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.
Membership: Queries
How do I actively support the meeting community?
How do I support the Clerk of Meeting and clerks of committees?
How am I maturing into the fullness of membership in this
spiritual community?
How does meeting nurture my spiritual growth and
transformation?
Membership: Advices
Just as Friends have “affirmed the priesthood of all believers” so
we also affirm that each Friend, not just the clerk, has a direct
responsibility for the meeting. As we are all ministers of the Word,
so we all are ministers to each other and to the community as a
whole. As members of a community we look not to our rights,
liberties and privileges, but to our obligations, responsibilities, and
our duties.
Membership in the Religious Society of Friends is a spiritual
commitment. To become a member, an applicant should have
come experientially into general agreement with the Society’s
principles of belief and testimonies.
Membership carries with it spiritual obligations. Each member
is called to participate in the Meeting’s spiritual life and to attend
worship regularly. Members need to nurture each other’s Godgiven
gifts and talents. They seek guidance from one another and
the Meeting in discerning God’s will for themselves. They pray for
one another.
The basic spiritual commitment creates practical obligations.
The vitality of each Monthly Meeting depends on its members’
investments of time, energy and financial support. Friends put
practical meaning into their spiritual commitment through regular
participation in meetings for business, service on committees or
as officers, regular financial giving, taking part in service projects
under the care of the Meeting, assisting in maintenance of Meeting
property, and representing the Meeting in community and wider
Friends’ organizations.
Membership: Voices
For as in one body we have many members, and not all members
have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ,
and individually we are members one of another.
Romans 12:4-5 (NRSV)
So the measuring line of righteousness is in this known; . . . So
wait to know every particular of yourselves, to be heirs of this;
and know your portion, the power of God, the gospel fellowship,
then are ye members one of another, and living stones, that build
up the spiritual household.
Fox, Epistle 239
When early Friends affirmed the priesthood of all believers it
was seen as an abolition of the clergy; in fact it is an abolition of
the laity. All members are part of the clergy and have the clergy’s
responsibility for the maintenance of the meeting as a community.
This means helping to contribute, in whatever ways are most
suitable, to the maintenance of an atmosphere in which spiritual
growth and exploration are possible for all.
Britain Yearly Meeting 11.01
Like all discipleships, membership has its elements of
commitment and responsibility but it is also about joy and
celebration. Membership is a way of saying to the meeting that
you feel at home, and in the right place. Membership is also a way
of saying to the meeting, and to the world, that you accept at least
the fundamental elements of being a Quaker: the understanding
of divine guidance, the manner of corporate worship and the
ordering of the meeting’s business, the practical expression of
inward convictions and the equality of all before God. In asking to
be admitted into the community of the meeting you are affirming
what the meeting stands for and declaring your willingness to
contribute to its life.
Britain Yearly Meeting 11.01
Membership is costly … It is not just about belonging, feeling
accepted, feeling at home. It has also to do with being stretched,
being challenged, being discomforted … We can never be entirely
sure of where the venture will lead us … [but] the one thing we
can be sure of is that the process, taken seriously, will call us to
change.
Helen Rowlands, 1952
Membership does not require great moral or spiritual
achievement, but it does require a sincerity of purpose and a
commitment to Quaker values and practices. Membership is a
spiritual discipline, a commitment to the well-being of one’s
spiritual home and not simply appearance on a membership roll.
Britain Yearly Meeting 11.01
Entry into membership of the Religious Society of Friends is a
public acknowledgement of a growing unity with a community of
people whose worship and service reflect, however imperfectly,
their perception of discipleship and their recognition of the work
of the Holy Spirit in the world. This unity is grounded in the
experience of being ‘gathered’ in the love of God in the silent
expectancy of our meetings for worship and in a willingness to
surrender ourselves to a corporate seeking for the will of God in
such measure as we can comprehend it.
Britain Yearly Meeting 11.04
Membership in a Quaker meeting is a spirit-led journey of
coming to know ourselves as individual-in-community, a journey
on which we experience meeting as a place of acceptance, a place
of shared values, a place of transformation, and a place of
obedience.
Thomas Gates, 2004
Worthiness has nothing to do with membership. God has already
accepted us in our imperfection and is loving us forward toward
a more perfect image of God’s self. The real issue in membership
is commitment on the part of both the meeting and the applicant
to remain faithful to the development and requirements of the
process within Quaker tradition.
Patricia Loring, 1997
As Quakers, we have no creed to recite, no confession to confess,
no rituals to undergo that will reliably bring us into the fullness of
membership. But we do have a rich and inspiring tradition; we
have each other; and we have the Spirit of God which, we are
promised, will “lead us into all things.”
Thomas Gates, 2004
The servant-leader can be effective only where the principle of
leading by serving is knit into the whole fabric of the institution.
Everyone who is part of the community must accept the principle
in his or her own life; it must be the basis for the novitiate-period
of anyone coming into the institution.
Paul A. Lacey, 1982
And oh, how sweet and pleasant it is to the truly spiritual eye to
see several sorts of believers, several forms of Christians in the
school of Christ, every one learning their own lesson, performing
their own peculiar service, and knowing, owning, and loving one
another in their several places and different performances to their
Master, to whom they are to give an account, and not quarrel with
one another about their different practices.
Isaac Penington, 1659
The Inward Light is a universal light given to all men, religious
consciousness itself being basically the same wherever it is found.
Our difficulties come when we try to express it. We cannot express;
we can only experience God. Therefore we must always remember
tolerance, humility, and tenderness with others whose ways and
views may differ from ours.
Pacific Yearly Meeting, 1953
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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