeting’s local development workers, I’ve become convinced of that.
Zélie Gross, the author of With a Tender Hand, says that eldership is done by anyone who answers a spiritual question, and I agree wholeheartedly with her. Like many Friends I am powerfully drawn to the notion of the priesthood of all believers. And if we are all priests, why on earth wouldn’t we all be elders?
I think about Friends I know, who spend time with people from their Meeting when those Friends are in need of loving care. This care can have a spiritual focus, at some level. It may look like visiting, chatting, reading or sewing togethe; these Friends may be simply living their Friendship. But often they are also answering a call to a specific ministry – a ministry given to them, at that time, because they are the ones best placed to offer it. It’s a ministry laid on them by love, not by appointment.
It seems to me that the role of elders is to see the need for this ministry, and to facilitate it. That might sometimes mean nominated elders undertaking it directly, but it certainly wouldn’t mean they were the only ones who could carry it out.
Newer Friends can also offer eldership. There are not many moments in my life when I’ve taken as much responsibility for my spirituality, and my spiritual life, as the first time I came to Meeting for Worship. If the gift of what we bring to our Meetings is what we are, with our own spirituality, then to turn up at a new Meeting is to bring the gift of yourself. This involves a process of deep searching, of openness, at a time of great spiritual awareness. Moments of spiritual searching often happen this way. Therefore, you could see simply turning up at Meeting for Worship for the first time as a monumental act of eldership.
Equally, some Friends tend to discount the ministry of children, or Friends experiencing mental distress. But I know in my heart that what I get is often closely related to what I am prepared to receive.
Do we need to be appointed to do eldership? I went as an accompanying elder for a colleague leading a Woodbrooke training day. This was an important step in helping me feel the validity of my own eldership service without having been appointed. On the way home Wendy and I spoke about this. From her substantial knowledge of Quaker history, she explained that the structures of appointments had grown up as Meetings became too big to hold these roles, needs and tasks informally. Very early Friends would all have expected to practise eldership.
This feels especially relevant as I spend time with Friends as they think about whether holding ‘eldership in common’ might be right for their Meeting. In this situation I sometimes see an individual Friend demur from the idea. They ‘could never be an elder’, they say, often because they’ve never been appointed. But I have often seen these same Friends carry out eldership faithfully and adeptly, engaging deeply and creatively with the spiritual experience of others and the life of the Meeting. When we nominate specific elders we don’t mean to de-skill or undermine the eldership of Friends who have never been appointed, but it can happen…
I’ve also seen the strain on appointed elders when other Friends in the Meeting don’t feel able to do things that were seen as eldership. And I’ve observed that what counts as ‘elder work’ differs in many Meetings. For example, some Meetings are happy for any Friend to lovingly intervene in the face of inappropriate ministry. Others not. Other Meetings consider that an elder has to start, be present for, and close any Meeting for Worship. Again, others don’t. There isn’t always a clear delineation of which eldership tasks need the spiritual authority of appointment, and which can be done as eldership without appointment.
None of this is intended to devalue the importance of the work done by our appointed elders. But I think creating a climate where wider eldership can flourish is one of our most important tasks.
But what is eldership?
I‘ve met many Friends who have struggled to grasp eldership from the section in Quaker faith & practice that lists all the relevant functions (12.12). There are also Friends who find this list immeasurably helpful. I find it both very helpful and inadequate. I have noticed myself searching for companion explanations as I meet with Friends who are trying to fully answer the question ‘What is the role of an elder?’.
One explanation that came to me was that eldership is concerned with the ‘flame’ of Meeting for Worship. By ‘flame’ I mean the way a Meeting seems to catch alight when Friends are faithful to the inner voice. We often notice this as a chain of ministry sparks up. You could also describe it as the flow of the spirit, or the force that takes a Meeting business item and turns it on its head. It runs through everything we do – when we do it rightly, listening for the spirit.
Conversations with Friends have shaped this further: eldership is concerned with nurturing the flame and protecting the flame, and above all paying attention to the flame. Of course, you can’t know what is needed to nurture and protect this flame if you aren’t paying attention to it.
Nurturing the flame can mean feeding it – feeding the spiritual capacity and energy of the Meeting, and the individual Friends there.
By protecting the flame, I mean protecting the spiritual life of the Meeting. This can mean lovingly helping others in the Meeting to follow Quaker processes, since these enable us to encounter the divine. All of us can profitably be reminded of this occasionally!
Paying attention to the flame is about checking the thermometer of the spiritual life of the Meeting. How is the spirit living in our worship and our business and our overall lives? What is needed to keep the flame healthy? Under this flame metaphor, the role of appointed elders is to make sure the flame doesn’t go out on their watch. It doesn’t mean that it’s the task of appointed elders to chop every stick of firewood and select each bit of kindling. That’s the work of all of us.
Quaker faith & practice is clear that it is the task of elders to make sure that the things on that long list actually happen. It doesn’t say they must do all those things themselves.
So Friends please hear this song in support of the role of the elders on the benches – particularly those at the back, who are not appointed but nevertheless practise the loving ministry of eldership. Call it a folk song of Friends, if you will.
Comments
This all seems so obvious, in that my own Local Meeting has practised corporate eldership for many years. It was initially a little disturbing, I think, for Area Meeting who would have liked to carry out their role of appointing Elders, but they accepted that we had no members able to accept the appointment. So we all became Elders of our very small Local Meeting. And it was equally obvious to us at that time that the same thinking might, and did, apply to Oversight. We all became Overseers in our Local Meeting. I have lost count of the number of years that have passed since we adopted this system of corporate eldership and oversight. It has not always worked as well in some years as others but we have been very aware of the danger that, if all are responsible, no-one actually takes responsibility. It has on occasions felt easier to assume that other Friends will do whatever is necessary, and as a consequence the work is not done. But more often than not both the eldership and oversight have been well done. However, I think perhaps we would have done the work better had we thought of it in terms of “nurturing, protecting and paying attention to the flame” described by Carrie Comfort.
By hazel.jones on 29th April 2021 - 13:21
Please login to add a comment
