'Learning from each other’s experience helps us care for each other.' Photo: by Kealan Burke on Unsplash
Should it stay or should it go? Abigail Maxwell on language
‘When Meeting for Business is held in a spirit of worship, it has beauty and winsomeness.’
How do you tell Quakers what to do? You persuade us. Better still, you win us over with the clear spirit-led beauty of your words.
The Book of Discipline Revision Committee is addressing sections of ‘Church Government’, which has not had a full revision since the 1960s. Might the word ‘should’ irk counter-suggestible Friends? Consider Quaker faith & practice 4.08: ‘The area meeting [AM] is open to all its members… Attenders may be present only with permission of the clerk, which should be sought well in advance of the day of meeting. It should be borne in mind that some matters, particularly membership, are confidential and cannot easily be discussed with non-members present.’
The passage refers to the business meeting as ‘the area meeting’. But we also use the term to mean the people, and perhaps the assets, of the AM. The US term ‘sessions’ distinguishes the business meeting.
When Meeting for Business is held in a spirit of worship, it has beauty and winsomeness. When Friends test their ministry there, as they would in any other worship (seeking the good of the Meeting and the wider community, acting as led but not seeking too much busyness, trusting the process and accepting unknowing), we find a way opens. It helps if some Friends uphold the Meeting, without any desire for a particular outcome. Sessions at best might bring the whole Area Meeting together in love, to know each other in the things which are eternal.
It might be useful to include how we go wrong. When Meeting for Business is experienced like a secular committee, Friends still seek to do what is right but may become confused and distressed, and drift away.
Friends have a great deal of experience of Meetings for Business that work. We could describe that. ‘We find it beneficial if’ might persuade better than ‘should’. ‘It should be borne in mind that’ is unnecessary.
Learning from each other’s experience helps us care for each other. It does no harm to remind us that someone might want their membership application to be confidential until accepted. What have we found that helps us treat each other with loving care?
We have a phrase, ‘right ordering’. Let our ordered lives confess the beauty of God’s peace. Any rules we make should promote reverence and harmony in the worship.
Might the presence of attenders disturb the spirit-led nature of the Meeting? My AM appoints attenders as what we used to call ‘overseers’. They are clearly Quakers. What does the concept of membership achieve? Any Friend could be visited to share an account of their spiritual lives. A well-ordered Meeting for Business should be able to accommodate people who do not know what is going on, or no one could learn our practice.
Friends, what in your experience helps us find God’s loving purposes in Meetings for Business? How could they help us build the kingdom of heaven on Earth?
