Worship as Essential to Quaker Business Meetings

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Read by Tess Hartford at the Beginning of the September 27, 20236 Business Meeting of Durham Friends.

Excerpted from “Principles of the Quaker Business Meeting,” by George Selleck

A RELIGIOUS METHOD

The Quaker method of reaching decisions always has been primarily a religious one. In
some real sense Friends intend to seek God’s will rather than merely human wisdom. Decisions
do not in the end depend on the particular knowledge and wisdom of certain outstanding
leaders, but on a gathered insight in which the whole meeting is unified. The method is based
on the faith that each person can know God’s will and that God’s will is one.The meeting for
business seeks to find it.

In practical terms this means that such meetings are held in a context of worship, so that
those present may repeatedly and consciously seek Divine guidance. Fox put it tersely, “Friends
are not to meet like a company of people about town or parish business…but to wait on the
Lord.”

This is not to be taken, however, as an ancient practice to be observed only by a formal
“moment of silence.” It is important that the meeting for business should begin with a genuine
period of worship, with an awareness of the real presence and direction of Christ in the
worshipping fellowship. The religious fellowship experience during such a period of reverent
waiting is helpful also in seeking Divine guidance and in finding unity of action in the transaction
of business. Only as Friends are aware that they are functioning in the Divine presence does
the Quaker method really work.

Secular groups sometimes use a method of consensus similar to a Friends meeting for
business, but the Quaker method is not simply a technique. It is a faith that finds expression in a method. The method without the faith will work so long as differences are not too great but may then break down.The essential safeguard against such breakdown among Friends is the faiththat there is a will of God for persons and discernible by them, and that faithful following of the Light given us will lead into a realizable unit.