Ministry Spotlights
In Ministry Spotlights, we ask experienced Quaker ministers to share advice for less experienced ministers.
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Deborah Shaw
Deborah’s ministry is:
Accompanying others on their spiritual journeys.
Validating physical manifestations of “Spirit poured on flesh.”
Listening in tongues and offering a compassionate, non-judgmental heart to others.
Practicing the presence of God with individuals, small groups, and through leading retreats and serving as an elder in various ways and settings.
Deborah advises that new Quaker ministers:
Bring your open heart and your whole self, body/mind/spirit, to every encounter.
Jon Watts
My ministry has taken a number of different forms. I had a ministry of songwriting and performance for about a decade. Then I founded the QuakerSpeak YouTube channel and ran it for 6 years. At that time, my ministry was listening and interviewing. Now I run Thee Quaker Project, and my ministry is building a platform to increase the visibility of others' ministries. Each iteration of my vocation has had particular ways in which it felt like a "ministry" (and ways it didn't!), but the throughline is probably "faithful media creation".
My best advice for someone called into ministry is probably to find a Quaker community that knows how to properly do gifts and leadings. After wandering in the wilderness for a while, I now have a Meeting with the spiritual infrastructure that supports members called to ministry. It is a game-changer! I meet with my support and accountability group once a month, and they provide the grounding and focused spiritual support that I don't get elsewhere. This is very important as you embark on a new calling, especially one that might put you in the spotlight!
Ashley M. Wilcox
Ministry: Connecting & Supporting Ministers
My ministry has taken many forms over the years, including speaking, starting a church, writing a book, and founding Public Friends.
When I first started out, people would ask, “Is your ministry blogging? Or is it traveling ministry? Or organizing events?” All I could say was, “Yes.”
As I continued in ministry, themes emerged, especially connecting people from the different branches of Friends and supporting women in ministry.
Advice: Your Authority comes from God, and the world needs you to step into your Authority.
All ministry comes from the same Source, though the forms may change over time. Don't be afraid to try different things as you feel God leading you.
Lloyd Lee Wilson
I have been a “public Friend” for nearly five decades now, in one way or another. During all that time, I have been reluctant to name or claim any activity as “my” ministry. This hesitation has two roots: first, that naming some known activity(ies) as my ministry risks my not being open and attentive when the Holy Spirit is calling me to do something new; and second, that claiming some ministry as “mine” risks forgetting Whose ministry it really is. The One who calls us into ministry also gifts us, for the time, with the gifts and ability to accomplish the task being assigned.
If one asks retrospectively “what sorts of things has thee done in public ministry,” the answer would include serving as General Secretary of Friends General Conference and as director of the Friends Community Project in New England; serving as yearly meeting clerk and treasurer and clerk of multiple monthly meetings; writing three books of my own and chapters in several anthologies on various Quaker topics, as well as numerous pamphlets and magazine articles; and leading numerous Quaker workshops, retreats and other gatherings across the country. I’ve traveled extensively across the USA and Canada, both in the old style under a travel minute issued by my monthly meeting and endorsed by my yearly meeting, and in the newer “invitational ministry” style of being invited to visit a particular group of Friends in a particular way (to give a lecture, offer a workshop, etc.) - also under the authority and accountability of a travel minute. For years, as I left home on any of these occasions, my wife, Susan, has admonished me, “Remember, thee has no idea why thee is going there.”
Don't be afraid to fail.
There is much more to be learned about the gospel ministry from one apparent failure than from multiple apparent successes. Spend time with thy failures, trying to understand how thee could have better discerned whether this was thy task to take on, how thee could have been even more faithful in thy calling, in recognizing what thee might have done differently.
I am fully persuaded that God does not count our failures, but rejoices in our repeated efforts to be faithful, to be an effective tool in God’s hands.