This week...

Sorry the blog has been so dark this week.
I took a few days a went down to the coast with the family to a Quaker Pastor's retreat.
It was great to be there, great to feel so very welcomed... I was honored that they would have me come speak to them, though to be honest, I felt a little silly speaking to men and women who mostly had a good ten or twenty years on me (with a few with twice that!) about pastoring and church.
I hope what I brought was helpful... I ended up working through the "Escape From Consumer Church" story the first session (what we're moving away from), talked the second session about being a Gospel centered, missional church (What we're moving towards- we preach the Gospel to ourselves so we can preach it to our communities so we as a community can preach it to the world, and we live as aliens and strangers- completely "in" our cities, but very different than...), and then walking through what a missional church does in the 3rd  session- mostly stuff we're still trying to figure out/do @ evergreen.

They were gracious and honestly interested in what we're doing @ evergreen. My sense was that though they are much further down the road than most evangelicals in terms of things like a concern for justice, peace and working out the role of women in ministry (in fact, I have a feeling that the emerging church has been ripping off the Quakers for some years now), they still struggle with being an "established" group with some older churches/programs that no longer serve the function they were designed to serve and are struggling with how to move ahead into the future.

One area where the Quakers have already tread the path and learned the lessons that many in the emerging church are in process with- the role of Pastors. In the 16/1700's the Quakers did away with the role of "Pastor" for a time... until it became clear to them that done right, the role of pastor, and paying someone to be free to devote themselves to it, is a net-positive for the church.
They have some interesting lingo for those who are in vocational ministry... "they are "released." That is, they are set free to work for the community. (I was asked- "Are you bi-vocational, or are you released?")

It's funny- people who have visited Evergreen have noted certain Quaker-esque tendencies in our community, and after being with them, I could see/say that in many ways, we could be very at home with the evangelical Friends.

Though, we'd probably need to still use bread/wine @ communion and actual water in baptism :)

Comments

[Rick]

Really cool to connect with folks who seem to have gone there before, isn't it. Thanks for sharing - good stuff.

[starla]

Ah, but silence. Silence is something else we need to steal.

[Bob]

We had us some this week! :)

[anj]

In the emerging church I was a part of in Australia, they openly ripped off the Quakers, and I would think, in the US, the influence on the emerging church, of John Wimber and the Vineyard is very real. JW was a Quaker pastor before he was the founder of the Vineyard. Having been a part of the Vineyard, then in an emerging church in Australia, it seemed very natural to become a Friend when we moved back to the US. Thanks for your post.