Travelling in ministry: Travelling light
Thomas Swain, in the first of a fortnightly series, writes about his experience of travelling in ministry
As I prepare for travelling in ministry, I soon lose any elevated sense of this old and enabling Quaker practice. There are many details to work out before leaving – where will I stay and how long is a ‘comfortable’ visit? I live with the sense that three days are a friendly limit.
When the Kindlers offered to help with my call to serve Friends in Britain Yearly Meeting, I soon found out how effective their flyer was. During the thirteen weekends that I planned to be in the UK, all of them were arranged to be with Meetings (including two in Sweden). Friends responded warmly to my request for overnight hospitality during the weekends. I began to call on my friends to help with hospitality during the weeks that I would be there. In the nine years of visiting with my UK Friends I had a loving network of Quakers who were willing to help. I have Friends in Knaresborough, Greenwich, Swanwick and London who have been generous with sharing their homes. They offer a space and a freedom from expectations.
The idea of travelling among Friends has been a personal journey for me that has its roots back to when I first became a Friend. In 1973 I attended a weekend conference, at Quaker Hill in Indiana, on ‘Dreaming for Ministry’. I had a dream of being a Quaker itinerant minister. I guessed that was where ‘the action’ was – supporting and nurturing Friends. It was also in 1973, when I was living for a brief time in Wichita Kansas, that a member of University Friends Meeting asked me to join his gifts study group. This was my introduction to spiritual gifts. It has taken me thirty years of living and learning as a Friend to understand spirit given gifts and how travelling in ministry could be combined. I had the desire in 1973 but I surely wasn’t equipped, nor sensitive, to the ‘openings,’ ‘leadings’, ‘authority’ or ‘power of the Lord’ that were necessary to uphold this nurturing work.
If I were to help Friends learn about spirit given gifts I certainly would know my own. It took a long time for me to feel comfortable in affirming my own spirit given gifts. I had to wrestle with my unworthiness and my own shadow side to be fully able to serve among Friends. Many Friends affirmed me but, somehow, I could not hold on to their affirmations longer than a few days.
My own personal transformations began after my retirement from public school teaching. I was a librarian for a high school in the state of Delaware. It really was a healing process as I worked through the pain in my own life. As the changes happened within me, I began to accept the gifts of teaching and a gift of offering Friends a safe place to learn. I began to accept my own spirit given gifts. I have confidence in myself in using gifts of practical, personal, hands-on, behind-the-scene gifts; nurturing, caring, people-oriented gifts; leadership gifts; personal faith gifts and prayer gifts. Behind each of these areas, which I have identified as my spirit given gifts, are other gifts that enable my sharing with others. Nurturing, caring, people-oriented gifts involve gifts of encouragement, a faith that is focussed on having personal trust in God, a hospitality in being comfortable meeting new people and a gift of mentoring that is focussed on longer term support for faith development.
I am not exaggerating or holding to an exalted sense of myself. This is the truth about me and what spirit given gifts I have. I am assured in my gifts because I see, when I share them with and among Friends, that they have meaning and life – they are enabling and uplifting to others.
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