Well, thank you Helen.  Helen is a very
experienced and gifted facilitator,
so she was wise enough not to say
"and Ben will begin when he is ready",
as that may have taken
a little longer
to get going...
And I did hear from one Swarthmore lecture
they got to this point and they were very pleased
to realise that they had every
word that they were going to say
typed down in front of them…well…
I just have a what my daughter Florence
called some indecipherable handwriting here,
so we are just have to see how we go.
There maybe hesitation
and then maybe repetition and there may
even be deviation, we'll see.
Well,
here we are in the third year of
Yearly Meeting exercise on
what it means to be a Quaker and to the
outsider this may seem
a rather curious kind of exercise partly
I suppose we might say, well,
being a Quaker isn't really what it's all
about.
Quakerism is a vehicle for our
faith journey and so what's more
important is
the faith journey itself rather than
what the mechanics of
Quakerism entails. However, of course if
we want our faith to be
dynamic and coherent and cohesive then
it would be sensible to be in the same
place regarding
Quakerism and what it means to be a Quaker.
So that leads to another kinda question
an outsider might ask...
"Well, don't you know?"
Don't twenty thousand of us, part of an
organisation that's been around nearly
three hundred and seventy years
know what it means to be part of that
organisation?
Well, maybe we're not very clear
actually; maybe we're a little bit fuzzy.
Perhaps in the last couple of decades
we've shown
a slight lack of clarity or confidence
in our ability to
say what Quakerism is and to
communicate that both amongst ourselves
and those who come to us and to the
outside world.
I meant to bring a Quacker Faith and
Practice
to wave so this will be the Quaker Faith and
Practice. It's actually
all in here at the beginning of
chapter eleven, it even lists what the
fundamental elements of being a Quaker
are.
So, why might we need an exercise in
what it means to be a Quaker?
But as I will
hope to explain there's a there's a gap
between
are red book and how we are amongst
ourselves
and I'll be looking at some other ways
in which that
that gap may have involved in recent
years.
So I want to do three things this
afternoon; one is
I want to say what I think it is what it
means to be a Quaker,
secondly I'd like to look at some other
challenges we
we face and thirdly I want to
offer some suggestions for sort of
rekindling and reclaiming
a strong sense of corporate Quaker
identity.
Okay what does it mean to be a Quaker
well I think there are four
what I've called Core Insights
that we can identify
historically and indeed globally amongst
Friends, the first is
that we discovered way back in 1647
that we can encounter the divine
directly,
that we don't need a text to mediate
and we don't need a separated priesthood
as we heard this morning we're all part
of the royal priesthood.
All ministers; and we can encounter the
divine
together without any outward forms.
Secondly
that we have then necessarily developed
ways to interpret that experience of
encounter, that spiritual experience; that
we've
wanted to a both understand what that
experience is saying to us and
also check when that experience is
authentic and when it may be something
coming out of our imagination
so we develop systems of discernment and
discernment is absolutely central
to us as Friends and this would include
our
Quaker business method.
Thirdly we've needed to develop forms
of
worship that nurture
that experience of encounter. And for us
in Britain we've maintained a system
of
stillness and silence,
our understanding and our experience that
absence
leads to a sense have presence.
And fourthly, that we've had a persistent
imperative if you like to lead a
particular
kind of life coming after this
experience of encounter,
that we over the centuries have
campaigned against war and against
social injustice,
that we try to lead our lives in line
with our
callings and what we would call testimony,
the life we have to lead,
the life we are called to. 
So I think thats
a nice short list, that's four things we
might want to
abbreviated in terms of worship, encounter,
discernment and testimony. Four core insights
that a underpin what it means to be a
Quaker,
that allow us to approach
the sort of magic and mystery
of the life of faith.
There are a few things I would like to
say about that list, however. 
The first is that as you will see
the focus there is on process, 
not on detailed theology
now there is a a theological
underpinning
to all of those aspects we are not
just sitting there doing nothing,
we're sitting there because something happens
for us in the silence and stillness,
something happens
in our Quakers business meetings. We can
discern and we do live
in line with our leading. So there are
some theological assumptions there, our
whole Quaker life is
rooted in spirituality.
But also that list reflects the idea
that
word aren't necessarily very helpful or
trying to
over define the divine is not really
appropriate or a helpful use of time.
There's a lovely article by Harvey
Gillman in this week's Friend
on the nature of religious language,
and he was asking whether ultimate truth
can ever really be expressed
in words, the words don't quite match and
we understand that very well.
So silence is both our medium, our
approach
to the devine, but it's also often the
best response
in some ways. Theologically.
The second thing about that
list of four core insights
is that I think they're inherently
collective, in other words that
we do things together. We worship
together,
we discern together, we act in the world
together, I'm sorry my earing keeps
attacking the microphone when I get excited!
I did think we wanted kettle drums
really, I often thought that Quaker 
faith is
you know, really summed up by kettle drums.
You could have these...
boom boom, boom boom!
It is fascinating, you know it's
a wonderful list of encounter and
you know, discernment and testimony.
Boom boom, and obviously we would have them
quietly and sort of
silent kettle drums!
You know, you would sort of
hear them on the inside...
So, sorry, it's inherently collective.
Early Friends did not have God
breaking into their lives just to say,
"Oh well that's great, I am saved,
I will go back to the farm.  Thank you very much."
Instead they were drawn to follow the movement, 
, bound in by their experience.  So the
Yorkshire seekers moved
to West Mull
and they gathered and then in 1654
ministers and elders spread out across
England and Wales.
It was a highly itinerant movement
following the callings God.
Francis Howgill speaks of being gathered in a net.
A finding of knowing a place to stand in
and what to wait in, being bound
together in a covenantal relationship.
Sort of mutual open ended dynamic with the divine;
which we are bound in and gathered
and enfolded and accompanied.
Quakerism is not a DIY in religion
as we so often hear.
It is a 'DIT' one, a Do It Together kind of faith
and we need to remember that,
it runs through all we do.
The third thing I want to say about
this list is that we can't encounter the
divine
and not be changed by that experience.
Our processes are inherently
transformative.
It may come in little nudges or there
may be some
magical kind of major break through
moment. But that moment of conviction
we heard about this morning is about
transformation
it is about being changed it is
about seeing and feeling the world
in a new way.
It may be uncomfortable, it may
mean leaving things that we
love and desire behind.
It may mean not having a Bentley anymore
however but it leads us into a new
and stronger place, a more
spiritually authentic place.
And where we are again not alone,
because we're with each other.
This is this awful thing and I think we heard
an echo of it this morning,
well I can't be a Quaker because I'm not
good enough
but actually we're Quakers because we're
not good enough
and we need each other to support each
other through
our journey of faith.
We are transformed individually and
collectively
in order to become agents of
transformation
in the world. That's
what it means to be a Quaker.
However, we have become a little fuzzy in places,
we have in times
gotten ourselves into a little bit of a pickle I
think.
And we can look back over the
last 150 years for some clues.
in that time we have recast our Quaker
tradition
to be a far more permissive kind of
Quakerism, Britain Yearly Meeting is
part of liberal Quakerism
and we are one of the most
liberal or permissive
Yearly Meetings within the liberal tradition,
which makes us one of the most permissive yearly meetings
in the world today
 
And we have recast our Quakerism at the same time
that society itself wider society
has itself been changing and is today
far more individualistic than
it was say a century ago
and also far more secular.
Sociologists of religion
talk about a process of secularisation;
of faith losing its public voice;
of individuals losing
their interest in the spiritual;
where the religious may no longer be the
first resort
and not necessarily the last,
that there's other ways that we manage
our lives and understand ourselves.
And I think in places and at times
within are Religious Society of Friends in
Britain we've been
infected and affected by both of those
trends, individualism
and secularisation.
And I want to look at some of the
consequences of this in
two areas, the first is
in terms of belonging
and the second is in terms of believing.
Well, the way we belong to our
Yearly Meeting changed dramatically
in the middle of the 19th century.
It's around that time
that we discovered that we
were no longer the true church.
This is a very dramatic moment,
we are not just a moment but also
a dramatic shift for us as a Society.
It meant that we no longer needed to
save everybody;
and be there for everyone.
What we realised around that time
is that we were part of the true church,
part of true Christianity
and that raised certain questions, why then,
were we as Quakers still wearing
the plain dress?  Why did as one Friend said,
why did our spiritual 
journey need to start in the tailor's shop
if, after all, when you are part of
the Anglican were okay, they didn't need
to get all dressed up;
we needed to dress up and we needed to
speak differently
from the rest of the world
and use "thee" and "thou" rather than "You",
well those things started to disappear,
there were various reforms in the 1850s and 1860s
that basically undid our
peculiarity or particularity
as a people of God.
And we have been increasingly allowed to do
more and more of what we decide is Quaker.
After 1859 we could marry a non Quaker
and not be disowned.So in fact we could after
1861 we could leave our meeting house
walk out into the street and not dressed
in plain Quaker dress,
not using the plain Quaker language
and go home to a Methodist
spouse.
It was a significant change
in the way that we
identified as Quaker.  And it has led
into the 20th century into the
possibility of the private life
that we no longer actually have
unexpected visits
by elders coming to check up on
us,
we are probably very pleased about that!
You know, what would we hide?
You don't need to share, it's okay!
So we enjoy our freedom.
But it also means that really
our sense of being accountable to the
Quaker meeting
stops at the meeting house door.
And often when people feel they have
been unsupported during times of crisis
it may just be
that our meetings haven't known how far
they can enter into a life
outside the meeting house.
In other words we've lost the sense of
being accountable
to our meetings and we have this private
life or the possibility for private life,
we have huge freedoms and we have the
responsibility to decide
what is and is not Quaker.
Then things went a bit further though
because I talked
a moment ago about
not feeling we had to save everybody. 
Well we hardly hear about salvation in
British Quakerism now.
Save from what and for what?
So... so we moved actually we have
moved in the 20th century from being
part of the true church
part of true Christianity
Christianity to actually being seeing
ourselves as one faith amongst many
or none. 
I suggest that we think we wouldn't
say that it was vital for anyone to be
part of any faith
now without permission we'll see think
it's a good thing
we're here for a week. We don't think
it's essential that everyone
must be part of a faith and in that
sense we present ourselves
as an option within the option of faith.
And that I think has had consequences
for us in terms of how we belong
to the Yearly Meeting or
belong to our local meetings.
Well the first major change and this
is probably related to the fact we could
start marrying non Quakers
is that we have seen the
break down of what we might call 
dynastic Quakerism in the 20th century,
we are no longer all born into Quaker families,
and brought up on monthly meetings
teas and learning our Quakerism 
over that over the dining table.
87% of us according to last
year's British Quaker survey
have joined as adults
and where we do have children who are
part of a Quaker meetings if they don't
want to go to Quaker Meeting
and it may be that now only one parent
is a Quaker
or the only Quaker in
their household
and if the children don't want to go
to Quaker Meeting
then we may very well said well that's
okay because it's only an option.
Florence don't listen to this bit.
We are going to meeting, so...
A smaller proportion
of us attend
meeting every week
than we did, say 100 years ago
about a third of us, the third of the
people on our members and attenders list
are likely to turn up at
meeting on any one week.
It may be we go to the Anglican Church
or it might be that we
would be tempted by the
motorcycle club
on some Sundays.
It's okay, so…
but we are going to meetings, Florence!
So, even our attendance is more
optional than it used to be.  
In terms of service
we have made that optional and
it was startling for me
a few years ago to meet Friends
who remembered the days
when nominations committee asked
you to accept a nomination,
you of course automatically said yes.
Who were you as the individual
to challenge the discernment
of the gathered group?
Well, actually we have got
very good at saying no now.
It may be we are being
asked to do more, but actually
we regularly say "No" to
nominations committees
and there are some startling
statistics about how many people
sent for nominations a committee needs
to ask to fill any one role...
or to fill any one committee.
There's also a fewer verse giving
money to the Yearly Meeting.
So maybe that's optional as well maybe
we're putting our money
somewhere else. But what the picture I'm
trying to build up is that we have a
very
optional sense of belonging,
we heard this morning about how we've
also blurred the lines
over the last 50 years between
what's a member and what's an attender.
I joined about thirty years ago because
I wanted to attend Business Meeting
and you need to be a member to go to
Business Meeting, you needed to be a member
to hold office and it was generally
members who gave financially.
Well we have blurred all those
lines, it is not surprising then 
that we have the kind of session
we do this morning about, well,
what is it to be part
of our society. The category
member and attender become less clear.
We are in a sense a more diffuse community.
So let's think about belief for a while
because this is the other area where
I think we have
become prey to some of the
individualisation and secularisation
in the wider society.
Well, the young Friends who
really pioneered liberal Quakerism
were very keen to emphasise that it was
spiritual experience that should be 
primary
and we very much feel that today. How do
we know
what is of God, it is a really important
question for any religious group.
And our response is, well we know
in our spiritual experience 
what is of God.
Belief then becomes an interpretation
of that experience,
a sort of belief story.
and it becomes private or
marginal within a group that emphasises
experience
more than doctrine. In fact
it is in 1922
in the revision to the book of discipline
then that the section on Christian doctrine
was replaced
by section called Illustrative Spiritual
Experiences of Friends
and the Red book which I failed to bring
is largely now
Illustrative Spiritual Experiences of
Friends.
As early as 1930 the question is then
raised, well,
if it's about spiritual experience do
you need to be a Christian
to be a Quaker? And in 1966
draft membership regulations that were
presented to the Yearly Meeting
were rejected as sounding
too doctrinally Christian.  
As I say belief has become privatised
and individualised. We've also developed a
doctrine of believing
that none of us will actually
get to the whole
truth even together we won't quite get
there.
We're on a spiritual journey
collectively
All of our theologising,
all of our interpretation
is towards or
perhaps its is never going to match
the ultimate truth as Harvey Gillman
reminds us in this week's Friend.
So we celebrate diversity and we
celebrate to a certain degree
uncertainty.
But this has consequences for a number
of the ways in which our processes
work. I think it affects how we are in
worship, are we actually all doing the
same kind of thing
in meeting for worship? Is it indeed
worship
anymore?
Want do we think ministry is?
Where do we think it's coming from?
We thank people for their ministry.
Well, in conservative Quakerism people are
thanked for being faithful for the words
that they are given.
So where does ministry come from,
where do we,
how do we understand the nature
vocal of ministry?
And what about meeting for worship
for church affairs? Our Quaker business method?
What happens to that if we have a
multiplicity of
theologies? Well, it might be fine,
but I mean, historically our
Quaker business method 
has been about discerning the will of
God.
With a single clear answer for
every question if we can only discern 
adequately, it doesn't matter
who's in the room,
if we can discern properly we will arrive
at unity and a sense of the
meeting that reflect the will of God.
Well, of course if we don't
have a God that has a will,
that's a little bit tricky.  Or if
we don't have a God, that
becomes even more difficult.
So our diversity can start to unpick
the theology that under pins
some of our core insights.
I am a little bit bemused
although I am open
to education on this, about why we
sometimes have consultations.
For example, Meeting for Sufferings
recently issued a consultation
on whether or not we should
revise the book of discipline.  
Well, consultation to me is something
that the local council might do.
But, you know, Meeting for Sufferings,
it has a minute,
it has a concern or something that has prompted
the question about the revision of the book
of discipline
and in theory then you could discern what to do.
But instead we have a consultation,
109 meetings responded,
there was no broad agreement
but meeting for Sufferings was
then able to discern what to do.
Well, I wonder whether we might have
cut out the consultation and trusted
the process that has served us so well
for 350 years.
About ten years ago we minuted
that staff who work for the Yearly
Meeting
should not sit on central committees
because they might have
"a vested interest".
Well, I should have stood up and said
something at the time and it was
one of my failings in my life of faith
but this is totally bemusing to me;
because in a meeting for worship for
church affairs where we are setting
itself aside
has Roy Stevenson told us last year
in Yearly Meeting, "there's no such thing
as
vested interest". Or in fact we
are going to start
vetting everybody that goes on the
central committee, any one of us might have
a vested interest
but of course it's part of our
discipleship that we lay that aside 
in our discernment processes,
to see the will of God.
We were told at the time adopting that
practice that it was
good practice in the world
and that should worry us, I think,
because the world is not
attuned to our life of the spirit.
It runs on different rules and different
values, most of which we find rather
awkward
and difficult.
So I think our meeting for worship
for church affairs is a key area where 
we are perhaps slightly confused
or at odds with each other
depending on a theological position.
But it's crucial in a sense that we get
that right
because that's at the hub
of our discerning processes.
I think we have lost a sense
of a theology of gift,
spirit given gifts; recently
Thomas Wayne from Philadelphia
has been moving around our
Yearly Meeting and now Woodbrooke
is going to be running gifts workshops.
But there is a sense where there
is that of God in everyone,
we know this inherently.
Deep in our guts.  
We feel that.
And we are all given
different equally important
gifts and when we are faithful to our gifts,
that's when we are living our ministry.
I think we get confused about this,
we take the spirit given bit 
out of the gifts and we are left
with sort of skills or talents
but also crucially we are left
with a sense that somehow we are
all equal, and all able and,
needing to do things together.
So we can run into difficulties
this way, we can start to
create celebrity which
is a secularisation of gifts.
We can start to issue leadership in the
fact that no one
actually should have any responsibility
or any kind of skill to lead because
actually we are all equal, well we are
all equal but we have also got different gifts.
It is not that one's more important
than the other but actually we need all
of our gifts to work well
as a spiritual community.
We might love that Beatrice's quotation
quotation in faith and practice where she's
about to be appointed to be an elder
and she was very unworthy 
and goes to speak to a very wise
elderly Friend and the Friend says, "Well, my dear, 
we must take what we can get."
Well we get that.  It is very nice,
but it's really unhelpful 
if we think we are all to do every job
just on the basis that the meeting will 
have to take what it can get.
Some people should never be treasurer!
it is not where their gifts lie,
or people should be treasurer
maybe for longer than 6 years  
Because that's exactly where
the spirit given gifts lie.
That's their ministry to the meeting. 
I think we need to re claim
our theology of gifts. 
And this plays very much
into nominations work.  
Those poor nominations committees
with everyone saying no to them, 
desperately sometimes ringing round
the night before area meeting,
we have got this whole kind of
tab of things to fill. 
Huge numbers of nominations. 
We have more nominations than members.  
Spare a thought for those with the
gifts of being on nominations committees!
Nominations committees are trying to match
gift and role,
not just tick a box. And if we can't find
someone in our meeting with that gift
then maybe that job shouldn't get done now.
We have these inherited lists of nominations.
It may mean even that a meeting might
need to be laid down for a while.
That's okay, my meeting was laid
down for fifty years 
and today it's thriving.
We don't have to just keep going
in the faith of everything.
We have also got a little fuzzy
over testimony
in my opinion.
it's far more diffuse than it used to be,
we used to be
very clear. I mean, when I say "used to be",
that back in the 1880s and
before
you know I'm quite old-fashioned really
you know
By the end of this you will think,
"think Pink Dandelion, think tradition"!
Well, the peace testimony as we call it
was part of our testimony against
war and war is clear, being against war i think
is rather clear
to work out what we need to do and when
we need to do it but what does peace mean?
It means a whole range of different
things, to different people.
Similarly we have moved from plainness,
no earrings, to simplicity. 
What does simplicity mean?  
Does it mean buying a car that will never
break down or does it mean going 
everywhere by bicycle
and we're back to that sort of private
life. Well, we have to decide
we work out what that means for us.
And we are more permissive about it, not
only because we might not know actually
how the person's deciding
you know when I had my lovely Bentley I
mean
the meeting didn't even know or need to
know I had it
Could park it on the other side of town.
Go out after Quaker midnight!  
And dark glasses, collar up,
have a little bumper sticker,
saying "I am not a Quaker" 
and it was up to me
to decide when to tell the meeting
that I had this car that did
13 miles to the gallon.
It was absolutely lovely.  You know...
but there we go.  So...
In the last fifty or sixty years
we developed testimony into a list, 
so we now have testimonies,
we might have SPICE or STEP as
a handy acronym simplicity
Simplicity, Truth, Equality, Peace,
or Simplicity, Peace and Integrity, Community, Equality. 
Well, what does this do, it
does a number of things.
First of all it seems to separate
out different aspects
of our life a faith. As if they're
somehow different from each other or
unrelated or worse, optional.
Well I am strong on simplicity, but I
have a trouble with the peace testimony.  
Well, it is a little bit tricky, you know,
I love the car but I am really there 
at the, you know,
gates of the air base.
So, it also I suggest becomes
easier for us to divorce 
our testimony from its spiritual roots
because here's a little list we
can pick and choose and we 
can just take it as a value or a
code or an aspiration
and leave behind the spiritual
experience that doesn't generate
testimonies but testimony,
the faith we are called to the life
we called to lead
I think we're a bit fuzzy about teaching
locally;
how much we learn about Quakerism and
what we learn about Quakerism
will depend hugely on which meeting we go to.
What are we going to teach?  You know, which
part of the diversity are we
going to emphasise?
And what are we going to say about meeting
for worship for church affairs now,
are we going to say it's discerning the
will of God, are we going to say
it's discerning the will of God?
Are we going to say discerning the will of God
and if we are a little bit
confused or fuzzy internally
what does that do to our outreach?
Maybe this is why our badges now say
"I am a Quaker, ask me why" but not "ask me what."
Or we could have another one saying
"Just wait until after Bath".
(Laughs)
Maybe we have too much said
"We love you and what is it you
would like us to be for you?" 
rather than saying, "We love
you and this is who we are."  
And you're welcome to join if that works
for you.
I would say that we do love everyone,
we want to love everyone, we want to welcome
everyone,
but that not every expression
of spirituality is necessarily Quaker.
Not every preference for how
we are in meeting for worship 
is necessarily Quaker.
Texting through the Meeting for Worship
is not Quaker  
in my opinion
and we need to be clear with each other
in love
and that will help us be far more
exciting and enticing to inquires.
You can actually see what it is we are.
What is it to be Quaker?
Well, you know, ask the clerk
or here's a book or, you know,
or for me always resorting
to the individual, I have done this
as well, we resort to the individual. 
Well, for me it's like this -
we can end up really not answering
anything for the other.  
And strikes me that there is a huge
gap has developed between the clarity
and assertion of our book of
discipline, and how we have been
and how we are face to face with people. 
I mean obviously we don't just say,
"Read the red book", but, you know, 
but we can draw from the red book. 
The red book is really very clear 
about what it means to be a Quaker. 
It is very clear about what worship is and isn't.  
It's very clear about what meeting
for worship for church affairs is. 
It is very clear
about the need for a teaching ministry.
It is very clear about testimony.
But somehow we have left
that book on the shelf.
And we have developed our own individualised versions  
and interpretations. So as one Friend
said to me,
whatever we decide to do this week about
revising the Book of Discipline
whether or not we revise it we surely need to adopt it.
We need to use it, it is there,
it is our book of discipleship.  
We have lost a single voice I suggest.
And we suffer because of that.
We have also possibly fallen prey to our own
enthusiasm for uncertainty.  That
the uncertainty that we know is 
theologically true
might begin to unpick any kind of
theology
I am a bit uncertain about this uncertainty but
I am a bit uncertain about Quakerism,
I am certainly uncertain
about that passage in the faith and practice.
It is not that we can be uncertain
about everything, because we will indeed 
unpick our beloved society.
I think those four core insights
about encounter and discernment
testimony and the way we worship,
I think we…it is a dangerous thing to become
uncertain about those.  They are
core insights in my opinion.  
And if we lose the spiritual basis,
if we lose that sense of spiritual
experience that's at the heart 
have a Quaker faith then we will simply
become a secular pressure group
or we'll be having a coffee morning on
Sundays
or we will be a book study group.
So what can we do? Well, we can do whatever
we collectively decide to do.
Nothing I've talked about
this afternoon cannot be changed.
I think we need to resist
the secular, resist individualism
and re-claim the spiritual
and the spiritual basis about religious
life together
and the joy in the passion that goes
with it, not be beleaguered by the sense
of bureaucratic
overwhelm that we hear about so often.
And there are a couple of
examples I'd like to give
things that we might want to put to bed.
One is a preoccupation with
falling numbers. Now numbers whether
falling or rising might be of interest
to sociologists of religion
and with another hat on I might be
very interested in numbers and I,
you know, have looked at them.
But I don't think they take any place
in our internal nurture of us as a
religious society.
We know is that statistics
are dangerous things.
Disraeli said there were “lies, damn lies
and statistics.”
We know that,
for example, trends aren’t consistent,
apparently nobody was going to be going
to the cinema
by 1990 after video came out. Well,
now more people are going to the
cinema than ever before.
So I think what does that mean
for Quaker meeting?
Okay, comfier chairs, drinks holders…
no not really!
And, you know, a better range of snacks
in the foyer.
Also I don't think you wanna go down the
route where we turn our meetings from
worship into cinema,
but, anyway, there we go. But it
comes out of that, so first of all
the trend just snapped because something
else happened.
But secondly, when we have these sort of what
I have heard called “a doomsday scenario”,
that so many Quakers by 2030,
it is not that we are suddenly going
to lose everybody.
We, us as society, will adapt
and adopt new structures as we
need to,
as we always have. So
let's just forget about numbers, it's
really unhelpful.
And where does the sort of sense of
falling numbers fit with
the life of faith?
It doesn’t, it up here in our heads.
We are intellectualising, so… faith
or hope beyond our imagination says in
Romans.
It is faith about what we
can’t grapple with up here. It's
all about the mystery
and we go forward in faith not
listening to the sort of statistical
rumours of the sociologists.
Now the other thing
I think that isn't very helpful is…
and I mean it does keep the Friend in
business, which is good but I mean this
constant dialogue about the
detail of the divine. I think we should
read Harvey Gillman and then
cut a lot on letters to the Friend, really.
It is again
a head exercise. Harvey wrote this week
“God is not the name for God”.
It is about just trying to find the
word that works as a symbol 
for us. It doesn't mean
there's nothing there.
I need to sell that very strongly, there is
something there,
there is a
spiritual experience at the heart of what
we do.
But
let's not spend a lot of time working on
the details when we've already really
decided that that's rather awkward
exercise
and for some others that's why we're a
Quaker and not other things.
At the same time, and again, Harvey’s
article is helpful with this,
we need to use our own language
unapologetically.
So we don't want to be pussy footing around
each other, saying…
last year at Yearly Meeting, someone
sitting on the bench next to me said
“I’m going to find it
really difficult to report this back to
my meeting because I can't mention the
term
‘God’ there.”
It’s really quite a ridiculous situation to
be in as a religious society.
Can’t we hear the word God,
even if it's not the language we use?
Maybe we're in the wrong place
if that's the case. I think we need to
re-assert our Quaker processes
and our understandings and
I’d be waving the red book again
if I'd remembered to bring it, but
there we go. Symbolic Red Book. So…
At the same time
as re-asserting our processes
we may need
to sit lightly to some of our
structures and all the nominations they
involve with us.
There is nothing set in stone.
Our processes are important but our
structures are of our
making and they are pragmatic,
they've changed dramatically overtime as
we can see from the
fairly recent introduction of trustees.
Essentially trustees for centrally
managed work
so we can change things if we need to
and if we need to then let's do it. Let's not
get beset with inertia.
And there’s a very inspiring story from
America of a meeting in Chicago, a 108th
Street meeting and they'd reached
a nominations crisis
or a labor crisis if you like, they were
just struggling on
and yet nobody was kind of
willing really to step up to the plate
because
there was such a lot involved,
they'd seen through these
sorta stories of “Go on, be a clerk!
It’s nothing really!”
Half an hour a week or something, it's all right!
You can do it, I know you’ve only been coming six months
but it’ll be fine. They’d seen
through that, nobody
was going to step forward and so they had
a special business meeting and they said
“What do we need for meeting to work next
week?”
Well they had a building
so they needed someone to open up
“Well, I could do that, I can bring
the key.” And they
enjoy tea and coffee afterwards;
“Well, I’ll bring milk.” That's what it needed
actually, and
everyone else could focus on worship. And
all that that gives us.
And they ended up in that meeting with
three committees;
‘Us’, ‘Them’ and ‘Stuff’. ‘Us’; what do we need
to make our committee, our meeting work?
Well we need someone to lock up
and open up and someone to bring milk and…
okay, if we wanted flowers, flowers are
an innovation
just from the 1930s, you know, innovation
so
then you had ‘Them’, so anything that
you needed to do with other people,
the ‘Them’ committee dealt with it.
And there was the stuff like the
building or
getting an new table for the flowers or
whatever so
three committees, new energy
new life, and that meeting was transformed.
Now about a decade ago I moved north
which is why I can say Bath now, 
instead of “Barth”. I can say either,
anyway, so
I was shocked actually when I first went
to that meeting that I’m now part of,
I've come out of a rather large meeting
in the south
with lots of rotors. Rotors for flowers
and door keeping
rotas for library duty, rotas for
tea/coffee making, rotors for the person
to stand by the piano to ask if there
are any questions after meeting
and I went to the southern meet and
there were lot of nominations as well.
Okay and this new meeting I went to
had two nominations a year.
One clerk, one treasurer.
And the monthly meeting as it was then
with supply one elder, one overseer
and a trustee.
No assistant clerk, no assistant
treasurer and no rotas.  
Whoever gets there first does the job.
Okay? If you're by the door and someone's
coming along who haven't seen before,
radical as this may sound, you could welcome them.
You could open the door for somebody.
You could put the kettle on
if you got to the kitchen first. If you
were thirsty
you could put the kettle on. If there is life
in something, you do it. If you're
standing around thinking
“When’s this tea coming?”,
are you really that bothered? No.
So it was starting to me, I mean
there's other things about that meeting
that are starting like no notices and the
end of meeting.
Now they are sort of monthly or,
you know, they are put in 
the middle a tea time if
it's really pressing.
It’s sort of ‘Quaker Lite’,
and it works tremendously well because
actually everyone is more involved
in the running at that meeting and
looking out for each other.
“Well, who hasn't got a cup of tea?”
So we can do things with our structures.
And we can be more inclusive
and more welcoming, we can increase the
number of children's meeting, I was
startled to hear
there’s only 65 meetings out of near
500 that have regular
children's meeting that is every week.
In other words if a new family
come along to a Quaker meeting
they've got to find one of those 65 if
they want to be sure
there's something there for their
children. Out of 478.
We may not have any children
but we won't have any if we don't have a
children's meeting.
We need to have the provision. It
may be no accident that
of the 87% of us
who come in as adults, the average age is 43.
Maybe that's because our children
have grown up
and now we can go to meeting. I've raised
a lot of issues but I want to end with a
lot of enthusiasm as well.
We have so much in our favour.
We have this kettle drum
faith. We have this amazing thing that we
can encounter the spirit directly,
feel it in our lives. All of the time
in all places.
And that we
are, as I said, we can collectively do
whatever we are called to do
and we know how to discern what we’re called
to do, we have huge strengths
in our tradition. And we have a lot of
good things going on at the moment.
We have more people coming in
than perhaps any time since the 17th
century, 87%,
so that's good. Let's get even more
people. We have more meetings
in Britain then we just about had at any
time, 478.
That surely a sign of growth
and strength. We're getting better
communicating in spite of the fuzziness
that I talked about.
Quaker quest has helped us enormously,
National Quaker Week
gets us practiced at communicating our faith.
And I think
there are signs have have growth in
terms of teaching, as well.
Ten years ago Woodbrooke had about 5%
of people in Yearly Meeting coming
to courses, now that's up to 14%.
And we have new learning programmes
like becoming Friends
that are working locally. And we got
nobody in the way
of whatever it is we want to do. We
don't have a Pope.
We don’t have an Archbishop or anything like that
we can actually collectively do
whatever we’re called to do, there's no ‘Them’ and
’Us’ in Quakerism.
We’re all us if we don't like it
we can get involved and help change
things.
And as I say our only enemy 
maybe our own inertia or our own
inability to think radically or to be
bold
or live adventurously
a lack of faith, a lack of that hope
beyond our imagination. But one of the
great
strengths that I see is that probably
everything I've said here
today is not new. In fact
you know about a year ago, I got the first
draft to the book out and then
I read something in the Friend and thought,
“Oh well, that's that then, no one’ll have to write that.”
I thought I will just go home
it will be okay but actually
there is nothing new in what I’ve said.
We know these things already.
We're already writing about them,
discussing them,
finding a way through
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that will be new and powerful
and visionary for us. That will
nurture our faith and pull together
our diversity in a helpful,
positive, inclusive, coherent,
dynamic way.
We were
really suggested by last year's
Swarthmore lecture
we should inherit the tradition, well I
think we need to inhabit
the tradition. We need to live it,
we need to have our lives cloaked
with our Quaker faith.
And everything we do is Quaker
and this is the other difficulty with
this that I have, with this
“What it means to be a Quaker”,
because it's not a Quaker. But it’s us
as Quakers together, being Quaker
and it's not that we are a Quaker
alongside other things
but that our life becomes Quaker, we ‘be’
Quaker in that sense, as well.
So, as I suggested as I went through the
core insights, transformation is at the
heart of
what we're about. That we are transformed
in order to become agents of
transformation,
both for those around us and for
challenging
injustice in wider society
challenging war and the preparation for
war. And my prayer is that we can become
again kindled into
covenantal communities,
feeling drawn together, bound together in
love and action.
That we can again be transformed
in order to transform.
