Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, September 11, 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s membership that\u2019s on my mind this morning. It\u2019s on my mind because recently I\u2019ve been asked a few times about how one becomes a member of a Quaker Meeting. I\u2019m a member of Ministry and Council, the committee of the Meeting that handles membership matters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Membership: Is this a club you\u2019re joining? Is membership just a matter of affiliation<\/em>? Like being a member of Rotary, not a member of the Lions or of the Odd Fellows. Or like being a Phillies fan not a Mets or Yankees fan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I wasn\u2019t born into membership. I\u2019m a convinced<\/em> Friend, not a birthright<\/em> Friend. I grew up in a Presbyterian Church. I first went to Quaker Meeting in college, and attended fitfully until I made the decision to become a member in my mid-30s. I remember with some embarrassment how long it took me to write a letter to the Meeting I joined \u2013 mostly because I didn\u2019t really know what I believed. Writing the letter made that all too clear. They took me in anyway. (It turned out it didn\u2019t matter so much what I believed. More on that later.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n I said I grew up in a Presbyterian Church. My mother and my father had each grown up in a Northern Baptist Church. They had full body immersion baptism as teenagers, not infant Baptism. They met at a Northern Baptist college \u2013 Bates. But as a family we went to a Presbyterian Church. Why? because it was nearby, because friends went there, and because there wasn\u2019t a Northern Baptist Church easily to be found. So was this Rotary not Lions, Phillies not Yankees. I wondered as a kid. Does it matter? Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Early Quakers didn\u2019t have membership. They weren\u2019t trying to create another distinct group of Christians with a slightly different set of beliefs. They wanted to change the way everyone<\/em> thought about being a Christian. It was only after a few decades had passed and Quakers were being persecuted that they started having membership \u2013 so they could keep track of who needed assistance from other Quakers while they were in jail or didn\u2019t have a job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Being a Quaker is an affiliation, I suppose. This is my religious club; this is my religious clubhouse. But this isn\u2019t all it is, an affiliation. A little over a decade ago I was a member of Quaker Meeting in Indiana Yearly Meeting, and we were thrown out. Not from Quakerism, but from the Yearly Meeting. It was a rude and unsettling experience. Why were we thrown out? Because we had beliefs and practices that welcomed people whatever their sexual orientation. We didn\u2019t believe homosexuality was a sin. So we got the heave-ho. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Does being a Quaker mean having the correct beliefs? Many Friends recoil from that thought, don\u2019t we? Part of being a Quaker is not having a creed, not having to ascribe to a formula of beliefs. It\u2019s something else, something more. That \u2018non-creedalism (no orthodox, insisted-on beliefs) is important to me, and it seems like Indiana Yearly Meeting lost its way on that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What does it mean to become a Quaker, a member of a Quaker Church or Quaker Meeting. It\u2019s not just an affiliation. It\u2019s more. To talk about that something more I think we have to think about matters of discipline<\/em> and commitment<\/em>, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s start with discipline<\/em>. I know that can be a worrying, even forbidding term, with its suggestive overtones of punishment. It becomes a warmer word, however, when we think of it as having to do with being a disciple \u2013 a student, a follower, a learner. Discipline is a way of discipleship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We each need a discipline, I think, because we each need a way to learn about God and what God expects of us. I\u2019m wary of those who believe that knowing God is easy, as if it were something that just happens without our having to make much effort. Perhaps that is so for some people, but I am skeptical. For me, knowing God takes active effort. Making no effort is much more likely to lead me towards inattention and selfish behavior. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So for me, I need a discipline: a learning strategy, a regular approach to knowing God. I am pretty sure we do not<\/em> all need the same discipline. For me, that is a clue to why it is not a bad thing that there are a variety of denominations. Think of each as embodying a distinctive religious discipline. \u201cThis is how we work together to know God.\u201d (Of course, for many denominations, there is also a creed, an orthodoxy.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n For me, waiting worship is a most helpful approach: gathering with others in stillness to seek God. I know many who find the repetition of the Mass to be especially useful for drawing closer to God. I know many people who value external sacraments, or who value \u2018smells and bells\u2019, or \u2013 a lot of other things. A place to start on a spiritual journey is to know what spiritual discipline is best for you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n From the British Quaker Ben Pink Dandelion I learned a new word: orthopraxy<\/em>. Quakers, he says, don\u2019t have an orthodoxy; they don\u2019t have a creed. But they do have a set of distinctive practices especially in worship. Those distinctive practices, especially waiting worship, are the orthopraxy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Discipline opens the door to commitment<\/em>, and to community<\/em> There may be some who can find and settle into a discipline all by themselves \u2013 without anyone else. But that\u2019s not for me, and I imagine would not be for most others. If I am to settle into deep, waiting worship, I want to gather with others in doing that. We do it together. And so it is with most religious disciplines: their practice requires a community to practice them well. So spiritual discipline requires community, and community requires commitment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In seeking such a community, I\u2019m looking for a group of people who will not just be present once, but be present together over time, gathering and regathering. I\u2019m looking for a group of people who will make a commitment to being together for worship and seeking, and I\u2019ll expect to make a commitment to them, too. To become a member of a Quaker Meeting is to say, \u2018you can count on me as we seek together for God\u2019s will.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n How will that commitment be shown? I can imagine a variety of ways: via regular financial contributions, via service on committees, via volunteering to help in other ways. But most of all through regular count-upon-it attendance, week in and week out. Taking part, showing up, being engaged. In my Quaker meeting it does me good to see familiar faces each week, people I expect to be there and who expect me to be there, too. We gather strength from one another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Also posted on Riverview Friend<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, September 11, 2022 It\u2019s membership that\u2019s on my mind this morning. It\u2019s on my mind because recently I\u2019ve been asked a few times about how one becomes a member of a Quaker Meeting. I\u2019m … Continue reading