Words from all five of the Reaching Out articles were used to make this ‘word cloud’ showing the frequency of their usage. Photo: Wordle.net
Reaching Out: Publishing truth - Quaker Quest style
Michael Hennessey reflects on risks and experiments
A quest is powered by questions. On a Quaker Quest these questions will be spiritual ones of profound significance to those who ask them. Seekers dare to cross the threshold of a Quaker Meeting house for the first time because something stronger than their apprehension impels them in the search for answers. In the experience of those facilitating the early Quaker Quests, the most profound question invariably concerned God. If there is no God there doesn’t seem much point in worship, or prayer, or any language of Spirit. Seekers have an intuition that the way Quakers experience and understand God is different from other Christian denominations and other faiths: ‘so tell us all about it,’ they ask.
But, of course, for Quakers there is no one answer to any question, having no dogma and creed, just a ‘Way’ of exploration and experience that embraces certain values that most Friends hold. That was why we evolved a Quaker Quest framework of having three speakers sharing heart matters and not one lecturer speaking of head matters. Yet such sessions are only tasters and newcomers wanted more. However, when we looked around there were no clear, accessible and inexpensive booklets that we felt could help. So, we decided to write our own, not with one voice but from the whole of the committee.
Twelve Quakers
Our first attempt was called Simply Divine. It was welcomed but we soon had second thoughts about the title. A hilarious and highly creative committee meeting suggested many more but none fitted. Then the idea from our being a dozen jumped at us. Why not Twelve Quakers and God? It clicked. It worked. It was simple, direct and would give us an easy pattern to follow.
We started writing. Just as preparing to speak in a session clarified for us what we understood about the matter in hand, so writing about it made for even deeper reflection and personal discernment. It was a taster that made us eager to do more. The first print run of a thousand booklets on God went speedily, so we were soon at work on Worship, then Pacifism, then Evil – all in response to the questions seekers most asked. Simplicity, Jesus, Equality and Faith followed. We toy with plans for others. Each has been edited by a different member of the team; a few of the original twelve have contributed to each one but many others have now tried their hands.
Outcomes
As always there were unexpected outcomes. What had been intended for seekers at Quaker Quests became increasingly used by study groups within Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) and abroad, with participants encouraged to write their own contributions. But that was still in the Quaker family. Our aim was to reach beyond.
Contact was made within the O Books imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd, which has international distribution. Eventually, a compilation of the first seven booklets, edited and introduced by Jennifer Kavanagh, was published by them under the title New Light. Sales continue encouragingly in the non-Quaker world. Altogether, 23,000 of the single booklets have now been printed, which, apart from Advices & queries, may be the highest of recent sales in the Religious Society of Friends.
Throughout this time we were also producing resources for regional Quaker Quests that were developing around Britain and overseas. Posters, with blanks for local details, echoed our original strapline – Quaker Quest, a spiritual path for our time: simple, contemporary, radical. This was eventually adopted by Quaker Week and the Society at large. Our original A4 guidelines to running a Quaker Quest were re-written and are now published in a more attractive format – Quaker Quest: the how-to-do-it manual – a new way of outreach.
Moving beyond print
A website has been set up, on which all local Quaker Quests can advertise their sessions. Resources and the manual are there to help new ventures. Regular newsletters have appeared giving stories of good practice and sharing problems. This eventually led to two residential consultations at Woodbrooke and the setting up of the Quaker Quest Network, with its annual newsletter: Questings.
At the first two ‘Big Outreach Conferences’ the dilemma was raised about how rural and scattered Meetings could run a Quaker Quest or any form of outreach. Our Network has responded by producing a supplement to the manual, a simplified programme of running a Quaker Quest on a Saturday, rather than over a series of weeknight evenings.
We have also provided help with speakers by recording a series of six minute talks on DVD, Twelve Quakers talking – Quaker Quest presentations, on the four key themes that many Quaker Quests centre on: God, Worship, Faith-in-Action and the Spiritual Path.
This means that a Quaker Quest can be run in a Friend’s home with just one or two Quakers making presentations and the rest contributed by chosen talks from the DVDs.
There are forty-eight talks across two volumes of DVDs. They are professionally made by Just Film, a company of Quakers in Kings Langley, and the talks given by those well experienced in local Quaker Quests. A surprise outcome of this work has been the use of the DVDs in prisons by Quaker prison chaplains.
Reaching further
The Network’s quest is to find new ways of reaching out beyond the Society. Several years ago we commissioned Geoffrey Durham to write a book, an introduction to the Quaker Way, for those who had never even attended a Quaker Quest. They might be encouraged to come along if they had read something accessible and straightforward about what we are like as a worshipping community today. Last year this was published as Being a Quaker. We are selling it on Amazon and are in the process of making it available via Kindle as an ebook: this is a first and takes us, and the Society, into promising new territory.
At the same time we are exploring the use of two- to four-minute quick-fire programmes in a Facebook style, each centring on a Quaker who is witnessing in a particularly interesting and challenging way. We will see the first attempt at our January tenth birthday committee meeting. The intention is to use new means to spark interest and encourage newcomers to dare to darken our doorsteps. Running through all the Network’s committee meetings is our original critique: ‘Why, if we feel that the Quaker Way is such a precious human insight, are there still so few Quakers?’
Michael is clerk to the Quaker Quest Network committee.
For further information please visit www.quakerquest.org
This is the fourth in a five-part series.
