Chris and Matt. Photo: Courtesy Matt Rosen.
Moving in the right direction: Matt Rosen’s apprenticeship in Quaker ministry
‘It was truly a moment of surprising grace.’
When I first began to feel a leading to travel in the ministry – to visit Quaker Meetings to worship with Friends and share freely of what I was given – I thought it seemed like a truly terrible idea. I was aware of my profound shyness and introversion, and I felt that I didn’t have much to contribute. Although I experienced a deep love for Friends and a prompting to share the joy I’d found in our faith tradition, I was afraid to speak vulnerably about my experience – afraid that, if I answered this call, God might ask more than I could live up to. I spent a great deal of time in prayer, reminding God that there were much better candidates for this work: more confident and capable speakers; people with deeper knowledge of Quaker faith and practice. I told God that I was just trying to cope with my own life, just trying to follow Christ’s guidance in my daily interactions. I asked God to leave me alone and send someone else.
God didn’t seem particularly open to my suggestions. In Meeting for Worship, I started to feel that I wasn’t being faithful, and this sense began to spread into the rest of my life. The more I understood that I wasn’t listening, the stronger the leading got. Looking back, I can see that God was extraordinarily patient with me, gently pushing me to see that Christ’s power might be made perfect in my weakness, rather than in my strength. But at the time I wondered if I’d just read too many early Quaker journals, and had picked up some reckless ideas.
While I was wrestling with all this, I found myself living at Pendle Hill, the Quaker study centre outside Philadelphia. I was there to study early Quaker convincement experiences, and as I learned more about how so many Friends had been reached and changed by a Power greater than themselves, how they had surrendered to Jesus as their inward Teacher and Helper, I began to see new ways in which I was refusing to yield to this same Guide. I was learning a lot, about myself as well as about earlier Friends.
Each morning at Pendle Hill, we had Meeting for Worship, and one morning, as I sat reflecting on the call to faithfulness, an older Friend stood and spoke very simply about how, in all his confusion and weakness, he had experienced Jesus as an ever-present friend. He said that, when he listened to Jesus’s voice in the heart, he was led forward, helped forward, one step at a time, and brought day-by-day toward greater clarity, hope, and love. This was so much the message I needed to hear. I had been looking for a five-year plan, a sense of how I could be faithful to what God was asking over the long-haul, but Christ was offering to lead me one day at a time, in reliance on him. I felt newly-able to consider God’s call, knowing that I would be accompanied each step of the way.
The Friend who spoke that morning was Chris Stern, a minister of nearby Middletown Meeting. He was also living at Pendle Hill as a scholar, writing a memoir. Chris took me under his wing, helping me to find my voice and consistently turning me to our shared Teacher. One afternoon, we’d been exploring the archives at Swarthmore College and decided to take a look at the recently-renovated dining hall. There, an employee asked whether we were enjoying our tour – clearly thinking we were father and son, considering Swarthmore for university! From then on, I was often referred to as Chris’s ‘son’, and I felt like a part of the family. It was hard to say goodbye after my weeks at Pendle Hill, but I knew we would stay in touch.
‘I asked God to leave me alone and send someone else.’
Some weeks later, after I had continued to wrestle with the call to ministry, and my Meeting had encouraged me to take this call seriously, I gave in. I felt tremendous relief and peace in this, but I also knew that I had no clue what I was getting myself into. Travelling in the ministry had become almost unheard-of in Britain, and, although local Friends held me in prayer and supported me with their wisdom and advice, I still felt like an unwilling pioneer. So I wrote to Chris, telling him about where I felt God was leading me, and how I was planning to begin visiting Meetings that summer as a way opened. Much to my amazement, and with the support of his family and Meeting, Chris offered to travel over to accompany me on the initial journey! I had been praying for solid eldership and mentorship as I answered the call, but I didn’t expect that. It felt like God was confirming that I’d heard right, offering a way to help me grow into the work. It was truly a moment of surprising grace. Chris had been called to travel in the ministry when he was about my age and had been encouraged and accompanied by older Friends; now he could support and travel with me, as I prayed and stumbled forward.
Chris and I visited six Meetings in just a few weeks, often staying with local Friends who took good care of us. I found it challenging to share my experiences of despair and anxiety, and of finding a living faith as I was turned to Christ’s voice within. I worried that I would be misunderstood as preaching another Christian message, which many Friends had understandably rejected: a message of judgment or escape. What I felt led to share was that, at a very low point in my life, I had been helped and rescued by the living Christ, who, in that dark place, I found able to ‘speak to my condition’. I had experienced Jesus softening my heart and leading me toward greater love and truth, and had come to see how Quaker Meeting was less about our ideas or goodness, and more about finding the presence of a Guide when we’re at the end of our own resources.
As Chris and I travelled, I struggled to share this. He helped me to see that I was often cutting the message I was given short, or translating into vaguer words, for fear that I might be misunderstood or not liked. As we travelled, I started to listen more to Christ within and less to my fears and anxieties. I started to see how travelling in the ministry was a way for Christ to work on me, never mind anything I could offer to Friends or Meetings. As I spoke more fully the words I was given, Friends often responded with kindness and patience, a willingness to hear the Life animating the words. That made all the difference.
After these weeks of apprenticeship, I felt a new readiness to follow my Guide, even if the way looked uncomfortable or uncertain. I felt more able to wait on help from a Power greater than myself, to trust that I’d be led. And I had a new appreciation for the importance of faithful eldership and mentorship as we each grow in the gifts that God gives us for the benefit of our community. None of us has to be faithful alone. We have Meetings so that we can listen and learn together, and draw each other into deeper surrender to the Life and Power.
Recently, Chris’s memoir – Who Turned on the Light? Stories of hope and healing – has been published. Full of stories about coming to an inward faith that can help us in our everyday lives, Chris’s book has taught me more about those who supported and encouraged him – my ‘grandparents’ in the ministry. It has brought me to a deeper sense of Quaker community across generations and geography, the Meeting of Friends which is always in session. Chris’s story is about finding Jesus present within as a living Guide and Friend; it’s about a simple, practical faith, based on listening to, and following, this source of light and hope. Page by page, anecdote by anecdote, I felt I was travelling with Chris, with humour and joy. In his writing, I read a longer story of the many Friends who have sought, in all their humanity, to follow the voice of Christ within. They were changed by that voice, and helped others to be changed, too. It’s the story of God’s love and grace, and it’s also our story. As I’ve learned on these travels, we can help each other to step into the Meeting which is always in session, apprenticing together under our Teacher.
