Living eldership
Edward Hoare welcomes an initiative to enhance the spiritual life of Meetings
Elders are the arteries through which the spiritual life of the Yearly Meeting flows. Long neglected, they have, I believe, become hardened and thus restrict the flow of life.
When Alastair Heron was clerk to Yearly Meeting elders he used his position to lead a group to clarify and publish a work on the subject of Quaker Concern. When his successor found that in Quaker faith & practice there was no role for Yearly Meeting elders, he recommended laying the position down. At that time it was also the custom to hold a separate gathering of elders during Yearly Meeting. In the years after Alastair’s term of office that custom lacked direction and was also laid down.
The proposal, made at Yearly Meeting in York, that a small group be appointed by the Yearly Meeting to report directly to it each year on the spiritual life of the Yearly Meeting (as is the practice of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Worship and Ministry Committee) was not accepted.
Our spiritual life has been kept on the back burner with obvious effects. In the Framework for action 2009-2014 Meeting for Sufferings identified ‘strengthening the spiritual roots in our Meetings and in ourselves’ as the first priority. But, it appears, this nettle has proven too strong to grasp. Sufferings seem to be happy doing the sort of things that they have always done and, I feel, has shown no signs of taking up the task. However, we pride ourselves that, as Quakers, we work upwards from the coalface, rather than from the top down.
At this time, when we are called by the 2014 Swarthmore Lecture to ‘transformation’, a tool to help us to begin the process has come to hand. It is called Living eldership and is a review of eldership written by Jenny Routledge who, on being appointed an elder for the first time (and simultaneously appointed clerk of the Area Meeting elders and overseers committee!) thought it might be useful to explore what eldership was. She started her exploration when at Pendle Hill (Pennsylvania) and talked with Friends from around the world as they came and went. When it was suggested that she might have a ‘concern’, she brought together a group of Friends to support her. The result is Living eldership.
Living eldership is based on her journey of exploration and discovery. It is a programme designed for anyone interested in deepening their own spiritual life and the life of their Meeting. The book is in two halves. In the first we follow Jenny as she tests her concern. In the second we are given a course guide on the themes of Living eldership and the deepening of the spiritual life of our Meetings. It sets out clearly what eldership is all about. In the words of Jenny: ‘The heart of eldership is nurture, first and foremost and for our future. As I travelled among Friends I came across ways in which traditional aspects of eldership had been revisited and put into practice in new ways and with fresh enthusiasm. They were all about nurture.’
Living eldership by Jenny Routledge, Quaker Books, 2014, ISBN: 9781907123634, £8.
