These Voices, Advices and Queries have yet to be approved by Baltimore Yearly Meeting. Your comments to the Faith and Practice Revision Committee would be appreciated.
Meeting for Business: Queries
Are our meetings for worship with a concern for business
held in the spirit of worship, seeking the guidance of God?
In what ways do we each take our right share of
responsibility in the service of the meeting?
Meeting for Business: Advices
Participation in the meeting for worship with a concern
for business is the responsibility of all. Come with open minds,
seeking the spirit, listening carefully, discerning the truth in what
others have to offer. Proceed with forbearance and warm affection
for each other. If you cannot attend, prayerfully uphold the meeting.
We do not seek a majority decision nor even consensus.
As we wait patiently for God's guidance, our experience is that
way will open and we shall be led into unity. Speak only when
God gives you new insight into the matter at hand. Think it
possible that you may be mistaken.
Meeting for Business: Voices
So Friends are not to meet like a company of people
about town or parish business, neither in their men's nor
women's meetings, but to wait upon the Lord; and feeling his power
and spirit to lead them, and order them to his glory; that so
whatsoever they may do, they may do it to the praise and glory of God, and
in unity in the faith, and in the spirit, and in fellowship in the
order of the gospel;
George Fox, 1674
And that all may be careful to speak short and pertinent
to matters in a Christian spirit, and dispatch business quickly, and
keep out of long debates and heats; and with the spirit of
God keep that down, which is doting about questions and strife
of words, that tend to parties and contention: which in the
church of God there is no such custom to be allowed. And likewise
not to speak more than one at a time; nor any in a fierce way; for
that is not to be allowed in any society, neither natural nor
spiritual; but as the apostle saith, `Be swift to hear, and slow to speak;'
and let it be in the grace, which seasons all words. . . .
George Fox, 1690
The meeting for the transaction of church business is
as distinctly a religious exercise as is the meeting for worship, but
it has a different objective. The meeting for worship is focused
upon the divine-human relationship and the meeting for business
is mainly concerned with inter-human cooperation, the two
being interdependent. From another point of view, the meeting
for worship concerns being while the meeting for business
concerns doing. What is implicit in worship becomes explicit in action.
The meeting for business should, therefore, be preceded by
a period of worship in which the hard shell of ego-centricity
is dissolved and the group united into a living whole. It is also
well to conclude the business meeting with a period of silent
devotion. George Fox wrote to Friends,
"Friends, keep your meetings in the power of God, and
in his wisdom (by which all things were made) and in the
love of God, that by that ye may order all to his glory. And
when Friends have finished their business, sit down and
continue awhile quietly and wait upon the Lord to feel him. And
go not beyond the Power, but keep in the Power by which
God Almighty may be felt among you… For the Power of the
Lord will work through all, if you follow it." (Ep. 162, 1658)
Howard H. Brinton, 1952
For the preservation of love, concord and a good decorum
in this meeting, 'tis earnestly desired that all business that
comes before it be managed with gravity and moderation, in much
love and Amity, without reflections or retorting, which is but
reasonable as well as comely, since we have no other obligation upon each
other but love, which is the very bond of our society: and
therein to serve the Truth and one another; having an eye single to
it, ready to sacrifice every private interest to that of Truth, and
the good of the whole community.
Wiltshire Quarterly Meeting,1678
Partly because of its rarity, sense of the meeting is a gift
of enormous worth, more valuable, perhaps, than any other
Quaker gift or practice. Quakers are not the only people who worship
in silence. They are not alone in waiting for continuing
revelation by attending to the Light within.... But where, except
among Friends, has the practice of discovering the sense of the
meeting become so entrenched?
Barry Morley, 1993
Friends have traditionally so valued the fruit of
group discernment that they have been willing to labor hard and
to wait long to come into unity with one another before
proceeding in a matter of substance.
Patricia Loring, 1992
Our meetings for church affairs, in which we conduct
our business, are also meetings for worship based on silence, and
they carry the same expectation that God's guidance can be
discerned if we are truly listening together and to each other, and are
not blinkered by preconceived opinions. It is this belief that
God's will can be recognised through the discipline of silent
waiting which distinguishes our decision-making process from the
secular idea of consensus. We have a common purpose in seeking
God's will through waiting and listening, believing that every
activity of life should be subject to divine guidance.
This does not mean that laughter and a sense of humour
should be absent from our meetings for church affairs. It does mean
that at all times there should be an inward recollection: out of
this will spring a right dignity, flexible and free from pomp
and formality.
Britain Yearly Meeting, 3.02
We sometimes overlook that meetings for business are
also meetings for worship, even as Friends' weddings and
memorial meetings are meetings for worship. Thus meetings for
business are subject to the same kinds of abuse and require the same
kind of nurture and discipline as meetings for worship. ... The
Quaker business meeting is as dependent on the sensitivity, good
will, and spiritual readings of its participants as is meeting for worship.
Barry Morley, 1993
 Spiritual discernment lies at the heart of Quaker
spirituality and practice. It's grounded in the central Quaker conviction
of the availability to every person of the experience and
guidance of God, immediate as well as mediated. Discernment is the
faculty we use to distinguish the true movement of the Spirit to speak
in meeting for worship from the wholly human urge to share,
to instruct, or to straighten people out. It is the capacity we
exercise in a centered meeting for worship for the conduct of business
to sense the right course for the meeting to take in complex
or difficult circumstances. It is the ability to see into
people, situations, and possibilities to identify what is of God in
them and what is of the numerous other sources in ourselves _
and what may be both. It is that fallible, intuitive gift we use
in attempting to discriminate the course to which we are
personally led by God in a given situation, from our other impulses and
from the generalized judgments of conscience.
Patricia Loring, 1992
In some people this gift [of discernment] may be given
or developed to an unusual degree. Part of the Quaker
experience, however, has been that we all have been given some measure
of the gift of discernment. In a life lived with other priorities,
the gift may be left undeveloped. But as we grow and are faithful
to the spiritual life we may well be given more.
Patricia Loring, 1992
Consensus _ a secular method, involving a rational
process and producing general agreement. The authority is the group.
Sense of the Meeting _ a religious method involving a
spiritual process and producing a spirit-led decision. The authority is
God as discerned by the group in worship.
Arthur Larabee, Clerking Workshop
Consensus is the product of willfulness. We will ourselves to
a decision. Sense of the Meeting is a product of willingness in
which we allow ourselves to be led. It is the difference between
reason and faith.
Barry Morley, 1993
Central to the Quaker understanding of unity-based
decision making is Fox's idea that there is "that of God in every
one." When a group of believers comes together to deliberate
about the best way to serve God here and now, each looks to find
in others some manifestation of "that of God," and looks for
the mark of the Spirit of Christ - Truth with a capital `T' - in
everyone else's remarks. In short, since the same Spirit speaks in
each heart, the members expect to end their meetings
united.
Michael J. Sheeran, 1996
Sense of the meeting is a gift. It came to the Quakers
through their commitment to continuing revelation. They discovered
that the Light which had come to teach the people could lead
them to revealed corporate decisions. The Quakers cherished the
gift. They handed it down as a spiritual heirloom from generation
to generation, even as the Jews hand down their covenant
with God.
Barry Morley, 1993
These Voices, Advices and Queries have yet to be approved by Baltimore Yearly Meeting. Your comments to the Faith and Practice Revision Committee would be appreciated.
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