Letters - 17 January 2014
Thoughts on Afterwords
Afterwords
In our Meeting we give Friends the opportunity of offering what we call ‘Afterthoughts’ before the notices are given. I cannot recall any occasion when the ministry offered during the Meeting for Worship has ever been deprecated or criticised in the unfortunate way described by Simon Western (3 January).
There may be many reasons why someone might hesitate to offer ministry during a Meeting for Worship, perhaps being uncertain whether they were being given a proper leading to minister. Possibly the spoken ministry has moved on so that a particular thought would no longer be apposite. I have occasionally felt it right to share in Afterthoughts a reflection arising in Meeting, which I had not felt led to offer as ministry.
Elders have overall responsibility for the right ordering of Meeting for Worship. I have heard the immortal words of an elder, ‘may we have a little time to think about what our Friend has said?’ and there is always the apocryphal reprimand, ‘we think our Friend has unburdened his mind sufficiently’. If, in Afterthoughts, there were specific, deliberate criticism of earlier ministry, then I hope that elders would feel able to intervene appropriately.
I do not agree that Afterthoughts is a ‘process where Friends are invited to comment on ministry’; I recognise that this is the danger. Afterthoughts should be an exercise in disciplined creative listening and should never ‘turn Meeting for Worship into a place of debate’.
Alan Quilley
‘Afterwords’ now greatly enhance our Meetings for Worship, though not without earlier disconcertions. We do it like this. The person shaking hands asks, informally and seated, if anyone wishes to add something that didn’t quite rise to the level of ministry during Meeting – it’s like halfway to ‘Worship-sharing’, and helps extend the Quaker way to the rest of life. Manchester Quakers in the 1890s provide the model – an hour’s Meeting for Worship, followed by an hour’s discussion of what it was all about – harder to accommodate nowadays. Some years ago, at a different Meeting, a Friend started his ministry by saying, ‘What Bob has just said is quite wrong’. Not the only time I’ve been ‘ministered’ against. James Nayler advises we ‘weary out’ these painful episodes – never easy, but so central to Quakerism today.
Bob Johnson
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