It has dawned on me that similar reflection can be turned on vocal ministry in our meeting for worship. Why am I touched by some messages but not others? I confess that the impetus for writing this is my experience that much speaking in meeting is not Spirit-led but shallow and self-centered. I have been troubled by why I "feel" this way.
There is a lot in Quaker literature about the Source of vocal ministry or how one is led to speak, but little about vocal ministry as experienced. I suspect this is because we are cautioned not to be judgmental. But vocal ministry is meant for us to hear and be improved by, so it seems entirely a valid question – how do we experience vocal ministry and how do we sense true ministry?
I crave ministry that inspires me, teaches me, encourages me and reproves me. I long for ministry that makes me a better person, more committed to doing what God requires of me. I also long for prayer. How do I sense the voice of God in the message?
I think a there is a clue to true ministry in the most psychologically insightful phrase in all of George Fox's writings: "...a voice...that can speak to thy condition." There is someone in meeting who speaks occasionally, often emotionally, sometimes at length, but whose messages have seldom touched me. One day I put my finger on why: the person usually spoke about themselves – their pain, their struggle, their experience. From this I have come to believe that true ministry is not about one's own condition, it speaks to the condition of others. If this be true, then to minister one has to be finely tuned to the condition of the meeting for worship and its attenders. How? By deep listening.
True ministry is grounded in listening before speaking. A couple of months ago, someone posed a question in meeting for worship about something that had been troubling them. Of the six speakers that followed, three completely ignored the question and gave messages on different topics. This failure to hear others is what leads to our "popcorn" meetings. Meeting for worship can rarely "gather" when distracted by these "one-off" messages. I had the same experience myself last May in asking a question of the meeting. Of the eight speakers that followed, none – NONE! – spoke to what I had asked. They all came with their own things to say. None spoke to what was troubling me and my family. They hadn't heard, hadn't listened, hadn't cared.
There is also a cumulative power in ministry that builds as one message flows from one to the other, when it seems like there is a gathering unity of revelation. But too often someone rises to stick something in that doesn't fit, and the spell is broken. True ministry speaks "deep to deep."
One less troubling but more common problem is the recycling of old messages, those automatically accepted, politically correct advices of Quakerdom that have been endlessly repeated over the years. Repetition is spiritually deadening. Teach me something new. Inspire me with unique vision. Shape me with exhortation or reproof, but don't tell me something I heard many times before.
We make too much of our personal experiences. Many seem to think the content of ministry doesn't matter, as long as it is about one's experience. But true ministry is about something beyond ourselves. True, our faith, our practice, our conviction is grounded in our experience. But true ministry is not about our experience. Making too much of our own experience is merely speaking of ourselves.
The last thought is on "third party ministry". Probably the most infamous example in our meeting came from several years ago when someone rose to say, "I was reading Kierkegard the other day..." In my angst-ridden twenties, I too read Kierkegard but doing so never deepened my spirituality. "Third party ministry" is usually criticized because it is not of one's own experience. This is a fallacious criticism. The real reason to be skeptical of "third party ministry" lies in the fact that if the original "third party" was not Spirit-led, no amount of laundering with pious Quaker jargon can make the message Spirit-given. We quote Woolman profitably and such quotes are "third party" ministry. What is the difference? Anyone who has read Woolman carefully recognizes he was Spirit-led, and his experience of the Spirit inspires us to seek the same Spirit. His testimony is true ministry, even though "third party."
I apologize for the length of this. I kind of want to apologize to those whom this may offend. But I won't. I think the question of proper ministry has to be raised to deepen our meeting for worship. If you are offended, I will carefully listen to your concern.
I did have a reservation about putting this forward, that in raising the bar of ministry I would too much discourage ministry. This is a real danger because a meeting that goes totally silent eventually goes dead. However, a meeting cluttered by too much self-led speaking isn't exactly spiritually rich either. But there is a more important issue – how do we prepare ourselves to be true ministers? I want to speak to that next time.
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