THE MEETING AS COVENANT COMMUNITY pp. 61-72 (abridged) in Lloyd Lee Wilson, Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order. (2001) Quaker Press, Philadelphia, PA. Copied with permission of the author. The Quaker vision of Gospel Order includes an understanding of the monthly meeting as a covenant community, called into being and sustained by God. This understanding has profound implications for the way we live as a faith community as well as for the ways we teach newcomers about the Religious Society of Friends and incorporate new members into our meeting communities. The issues and implications of being a covenant community are highlighted in the ways we bring new persons into our fellowship because this is the time that every faith community tries to articulate what it believes about itself and its relationship to God. The divine-human covenant is a relationship initiated by God, to which we as human beings respond in faith. God has been reaching out for each one of us even before we began to seek Him out. Friends understanding of the monthly meeting as covenant community is that in the Gospel Order, God is calling individuals to live in covenant with Him and through that covenant in community with one another. Because of the covenant relationship we have with God through Christ we are enabled and equipped to live together as human beings in a way that witnesses to his relationship with us and serves as an outpost of the Kingdom of God on earth. In other communities of which we are a part, we choose to be in relationship with the members of the community, or choose to be a part of the community itself, in order to share in the community's identity. In the covenant community, we choose to be in relationship with God, and God gives us to one another and to the community. Our primary bond is to God, which makes the community itself resilient and capable of great healing. The crises and interpersonal failures which could destroy a human community become, in the covenant community, opportunities for the love of God to heal and reconcile us to one another, and for the community to witness about God's healing presence to the world. Friends in the non-pastoral or unprogrammed branches of Quakerism have both a special challenge and a special opportunity in the area of new membership, since the structure of an unprogrammed monthly meeting is least like the Protestant congregation with which most North Americans are familiar. The opportunity comes about because those who seek to join the meeting community are alerted by the unfamiliar organization, and are therefore prepared to learn that the meeting is different in important ways from the faith organizations with which they are familiar. However, the challenge is that without a pastor there may be no one in the unprogrammed meeting who has thought very long about how to communicate the fundamentals of a covenant community to newcomers or who has prepared herself to take on that task. In previous generations the monthly meeting was more self-contained as an economic and social entity, there were more birthright Friends than newly convinced Friends, and those who were convinced learned by absorbing the example of those who were more seasoned. In today's society, though, there is less opportunity for this "education by absorption," and newcomers are less willing to sit silently for a decade or so while the faith and practice of Quakerism "sinks in.".
Most new unprogrammed meetings and worship groups in recent years have been located in "university towns," where they draw heavily from the academic community. This suggests a homogeneity among the participants which, if true, should be troublesome to all of us. If our message is reaching the hearts of only one type of seeker, then either we are not witnessing to that Truth as fully as we ought or the message we are sharing is not the Gospel message of early Friends. The Valiant Sixty were convinced that the Quaker message was meant for all classes and cultures, and their converts demonstrated the truth of their conviction. A further complication, and one more central to the theme of this essay, is indicated by the small size of most unprogrammed meetings. Those meetings affiliated with Friends General Conference, the largest association of unprogrammed Friends, have a median size of less than 50 members. 5 A close look at the growth in the period 1975-1985 shows that most occurred in new meetings with 25 or fewer members, few if any of whom have any extensive experience of Friends outside of the meeting they now attend. New meetings are typically two hours or more by automobile from the nearest concentration of seasoned Friends, which limits the amount of informal visitation among meetings.. It is apparent that the challenge facing Friends is not how to attract new people but how to communicate the essence and essentials of our faith tradition in the face of two obstacles; one in the newcomers and one in our own meetings. First, many of the newcomers to meeting for worship may actually be reluctant to learn what we want to share; second, the membership of many unprogrammed meetings is itself sharply divided - splintered may be a better image - over what should be taught as Quaker faith and practice and who should be permitted to teach it. The personal history of many spiritual refugees makes them very sensitive to any reminder of the non-nurturing spiritual authority which they have escaped. The task is made more difficult by the scarcity of seasoned Friends in or even near many of the meetings where they are most needed. The corporate reluctance of many unprogrammed meetings to allow anyone to speak authoritatively about what Friends believe (where there are two Friends, there are three opinions) completes the conundrum. We agree wholeheartedly that what we've found among silent Friends is the most precious of jewels, yet are unwilling or unable to share the source of our good fortune with others. Friends are unable to speak clearly about the covenant nature of their community because they are not in complete unity about that covenant. Friends are proud - to a fault - that Quakerism is a "do-it-yourself" religion, resting fundamentally on the personal spiritual experience of each individual. We are uncomfortable with the notion that a diversity of spiritual gifts might mean that spiritual gifts are distributed unevenly. Paul wrote that God calls specific individuals to be teachers, but many Friends act as if that were not the case, preventing those who are in the position of teacher from teaching with the spiritual authority that was characteristic of the "primitive Christianity" Quakers intend to emulate. Everywhere around us God demonstrates a love of making each creature unique, yet we prefer to act as if each Quaker's spiritual gifts were precisely like those of every other Quaker. The writer of Ephesians emphasizes that the diversity of spiritual gifts builds the unity of the church, not weakens it, but Friends act as if the reverse were true. It is becoming increasingly difficult for "infant ministers" to name
and claim their spiritual gifts, or for meetings to find acceptable ways to recognize and nurture the gifts of the Spirit present among their members. Our response to these difficulties is too often a silent consensus not to talk about them - not to rock the boat. Those Friends who have been gifted in ways that would enable them to speak to the condition of newcomers are not empowered by their meeting community to do so. To the extent that these characteristics make it easier for Friends to offer a place of safety to spiritual refugees, they contribute to numerical church growth. If no one is speaking with clarity about who we are as a faith people, many newcomers will make the assumptions about Quakerism that make them personally most comfortable. The problem is that these same characteristics make it quite difficult for Friends to create the spiritual environment which will best nurture spiritual growth in us all. God loves us as we are, which is infinitely comforting. God also calls us to grow and change, to become more nearly that person we were created with the potential to be, which is infinitely loving but also sometimes disconcerting. Friends have done well in living out God's accepting love in our meeting communities; we have done less well living out God's call to each of us to grow in the faith. A refugee identifies with her old country, defining herself by the place she has fled. An immigrant identifies with her new country, defining herself by the norms and values of her adopted country. The challenge to those countries who accept refugees as permanent additions to the nation is to transmit the essential norms, attitudes and values of the receiving nation while preserving what is best of the heritage that refugees bring with them. Meeting this challenge is at times uncomfortable for both refugee and refuge provider. The same situation holds true in faith communities as in nations. In the attempt in our monthly meetings to provide the spiritually wounded refugee a safe sanctuary at all times, we may be creating a spiritual environment that actually stifles spiritual growth - our own as well as the newcomer's. Political refugees arriving in America are taught the English language (U.S.A. version), our national history, and our democratic system of government. The political refugee is expected to adopt our political perspective in order to assume the full responsibilities and enjoy the full rights of citizenship. Each one enriches our country with his or her unique heritage and life experience, in the context of having adopted our political values. As Quakers we should be teaching the spiritual refugees who come to us the peculiar Quaker language and the history (often recorded in human suffering) of our spiritual ancestors, as well as our personal and corporate experience of Christ the Seed, Guide, Healer, Counselor and Redeemer. We are not doing a good job at carrying out this responsibility, to our own detriment as well as that of newcomers to our meetings. The newcomer to Quakerism is all too often neither challenged nor encouraged to make the transition from refugee to "landed immigrant" - to make the switch in self-definition from the experiences he has left behind to the experience that now invites him onward. Many persons continue in a sort of spiritual huddle for years, never growing beyond the negative experiences of earlier years, never being healed, never becoming whole enough to enter unreservedly into the Presence of the Risen Lord anew. We are unable to help these persons find what they need because we have no common vision of what that might be. When we lack, as a faith community, a shared vision of what is essential to our corporate faith experience, we are unable to teach newcomers what it means to be a Quaker. Without a shared vision of who we are as a faith people, we are unable to invite others to join us.
A frequent explanation I hear for this "benign neglect" of spiritual formation for those new to Quakerism is that by being explicit about what Quakers believe - or at the very least, what we have believed for most of our history as a gathered people - we may frighten away those who are still bleeding from past wounds. This argument is circumvented so easily that one comes quickly to look past it for deeper reasons. Surely being explicit about our faith in and experience of the One who George Fox called the Great Physician, Healer, Comforter, and Counselor will not frighten away those persons in need of healing, comfort, and counsel who want to be healed and comforted. In reality, I believe we are reluctant to speak our beliefs clearly because the effort to do so will force us to face unresolved issues in our own faith journey. We are reluctant to allow others the freedom of their beliefs for the same reason. Whether we are seeking ways to minister to the spiritual refugees who seek us out or are seeking to foster spiritual growth among those already in membership, we need to ask ourselves and each other the question, "What is our vision of the monthly meeting? Is it a covenant gathering or human community?" Is the root of our life the Risen Christ, or is it the love and warmth we have for one another in this self-isolated community? The healthy meeting is always a mixture of both divine covenant and human community: the vertical and horizontal aspects of the Cross. It is the covenant relationship, however, that inspires and enables us to live in human community in spite of the many centrifugal forces that seek to separate us. The presence of a covenant relationship exerts a profound influence over the way we deal with disappointment and pain in our relationships within the community. The individual whose commitment to the community is based on a sense that these community members are somehow special human beings, who have the right concerns and values and live the right lives, will find great difficulty when members of the community fail to live up to these standards and expectations. Being human, we all fail repeatedly to live up to our own standards and expectations, and are bound to disappoint other people" on occasion. If one's commitment to a community is a human commitment to the individuals in it, because they are the right people in some way, the community will be shattered when the individuals fail to live up to their ideals. In contrast, the individual whose commitment is based on an acceptance of a covenant relationship with God has a different reaction to these inevitable pains and disappointments. The covenant relationship says that we are given in relationship to each other precisely in order to help one another through these painful times, into a fuller relationship with God and one another. What is a centrifugal force in one case is a bonding experience among a covenant people. Our individual sins and failures become opportunities for the community to practice true loving forgiveness, to offer spiritual counsel and guidance, and to offer spiritual and emotional healing. It is precisely the imperfect, human nature of the people in a covenant community that gives it the opportunity to witness to the redeeming love of Christ, through the redeeming love we have for one another in Christ. The way we deal with spiritual refugees, and what that discloses about our own conditions, leads me to believe that many Friends meetings have overemphasized those aspects of our common life which are human community, to the neglect of our experience of the meeting community as the living out of a covenant with God. While in the short run this shift in
emphasis may seem like the best way to invite others to join in our common life and feel immediately comfortable, in the long run neglecting our Divine Covenant not only curtails our numerical growth but keeps those who stay in the meeting from achieving their divine potential. For every person who stays in the meeting community because it does not emphasize the life-changing nature of our covenant relationship with God, there is another who tries our fellowship and leaves quickly because we are apparently not serious enough about our spiritual life. When we understand the monthly meeting to be a human community of like-minded and like-hearted individuals who share an affinity for silent worship and certain social concerns, newcomers and growth will be threatening. Growth under these conditions means bringing strangers into the circle of friends who I trust most deeply; newcomers mean hearing new perspectives on favorite causes from people who can't possibly understand because they haven't been a part of "my" meeting all these years. Growth means hearing vocal ministry during meeting for worship that is decidedly different from the mainstream of this meeting. When we cling to the idea of "our" monthly meeting or "our" yearly meeting, we consciously or unconsciously become defensive about change: and newcomers always mean change. We may talk about how Quakerism is only appropriate for a certain type of person, or rationalize our behavior in any of a number of different ways, but we are protecting ourselves against change. Other people can perceive this defensiveness, and they will and do act accordingly. When we give up ownership and celebrate the ways the Lord is working in his meeting, we give up being defensive and begin to act in ways that invite others to join our fellowship. The covenant meeting is always the Lord's meeting first; members trust the Lord to take care of his meeting, and therefore spend less time being defensive and more time celebrating the ways the Lord is at work in his meeting. Growth is frightening when we think of the Friends meeting primarily as a place and time where we are rested, sheltered, and restored after a time of struggle against the forces of the world. This happens when one sees the world as the primary reality, and the meeting as a resource for dealing with that reality. We adopt a refugee mentality ourselves about the meeting, which encourages others to remain refugees. At its best, the meeting community becomes a sanctuary from the world; at its worst, it becomes a refugee camp. When we understand meeting to be a Covenant experience, everything is different. Each of us is in a Covenant relationship with the Lord, drawn in by his initiative and put in relationship with one another through our common bond to God. Meeting becomes a divine Potter's wheel, where we are shaped into that form which as yet exists only in the mind of God. Like clay thrown by a human potter, we become of value only as we yield to the Potter's hand and are then taken from the wheel to be put into service. Meeting is not a place of shelter from the world so much as a place where we are shaped in order to become God's instrument in the world. The primary reality is our relationship with God, and the world is an arena in which that relationship is lived out. When meeting is understood to be primarily a human community, the unusual is threatening. Newcomers are unusual by definition, and most visitors can feel this sense of threat; they respond by not coming back. Some few, those who are least different from the people who are already in the community, stay to become members themselves. When meeting is understood to be a Covenant experience, the unusual is God breaking into our
lives in a new way - cause for celebration! Visitors to a Covenant meeting are given a truly heartfelt welcome, and are more likely to want to come back again. When we live in a Covenant relationship with God and one another, we offer the spiritual refugees who come to our meetings far more than shelter from the storm - we offer a path to a transforming relationship with the One who makes all things new, who makes of each one of us a new creation in Christ. The path to genuine, Spirit-led and Spirit-fed growth in our meetings lies not in contriving to make our meetings as comfortable and nonthreatening as possible to those who may visit, but in accepting with joy the covenant relationship with God that is expressed in the meeting to which one belongs. The most convincing argument one can humanly give to another about the healing, peace and joy that comes from giving up one's refugee mentality and entering into the Divine Covenant is the simple testimony of one's own life, lived in that same covenant.