Thoughts on being a Quaker in the 21st century
Hi, folks -
a couple of readers pointed out that I had omitted Northwest Yearly Meeting from my review of web sites. It was completely accidental, and I apologize. Northwest Yearly Meeting has a top-notch web site which easily ties for Best Evangelical Web Site. I have edited the fact pages to include this great site!
- Josh
I started looking at yearly meeting web sites out of curiosity. My monthly meeting is part of the New Association of Friends who are no longer part of Indiana Yearly Meeting, and we are setting up a web site this spring. I thought I’d look at what other yearly meetings have done and see what works and what’s attractive.
Nearly all yearly meetings in North America have a web site – that’s a big change from 10 years ago, when web sites were still new to many church organizations. There’s a lot of variation among Quaker sites, both in appearance and features. After visiting 8 or 10 yearly meeting sites I started making notes, which turned into a full-fledged review.
I wound up visiting the web sites for 34 yearly meetings in North America, most of them several times. I covered Friends from all across the spectrum – FGC, FUM, Evangelical, Conservative and independent, plus Britain Yearly Meeting for good measure. If I missed yours, I’m sorry – let me know, and I’ll be happy to check it out. Click here for a chart of all the features I checked, or click here for specific comments about each site I visited.
Full disclosure: I am not a professional web site designer, or even that much of a computer geek. I spend a lot of time on the Internet, mainly on religious/spiritual sites.
What are the differences? Some yearly meeting web sites are more visually attractive than others. Some have more features. Most of all, some web sites have a better flavor – after visiting them, you feel you’d like to meet the people connected with them. Other sites are a total turn-off – which is a pity, since the Friends behind them are probably quite nice.
Think of me as a “mystery shopper” – someone who drifts in quietly and makes notes, sort of like the Michelin guide. Most of my comments are subjective, but they’re not personal. If I didn’t like your yearly meeting’s web site, that doesn’t mean I don’t like you.
In today’s world, your web site is your front door. It’s the first place people look for you! They want to find basic information, and they usually want to find it quickly. If it isn’t there, they’ll go away in a matter of seconds.
Appearance matters. With the tools available today, any site can be colorful, well-organized and visually attractive. There’s no excuse for unreadable print, photos which are out of focus, or text which scrolls off the edge of the screen.
So does navigation – how you find things and move from one section of the site to the other. As a rule of thumb, most professional designers say that nothing on a web site should be more than 3 clicks away. If you have to burrow down through layers of links which don’t make intuitive sense, your visitors will leave. Many of the yearly meeting sites I visited also have links which are outdated or lead nowhere – there are simple tools available to check this!
Who is the site for? This is the single biggest question a web designer needs to answer. Is the web site mainly for members of the yearly meeting – “insiders” who already know the organization? Or is the web site mainly there to attract seekers, visitors, or new Friends – “outsiders”? Most yearly meeting web sites are hybrids, trying to serve both groups on a single site.
Many sites would make little or no sense to a non-Friend – they’re filled with acronymns, Quaker jargon, and references to programs and gatherings which mean nothing to an outsider. It’s a good idea to have a skeptical non-Quaker look over your site and say, “What’s that mean? What do those initials stand for? Who cares about that?” Pay attention, and make some changes. Your site will improve!
The sites for Evangelical yearly meetings tend to handle this issue better. Theologically and practically, they want new people to join, and they don’t mind if visitors aren’t already Quakers – in fact, they expect it! It’s an attitude which is reflected in the whole look and feel of their web site, and it’s something which other Friends need to work on. Visit MidAmerica Yearly Meeting to see how welcoming a web site can be.
Some hybrid sites have a login area which can be used by clerks, leaders or committee members to access documents and reports which are not for general circulation. “Member login” is unfriendly; “User login” is better. Better still is a navigation feature which directs this kind of user off the main page into a special area.
Many yearly meeting web sites have problems with consistency in appearance across all their pages. This happens when you try combine an “old” site (maybe only 3-5 years old) with a “new” home page. It may save time and effort, but it’s visually confusing for visitors who feel they’ve been booted off the site into a different place. Good sites use themes or style sheets to make sure all their pages have a similar appearance.
What’s under the hood? Most people who aren’t designers don’t care about the hidden computer code which powers the site. But there are significant differences, and to some extent you get what you pay for. The top-rated sites are custom built and professionally maintained. They’re expensive, and they’re full of well-designed features. The sites for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and Britain Yearly Meeting are good examples of expensive, complex projects where professional design and maintenance has paid off with a great site.
A large proportion of yearly meeting web sites today are built using pre-made or slightly customized themes from companies like Microsoft or services like WordPress. These can look very good with a little thought and effort. One of the best Conservative sites, Ohio Conservative Yearly Meeting, uses a WordPress design which perfectly and attractively expresses the simplicity which is dear to these Friends.
Color schemes can be too subtle as well as too garish. A number of sites use very pale colors to indicate hyperlinks, which can cause problems on laptops or when viewing the screen from an angle or in strong light. Give it a little contrast.
How long does it take your site to load? Several sites froze or locked up when I re-visited them. Some sites may be hosted on someone’s home PC or on a badly-run server, rather than on a commercial or institutional server. If the site crashes, locks up, doesn’t load or generates error messages, guess what? People won’t come back.
Another big distinction is whether a site is static or dynamic. Does it just sit there like a billboard, unchanging from month to month? Or is there new material being posted all the time? Give people reasons to come back to your site – articles, newsletters, online surveys, and other resources. A small number of sites include .MP3 audio files to share talks, sermons and lectures, or include links to YouTube videos of special events.
One important reason for people to visit a yearly meeting web site is to find a local meeting near them or where they’re traveling. Nearly all the sites do this in some way. Most use Google Maps, which allows the web designer to use colored “push pins” to mark the exact location of all the local meetings, or even color-code them by quarterly or regional meeting. Better yearly meeting sites also include links to the local meeting site, a map, information about worship times and First Day/Sunday school, e-mail and phone number, handicap accessibility, and other things which first-time visitors want to know about.
One of my pet criticisms is sites which are stuffed with PDF files, which are widely used because they can be read by nearly everyone using the free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. (Several sites include a link to download Adobe.) However, .PDF files take up a lot more file space than web pages, which means they load slowly. Also, a .PDF file is a “dead end” on a web site – you don’t usually go forward from a .PDF, you have to back out. Only use .PDF’s for large, long files like reports, minutes and back issues of newsletters.
Don’t make your good stuff hard to find! New England Yearly Meeting has a really exciting resource page of visiting Friends and Quakers offering workshops, but it’s in tiny print and it’s buried far down in the site.
Most sites include a master calendar of yearly meeting-sponsored events, and the majority of them use Google Calendar. Unfortunately, these calendars wind up with a lot of empty space, giving the impression that there isn’t much going on. Better web sites list upcoming individual events with bars or banners which you can click to learn more.
All but a handful of sites include a link to their Faith and Practice, and most of them aren’t very useful. Many are in .PDF format which creates ginormous files. Some sites have their Faith and Practice broken down into sections to make it load faster – and makes it that much harder to search. Take the next step and convert your Faith and Practice to .HTM which is much smaller and loads faster. Most important, please include hyperlinks throughout the whole document. To see what I’m talking about, visit Faith and Practice on the Canadian Yearly Meeting web site.
Nearly all sites include contact information for yearly meeting clerks and staff. Be careful about including personal contact information – names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mails. Consider setting up generic e-mails for yearly meeting staff and leaders (clerk@youryearlymeeting.org) so that their personal e-mail account at gmail or yahoo isn’t flooded with spam.
What makes your yearly meeting unique? Your web site should help people know who Friends in your yearly meeting really are. Well-chosen photos, short quotations, headlines for current news and events, can all help visitors get a taste of who you are. Be selective! Several yearly meetings have home pages which are stuffed with randomly chosen, out-of-date material. Others have photos showing only older Friends – intergenerational pictures are fine, but a couple of sites look like advertisements for Quaker retirement communities.
Many sites include a “make a donation” link. I can’t evaluate how much money these yearly meetings are raising this way – only your yearly meeting treasurer knows for sure. However, I predict that sites which are visually boring, static and feature-hungry are probably not helping their yearly meeting’s budget along.
Your web site probably has external links to missions you support, schools or colleges, other Quaker organizations like FUM, FGC, EFCI and so on. It’s great to include links to them, but make sure they return the favor – if you support a mission or concern and help to publicize their work, ask them to put a link to your yearly meeting on their site.
Here’s a surprise question: does your yearly meeting have an entry on Wikipedia? Less than a quarter of the yearly meetings I surveyed have Wikipedia entries. Wikipedia free, and it’s where a lot of visitors will look for you first. Wikipedia entries are editable, so you can update them easily – but they are also can be changed by any reader who takes the time to do so.
Plan on giving your yearly meeting site a complete makeover every 3-5 years – update your appearance, re-do the navigation, ditch sections which aren’t being used. Choose the features you really want. Don’t skip the ones you really need. All sites can be improved!
In my last post, I said that recording gifts in ministry is a tradition which goes back to the earliest days of Friends. Recording is a kind of a passport which allows Quaker ministers to travel and serve outside their own local meeting. It’s a sort of “permanent letter of introduction” which says that this person is a gifted minister, and that we feel he/she has our blessing and is worth listening to.
Most yearly meetings want to be sure that recorded ministers are stable people who aren’t likely to teach wild or unacceptable ideas, and for the last 80 or 100 years Friends have asked that recorded ministers meet certain minimum educational requirements.
Recording isn’t the only way to recognize gifts and recommend ministers. Recording among Friends is normally for life, and many people only feel a call to short-term or limited service. There are a number of alternative ways meetings can recognize people as leaders and ministers.
If the meeting feels that one of its members has a special gift in and a special calling to the ministry, it can provide formal recognition in one of these ways:
Recording or recognition doesn’t grant any special privileges or status. These Friends are leaders, but certainly aren’t the only leaders. Rather, recording and recognition are ways of saying that we expect much of these people. We believe God has called them, and we expect them to devote their thought, time, prayer, energy and effort to building up our branch of the Christian movement. As Jesus said, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” (Luke 12:48)
Recording isn’t a “one size fits all” thing. There are many creative ways to recognize the ministers among us. Let’s start using them!
Recording gifts in ministry is a tradition which goes back to the earliest days of Friends. Many Quaker pastors are recorded, as are a number of other “weighty Friends”. Because Friends emphasize that everyone is a minister and that all of us are equal, recording has often been misunderstood. In yearly meetings with pastors, the emphasis on pastoral leadership has often led to the neglect of non-pastors who felt called to minister, and in unprogrammed yearly meetings, Friends have often abandoned the practice of recording.
Recording gifts in the ministry is not a new practice. In the 1600′s, the Quaker movement depended on the efforts of “public Friends,” who traveled, spoke, debated with non-Quakers, visited families, set up new meetings and worship groups, and often suffered imprisonment, fines, and other hardships. Though they were unpaid, they were given hospitality on their travels. At one time in London Yearly Meeting a number of horses, called “Truth’s horses”, were kept for the use of traveling ministers.
The special place of such Friends was acknowledged in Robert Barclay’s Apology:
We do believe and affirm that some are more particularly called to do the work of the ministry, and therefore are fitted of the Lord for that purpose; whose work is more constantly and particularly to instruct, exhort, admonish, oversee and watch over their brethren; and that. . . there is something more incumbent upon them in that respect than upon every common believer. . . (Proposition 10, section 10)
Though there were no pastors in the 17th century or early 18th century, a large meeting might have a dozen or more recorded ministers. These Friends’ concern for the spiritual vitality of the meeting led them to speak frequently at worship, to be concerned for newcomers, to voice the concerns of the less articulate, to visit families and nearby meetings, and to attend (though not to officiate) at weddings and memorial meetings. No formal educational requirements were set for recording, but recorded Friends were expected to be deeply versed in the Scriptures and other works, both to assist in their own ministry and to answer the objections of outsiders to Friends’ beliefs.
In the years after the Civil War, many new meetings were being set up, and in small towns and frontier communities the Friends meeting was often “the only church in town.” Young adult Friends were impressed by the liveliness of neighboring revivals. They wanted such radical innovations as hymn-singing and a prepared message rather than the “dead” silence into which they felt many meetings had fallen. Out of this atmosphere, the first Friends pastors were called. These Quaker pastors were almost always recorded ministers. At first they were not paid, but gradually Friends “released” them for fuller service by providing full-time financial support.
During the theological wars among Friends in the late 1800′s, many yearly meetings began tightening up the requirements for recording to make sure that ministers were “acceptable” (held and taught the “right” theological opinions). Starting in the early 1900′s, some pastors and mission workers began taking college or seminary courses to better prepare themselves for ministry. By the middle of the 20th century, most yearly meetings had standardized educational requirements for pastors.
The early 21st century has seen high-profile battles over whether some pastors are “too liberal” on issues such as homosexuality and the atonement of Christ, or “not Quakerly” on issues such as baptism and communion. There have also been serious financial problems as small and mid-sized meetings struggle to provide adequate support and health insurance for their pastors.
In unprogrammed yearly meetings, there is often a “leadership gap”. Friends everywhere need trained, dedicated, and experienced leaders to make local meetings run smoothly, to run our many educational and service programs, and to communicate what Quakers believe with the rest of the world. Without these leaders, we might as well close up shop.
This may be a good time for Friends to revisit the practice of recording of gifts in the ministry, and remind ourselves of some things:
In my next post, I plan to discuss some ways we can recognize and support ministry, including traditional recording but expanding the idea in different ways.
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(Full disclosure: Back in the 1980′s I helped to write the manual on recording for New York Yearly Meeting, and some of the material in this blog is drawn from there. )
Here in the Midwest, winters are long, cold and gray. We tend to view sunshine pretty positively. Sunshine means warmth, friendliness and life!
In politics and group process, “sunshine” means something different. It means that to the greatest extent possible, discussion, decisions, and business will be conducted in the open, where anyone can observe what is going on, where everyone has access to all of the documents, and where all members can participate in decisions.
Quakers helped to pioneer this kind of decision-making. Long before “sunshine laws” became standard public policy for government across the U.S., Quakers were modeling open business meetings, open records, and open decisions.
There’s a trade-off, of course. Open, widely participatory decision making tends to be slow, and it can be held up by people who don’t know what’s going on or who are obstructive or cranky. Many organizations develop ways to “fast track” decision-making to a smaller group, which is given (or assumes) power to decide things in a more streamlined fashion.
These smaller groups may be self-organized around a special area of interest (focus group or interest group), or appointed (a committee). Interest groups tend to be sloppy and grow in a haphazard manner. Committees tend to be narrower, especially if they have a well-defined charge. Some groups are given (or take on) decision-making power, while others are more for discussion and research, and bring their ideas back to the larger group for final decision.
Quakers in the Orthodox tradition have a reputation for leaving decisions to smaller groups, and for establishing “executive” committees with strong powers. This can work all right as long as the executive committee is trusted and is seen as following the will of the larger group. When that trust breaks down, there is bound to be complaining and restlessness.
This blog is not the place to re-fight the battles of the past, and there are many different views of why Indiana Yearly Meeting fell apart. One contributing factor, though, was conflict over how decisions were being made, what subjects were allowed to be discussed, who was allowed to speak up, and whether decisions were being made in the open.
There’s a strong movement towards openness all across our society. It’s probably no accident that the conflict in Indiana Yearly Meeting came to a head at the same time that the Occupy movement flourished in other parts of the country.
As Friends across the Midwest pick up the pieces and re-organize, it’s important to remind ourselves that “sunshine” qualities – openness, transparency and accountability – are critical for a Quaker gathering to survive and grow.
Decisions are made according to Quaker process, which is aimed at discovering the will of God and the highest level of unity we can achieve under the Spirit’s guidance. As we believe in God, we also believe that God can help us to find the right way to move forward. “God will lead us” is our “default” expectation — it shouldn’t surprise us! If we can’t find unity, we can:
a) stop and give the matter more time for prayer and reflection
b) lay the matter down — not make a decision
c) refer the matter to a committee or smaller group for study and recommendation
d) ask for guidance from our member meetings
e) consider what other Quaker meetings like ours have done
f) continue with our existing practice or previous decision
g) write a cautionary advice or a question (query) to help Friends explore the issues
This may seem like going back to kindergarden, but in a Quaker business meeting, there is no “voting” by people who are not present. Decisions are made by people who are present, not by those who are absent. Minutes sent by member meetings deserve special consideration and should be answered in writing. Recorded ministers and pastors should be careful not to speak more frequently than other Friends, and should not be given special weight or privilege in making decisions.
No one exercises veto power. Decisions which are made by the larger group should not be un-done later by smaller groups of Friends, except in case of real emergency. Meetings which do not participate in making decisions or which do not provide spiritual and financial support are a matter of special concern. Friends who are habitually long-winded or obstructive need to be dealt with, usually in private, by Friends who are appointed to do so.
As we move forward, let’s re-commit ourselves to sunshine — let’s be known not just for what we believe and do, but for how we decide to do things together.
One of the paradoxes of Quakers today is that even though travel and communication are cheaper and more available than ever before, Friends don’t know each other very well. Among the many contributing factors in the breakup of the old Indiana Yearly Meeting are the isolation of Friends from each other, the enormous lack of mutual understanding, and the breakdown of common experience among Friends in our area. We might as well have been from different planets.
As the new association of Friends starts gearing up, one of the best things we can do is to create and encourage many different opportunities to get to know each other better. Worship, fellowship, and sharing by many Friends at a deep spiritual level needs to be the outstanding characteristic of our new group.
There are some simple things we can all do to stay in touch. If your meeting has a newsletter, please make sure to send it to the other meetings in the new association. If your meeting has a Facebook page, make sure you have “friended” some Friends outside your immediate local community.
I hope we can find a variety of ways to worship together often. Again, a simple way to do this is to encourage exchanges of speakers (sometimes called “pulpit exchanges,” although the pulpits or podiums themselves don’t seem to move). Think about sharing a speaker from your meeting, and inviting a speaker from another nearby meeting, every 6-8 weeks or so.
Pastors can be encouraged to re-think their role – could one of your regular responsibilities be visiting and strengthening other meetings in your area? And of course, the visiting speaker need not be a Friends pastor – some meetings have a number of recorded ministers, or Friends who have a special concern can bring a message. Let’s get in the habit of inviting each other to our worship!
An exchange doesn’t always have to be a speaker – last year our meeting partnered for a year with Winchester Friends Meeting. Our women’s groups met together a couple of times, our pastors were part of a monthly study group, and most ambitious of all, our choirs arranged a joint performance – one Sunday at our meeting, the next week at Winchester Friends. Each choir taught one of their favorite pieces to the other, and we learned a new piece together – then we sang all three pieces at each meeting.
We can also try gathering Friends from similar committees – Peace and Social Concerns, Education, Ministry and Oversight, or Outreach. There may be workshops or training events we could enjoy together. At least once a year, the Missions committees could gather to talk about the projects we do as individual meetings, and about projects we can work on together.
Also high on the list: think about ways our Young Friends and Young Adult Friends can get together for worship, fun and conversation. Most of these groups tend to feel isolated from each other. If you’re involved in leading one of these groups, plan to visit another group at least a couple of times a year!
Meetings which are geographically close can plan one or two events each year when they lay down their worship service and go as a body to worship with another meeting. (West Richmond Friends, Richmond First Friends, and Clear Creek Friends have done this for many years – we meet for outdoor worship on the grounds of Quaker Hill Conference Center, usually in June or July.)
One of the most helpful ways to strengthen small or struggling meetings is to have a “sojourning friend” come and visit for an extended period. If you are an experienced Friend with a bit of energy and wisdom, see if there’s a meeting you could visit for a couple of weeks. Worship with them a few times. Stay in several different homes. Bring a message, or share a class, or spend an evening listening with a committee. Talk with the meeting’s leaders. Share whatever you can. This kind of visiting can have wonderful long-term effects, and can do a lot to lift the spirits of a struggling meeting.
Is your meeting painting a room, digging a garden, fixing the roof, cleaning out a storage space, or doing some kind of physical activity? Invite other meetings to help! A lot of people don’t enjoy sitting in meetings or listening to talks, but they’re happy to do “hands on” projects.
Has your meeting put together a play, a presentation, an art show or a multi-media event? Think about taking it to another meeting! It’s great to invite other folks to come visit your meeting, but you’ll probably reach more people if you try taking it “on the road”.
Some events take some advance preparation, while others can be spontaneous. The bottom line is to strengthen and build up our meetings by sharing our strengths and by listening to each other.
Most of all, let’s have fun! Joy and friendship are some of the best signs that the Holy Spirit is at work among us.
Quakers in Indiana would almost rather talk about sex. Money is such a non-subject for discussion, but it’s been building up almost as much tension over the last 10 or 20 years as the battles over sexuality which are the “official” reason for our division.
For the last hundred years we have been locked in to a system of assessments based on the number of members in each local meeting. As assessments have relentlessly gone up, this has led many meetings to reduce the number of members, or even discourage people from joining, because each new member also meant adding another $150 to the yearly meeting assessment.
This is the first time in a generation when we have really been free to start over and think fresh. We are free to imagine a new organization, a whole new way of being Friends. We have no budget, which means we are free to think about what we really want to do.
There was general agreement that we don’t want or need to re-create the old structure, staff, and programs of Indiana Yearly Meeting. For years we heard Quakers complain, “What has the yearly meeting done for us?” Now we need to turn that around and plan a new organization which will do what we want. We need to live within our means, but also spend mo more than we are ready and willing to.
Not all yearly meetings are funded by a per capita assessment based on the number of members, though that is the most common practice. Some ask for a percentage of the local meeting’s budget, while other yearly meetings ask meetings to pledge whatever they can.
I’d like to suggest that instead of continuing with a tax based on the number of members, that we use an average of membership and worship attendance. This would help to remove the disincentive for meetings to add members, and include the folks who come to worship but haven’t joined yet. (To see what these numbers might be like, see “What Numbers Are We Talking About?”, posted last November.)
I’m not suggesting that Friends go all the way to zero. Most of our meetings have a long-standing interest in missions, and Quaker missions depend on steady funding, no matter what conniptions Indiana Quakers are going through.
The Indiana Yearly Meeting budget for the last few years has been built on an assessment of $75 for yearly meeting expenses and $75 for missions. As meetings move out of Indiana Yearly Meeting, they’re asking what they should be doing during this time of transition. Some meetings are probably calling it a “tax holiday” and enjoying a little relief in their local finances. Other meetings are including the old assessment in their 2013 budget and setting the funds aside, assuming they will contribute a similar amount to whatever new group they join.
As the New Association of Friends (that’s at least our interim name) start thinking about who we are and what we want to do, we could simply continue the old pattern of $75 for organizational costs and $75 for missions. But here are some other possibilities:
Or:
Or:
Or:
Whatever we decide, let’s have some lively discussion from our meetings about what things we really want to do and want to support. Let’s see what we’re willing to contribute, and plan what we positive things we can do with the funds we have. Let’s think about growing, not declining. Let’s not be tied down by the past, but freed for our future.
