In the 21st century, how do yearly meetings practice corporate discernment?
In most cases, new pieces of business rise from yearly meeting committees, though they can come from monthly or regional meetings. The question at hand is first explained in some kind of written form, in a document that’s sent by email to the Friends who have registered for the yearly meeting gathering. Monthly meetings can also access these documents ahead of yearly meeting, theoretically, and consider them in worship, but most don’t—perhaps because they don’t have time, perhaps because the pieces of business aren’t thoroughly explained, or perhaps because the proposals don’t feel relevant.
When the yearly meeting gathering happens, Friends in attendance—often fewer than 2% of the number of members of the yearly meeting—hear an ultra-refined version of the proposal at hand. Some committee or group of people has worked hard to develop a presentation that will be as clear as possible while not taking up too much time on the agenda. The body then has a few minutes—ten, maybe twenty, an hour for something really big—to consider the matter in worship.
The Friends gathered (again, often fewer than 2% of the number of members of the yearly meeting) discern way forward as faithfully as they’re able, given limited time and numbers and information. A minute is written. Friends in local meetings who were not present at yearly meeting gathering may or may not eventually hear about whatever the decision was. When they do, they may or may not feel it has anything to do with them.
Generally speaking, every person in the system I’ve outlined above is doing the absolute best they can, and generally they all have honorable intentions. There are, however, several fundamental flaws within the system—things that don’t function well organizationally and/or aren’t consistent with Quaker theology. I’m going to point out a few. Perhaps you’ll think of more.
First—new items of business often arise from yearly meeting committees. There’s nothing really wrong with that if the committee is making a proposal that’s consistent with the work they’ve specifically been charged to do and if that charge is consistent with the discernment of the whole yearly meeting. But often, one or both of those things is not the case, which means that the yearly meeting is suddenly considering a proposal that’s coming from a very small group of Friends and hasn’t had any yearly-meeting-wide discernment before appearing on the agenda.
Second—the question at hand is explained in written form ahead of time, in some form of advance documents, and this is often the first and only time that most Friends will hear about it before beginning corporate discernment at the yearly meeting gathering. We talk about items of business as having been “seasoned” by the committee that presents it, and what we usually mean by that is that the idea has been questioned and developed and prayed over and refined. Which is good. But there’s something I’m wondering about seasoning. It seems to me as though the process of seasoning a proposal actually has two purposes. One is to prepare the proposal. The other is to prepare our hearts and minds to accept it. When we’re called to some new thing by God, those of us who aren’t part of the seasoning process often struggle to accept the idea. Because we have missed the formative process. Even if the proposal may be perfect, we have not been given the benefit of the journey to that perfection, and therefore, we’re not in a place to approve it.
Third—monthly meetings often don’t consider matters of business before the yearly meeting sessions. If those Friends who attend yearly meeting are supposed to be discerning on behalf of the whole yearly meeting body, surely those Friends who are present should have some sense of how the non-present 98% of the body is feeling about the particular matter at hand, even if they are not intended to function as literal representatives of their monthly meetings. But they often have no idea what other Friends feel. So they’re not really doing discernment that takes into consideration the wisdom and leadings of the whole yearly meeting. They’re doing discernment that represents the 2%…not because they’re unfaithful but because that’s all they have access to.
Fourth—the time available on the yearly meeting agenda is so limited that Friends hear only a brief overview of the proposals, then have limited time to hold those proposals in worship. We Friends say that things happen in God’s time, not our time, and God’s time is not necessarily slow. Nor is God’s time always containable in a period of twenty minutes. Moreover, there’s a natural tendency toward anxiety and conflict because there are a few Friends who have had much longer than twenty minutes to hold the proposal in worship…namely, the Friends who are making the proposal. For them, the moment in business meeting is often the culmination of months or years of labor. It is almost impossible for a group that has been through that amount of work and discernment to have patience for a larger group that’s doing the best it can but is, ultimately, still in a very early stage of the discernment process, working through initial emotional reactions and very basic logistical questions. We also all know that either the thing must be approved today or it must wait for months or even a full year until the next opportunity. No matter how spiritually mature and centered we might be, that’s a lot of pressure.
Fifth—the minute that is eventually approved and sent to monthly meetings feels distant to Friends who weren’t present at the yearly meeting gathering. These Friends haven’t just had limited time to discern. They haven’t had any time at all. And yet, this minute is said to represent the yearly meeting’s discernment. Is it any wonder that Friends who aren’t active in their yearly meeting gatherings and committee structures often feel that yearly meetings are some other thing unrelated to them? But we know that’s not meant to be the case. The yearly meeting is meant to be a covenant community engaged in corporate discernment and mutual care.
On the whole, I really question our 21st century institutional systems and whether our yearly meetings, as currently designed, have any ability to fulfill their purpose, which is to support the entire yearly meeting’s corporate discernment and to provide an institutional structure that can implement that discernment after it’s done.
But people don’t design flawed systems on purpose. We do things the way we do them for a reason. I have some guesses about how we got where we are.
Why do new items of business often arise from yearly meeting committees? Because the Friends on these committees have a legitimate spiritual leading to do work among Friends in a broader setting than their local meetings. And yearly meeting committee service is the most obvious way to do that.
Why are new items of business distributed in written form, pre-seasoned by committees? Because we know there isn’t time to start from scratch when the yearly meeting gathering happens, and this is the most obvious method available to get a head start on the discernment and save time.
Why do monthly meetings usually not consider items of business before yearly meeting gatherings? Because there’s no sensible reason to do so. Friends in local meetings are smart enough to know that if a local meeting does do such discernment, there is no pathway built into our systems by which their discernment can make any difference to the ultimate decision. A monthly meeting might write a minute of support or objection. Or a Friend from that monthly meeting might attend yearly meeting and express that support or objection in worship. But ultimately, this carries very little weight. Officially, it carries no weight at all. Because Friends’ discernment is done by those who are physically (or virtually) in the room at the time the proposal is presented. We can’t design the process otherwise because, if we do, Friends who are not in the room can hold us back from moving forward. That would be wrong because we know that new spiritual understanding often happens in the actual process of sitting in worship together.
Why is the time on the yearly meeting agenda so limited? Because we have so many items of business to get through and so few days to be together. Almost all work done by yearly meetings is done by committees (who need approval for significant actions) or by staff (who are given specific and limited scopes of authority). Each major action must be discerned on the floor of the yearly meeting gathering to move forward.
And why are minutes simply sent to local meetings afterward? Because by that stage in the process, there’s nothing else we can do.
The system by which yearly meetings function today simply doesn’t work very well. It is slow and often tedious and tends to represent the discernment of a relatively small number of self-selected people.
What’s the alternative? I can think of two, and I hope we’ll try both.
When there’s work that we know needs to be done, and when we’re all pretty clear on what that work is, it makes a lot of sense to employ staff. Yearly meetings that have enough resources already do. There are things I could say about job descriptions and ethical treatment of staff and what right relationship means in terms of our theology, and I intend to say those things, but on another day. Still—when it comes to running the website, or cutting checks, or providing emergency support to local meetings, or writing the newsletter, or organizing gatherings, or any one of a number of clear, specific, and necessary functions—staff seems to be an excellent solution.
But the other piece we’re missing is recognizing ministry.
Why do new items of business often arise from yearly meeting committees? Because the Friends on these committees have a legitimate spiritual leading to do work among Friends in a broader setting than their local meetings. And yearly meeting committee service is the most obvious way to do that.
But it’s not the only way. Because we could recognize ministry.
Ever since our historical period of divisions and reunifications, we have struggled with issues of trust and ministry. Committees are safer. We know what committees are going to do. We know that we have control over who serves on them. We know that if they want to take a major step, they’ll have to come back for our approval. We know that they’re likely to meet once a month and write reports and, in general, take steps that are relatively small and predictable. Because those are the steps that they can get approved.
Because committee service is our default form of work, most Friends called to work beyond their local meetings will join yearly meeting committees. But that’s not how we used to do it. It used to be that a Friend experiencing that call would bring the leading to their monthly meeting. They would ask for a travel minute. Friends would say “yes” or “no” or sometimes “wait.” That third option generally meant that the person wasn’t yet fully clear about their call or that we sensed they needed to learn more first. And usually, given a little time and spiritual discipline, that “wait” would become a “yes.”
The practice of ministry carries with it all kinds of implications. We have to have the spiritual strength and willingness to tell each other yes and no. We have to be willing to support ministry, to name and cultivate elders who are capable of nurturing ministry (even if we don’t record those elders), and to trust the ministers and hold them accountable. All of that is potentially quite scary, and yes, there’s room for things to go wrong.
But if we did it, how would yearly meetings function differently?
New items of business on yearly meeting agendas would never appear to come from nowhere. They’d come from monthly meetings, who’d be considering the matters in worship on a regular basis because they’d be sending and receiving traveling ministers. Those traveling ministers would be carrying concerns from one meeting to another. This travel could happen physically or virtually. Conversations would happen about new movements of Spirit over coffee, on walks, in cars, and in front of fireplaces. The ideas would be seasoned one meeting at a time, in the natural process of travel, and we ourselves would be seasoned by those ideas as that happened.
When a proposal was ready to come to the floor of the yearly meeting, having already been in business meetings in at least a few different monthly meetings and regional meetings, almost no one would be present who hadn’t already encountered the new idea. We would not be starting with the first twenty minutes of discernment. There’d be many conversations and periods of worship already in place. We’d know how Friends generally, across the yearly meeting, were feeling led. We’d be able to engage deeply, fully prepared.
The agenda would also be shorter. We would have given most of the routine work to staff and then trusted those staff members to do the work they’d been given. And our ministers would be trusted to do the work they were called to do, held accountable by their local meetings and/or support committees, probably reporting to us but not needing permission from the whole yearly meeting for each new step. Because we’ve discerned already that they are following a genuine call faithfully, and therefore, we trust the work they’re doing.
And when Friends in local meetings received minutes afterward, those Friends would recognize the decisions made at yearly meeting as the Spirit-led result of a long discernment process in which they themselves had been involved.
How do we get to this? By dismantling the assumption that the default response to a spiritual call is to make or join a committee. This wouldn’t be easy. Most monthly meetings have not recognized and supported a call to ministry in living memory. It is really, really hard to know how to do it—intellectually, but also spiritually and emotionally. It requires mutual trust and a willingness to hold each other accountable. Sometimes it requires financial support. These are areas that aren’t comfortable for many of us. We will make mistakes.
I still believe it’s an experiment worth trying. Most of us never laid down the concept of traveling ministry. We just stopped doing it. We can try again. Was it a perfect system? Heck, no, it wasn’t. But neither is the system that we’re trying to make work today.