Choosing to thrive

A thriving community is not comfortable.

Amid the general crisis of British Quakerism, some Quaker communities are thriving. Meetings in Sheffield and Leeds have grown at an extraordinary pace over the last couple of years. At my Meeting there are now 80 people every Sunday, and at least a third of them are young families. Over half of the packed Meeting at Leeds Central are under the age of 35. In Oxford, 30 to 40 young adults meet every Monday evening for worship, discussion and a shared meal, and most of them are new to Quakers. The same dynamic is happening across the country; perhaps the biggest wave of new people coming to Quakers since the 1980s.

People everywhere are looking for supportive multi-generational relationships, for inclusive, non-hierarchical communities, for a spiritual practice that can help them to find purpose and meaning. Increasingly, they are finding Quakers online and coming to a Quaker Meeting looking for these things.

What makes the difference between the Meetings that are growing, and the majority that are gradually dying out, is what these newcomers find when they turn up.

Newcomers need to be made welcome, including children. They need to find people who enjoy spending time together, who are open about their spiritual experience, and willing to share the riches of the Quaker way with them. They need to experience Quaker worship that is expectant and gathered, where people take the risk of openness to the Spirit that leads to deep and vulnerable spoken ministry.

If someone who is searching for authentic Quaker community comes to an hour of empty silence followed by brief small talk over coffee, they won’t come a second time. They will probably conclude that Quakers have nothing to offer, and tell others not to bother either. This is how we have failed thousands of people who have tried a Quaker Meeting and gone away disappointed. These are the people who could have been a new generation of committed Quakers if they had found us living the faith we lay claim to.

Our hundreds of declining and ageing Meetings are not an accident. They are the inevitable outcome of choices we have made over the last few decades.

We have chosen to keep the Quaker way to ourselves. We have squashed attempts to welcome newcomers, while congratulating ourselves on ‘not proselytising’.

We have chosen to allow most of our children's meetings to age out, and discouraged new families by telling them they have to ‘phone in advance’, or making them sit in a side room on their own.

We have chosen not to share our spiritual practices or beliefs with each other, and not to pass on what we have learned about the Quaker way.

We have done all this because it is easy and comfortable compared to choosing to thrive. A thriving community is full of life and possibility but it is not comfortable.

In a thriving Meeting we have to keep making space in our lives and hearts for new people who are different to us. We may be called on to explain Quaker beliefs and practices, or to talk about our own experience of faith.

A thriving meeting brings challenges to the way we have always done things. There are people from different age groups and backgrounds, with varied needs and perspectives. There might be tensions about the timing of worship or the level of noise and activity in the Meeting House. We might need to change some things we have always taken for granted and that suit the people who have been coming for years.

None of this is easy or comfortable. But if we choose comfort over thriving, we are choosing the gradual decline of our Meetings. Everything can go smoothly for years, with a group of like-minded Friends enjoying the silence every Sunday as they gradually grow older together. Until they eventually look up and realise there are only a handful of them left, and no-one to carry on the Meeting after them.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. We can choose to thrive. The people who are coming to our Meetings are asking us to accept our calling; to share the gifts of the Quaker way with them. If we are willing to respond as communities that are welcoming, generous, flexible and spiritually alive, they will be a blessing to us, and us to them.

What choices is your Quaker community making?