Themes

A leading is sensing god’s guidance toward a ministry. Traditionally, Friends meant “ministry” to refer specifically to Spirit-led vocal ministry during worship. Today, Friends place greater emphasis on the diversity of gifts in the faith community. The traditional term “gospel minister” may be used to distinguish those called to Spirit-led vocal ministry during worship in contrast to other forms of ministry.

The Apostle Paul frequently writes about the importance of embracing a range of spiritual gifts including preaching, teaching, prophecy, healing, discerning, and ecstatic utterance. Keeping with this wider view, Friends now often use “ministry” to describe the gifts Friends offer our faith community and the world around us, including faith-led social witness, chaplaincy, religious education, spiritual formation, and healing work, among others.

Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting adopted a document on Nurturing Faithfulness to the Leadings of the Spirit. It describes in detail how that meeting nurtures leadings and ministries of its members. This offers a general description of the many different ways, both informal and formal, in which a meeting can support its members’ gifts.

Another terrific general resource from a specific meeting is Faithfulness in Action: Supporting Leadings in Pacific Yearly Meeting. This was drafted by the Subcommittee on Ministry & Leadings of PacYM’s Ministry & Counsel Committee in 2009. Relevant excerpts are also in specific thematic sections on this page:

What Are Leadings?

This is a Quaker term for when God speaks to an individual and provides direction for an action or choice. Leadings are both a precursor to a more well-defined spiritual gift or ministry and also an ongoing guide as Friends seek to pursue faithfully their gift or ministry. Faithfully responding to leadings from God is the individual equivalent of a community’s faithfulness in responding to God’s guidance in its corporate decisions and actions.

What Is a Leading? from PacYM’s Faithfulness in Action

“…give all diligence to the Spirit’s motion and leadings…” —Early Friend James Nayler on Leadings

“…to hear and obey the voice of God…”, excerpt from Leading & Being Led by Paul Lacey (Pendle Hill Pamphlet #264, 1985). A classic pamphlet adapted from a lecture given at Western YM in 1979. A free PDF is also available thanks to Milwaukee Quakers.

Discerning One’s Call & Clearness Meetings

Any path of religious service or ministry begins with the recognition of some kind of call by God, what Friends call a “leading”. This often begins with small promptings in the heart. Friends feeling such nudges will often request a clearness committee to help them discern their call. This request can be done formally through their meeting’s Ministry & Counsel committee, if related to the meeting as a whole, or informally if more related to personal matters.

Five Tests for a True Leading by Hugh Barbour

Meetings for Clearness

Prior to about 1970, Friends mostly used clearness committees for two purposes: to determine whether a meeting was comfortable accepting an applicant into meeting membership and to discern the rightness of marriage by a couple seeking marriage “under the care” of the local meeting.

Beginning, perhaps, in Young Friends of North America during the 1960s and ’70s and later spreading much more widely among U.S. Friends, clearness committees now provide assistance to individual Friends to help them discern what God is asking them to do. This can be a wide variety of personal decisions from faithful vocational choices or financial decisions to discerning calls to ministry in a local meeting or beyond.

Clearness committees can meet one or perhaps a few times with the Friend seeking discernment support until God’s leading becomes clear. These committees can evolve into ongoing support for that Friend, but they begin with a more specific focus. Below is more information on this practice, and the next section discusses meetings’ ongoing support for ministry.  

Clearness Committees – a post by Marcelle Martin on her A Whole Heart website. Post includes guidelines, resources, and videos.

Clearness Committees & Their Use in Personal Discernment by Jan Hoffman

Clearness Committees: Engaging One’s Community in Individual Discernment from PacYM’s Faithfulness in Action

Ongoing Support

A Friend feeling a long-term calling needs ongoing discernment on faithfully following that call. Discerning how one is being led can be done personally with exploration, prayer, and reflection, but we often need others to help us discern our true path of faithful service.

This can mean consulting other Friends who may have pursued a similar path. It can also begin formally with a clearness committee, if necessary, and/or one’s meeting providing ongoing oversight of the ministry. (Note that some modern Friends reject the term “oversight” because of its association with chattel slavery.) This oversight works to nurture faithfulness in stewarding a gift and accountability to Spirit in offering that gift in the best way possible. It is not to direct or manage the Friend on behalf of the meeting.

Sometimes, a legal obligation comes with a ministry, such as hospital chaplaincy or prison visitation. In this case, meetings may offer formal recognition of that ministry to assist the Friend with this obligation. It is important to recognize, however, that a meeting’s support of a member’s gift for a legal reason is very different from supporting a member’s capacity to faithfully live out their calling. Both the spiritual and practical aspects of the ministry must be supported, though differently from each other.

An example of a monthly meeting wrestling with a request to have a calling acknowledged formally is described in Engaging with a Monthly Meeting about Ministry by Debbie Humphries. 

Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting’s Handbook for Formal Care of Friends Called to Ministry or Witness accompanies Nurturing Faithfulness to the Leadings of the Spirit (mentioned above) and provides detailed descriptions of that meeting’s practices around clearness committees, spiritual accountability groups, minutes of support, and financial support for meeting members as they seek to be faithful to their callings.

Meeting Support for Ministries

Anyone attempting to pursue a ministry faithfully may, at times, lose the way or “outrun their guide” if they are following their ego or intellect rather than God’s direction. Meetings can assist members to be faithful to their calling by offering a committee of support for their ministry. These have been called by a variety of names including a spiritual accountability group, anchor committee, ministry support committee, oversight of ministry committee, etc.

A ministry support committee sometimes plays a passive role of listening to the minister’s description of how they are being led, providing feedback and suggestions, prayerful support, and eldership. The strongest support committees, however, truly hold the minister being supported accountable. Many Friends have talked about times when a support committee told the minister that the minister was off course. Many of us tend to take on too much in our lives and become exhausted and unable, as a result, to pursue our calling faithfully. In such cases, the support committee and minister may agree that the minister will not take on additional activities or projects without bringing the proposed activity first to the support committee for prayerful discernment.

Spiritual Accountability Groups: Formal Community Support for a Ministry from PacYM’s Faithfulness in Action

Below are queries used by two Friends whose ministry were under the care of their monthly meetings. These queries help their support committees prepare for their meetings.

These could also be used by Friends in personal reflection on one’s faithfulness, such as Examen, or in groups such as Faithfulness Groups described below.

Discerning Gifts

In 2013, Noah Baker Merrill discussed these issues in the Dwight and Ardis Michener Memorial Lecture at Southeastern Yearly Meeting on Prophets, Midwives, and Thieves: Reclaiming the Ministry of the Whole. He explores three spiritual gifts that were traditionally viewed as central in Friends’ meetings—minister, elder, and overseer—and the critical role that each played in upholding our life as a faith community. Friends involved in ministry of any kind can benefit from the accompaniment of Friends with eldering gifts, not just those with a gift of vocal ministry.

When a Nomination Becomes a Leading from PacYM’s Faithfulness in Action

Faithfulness Groups

Marcelle Martin and several other Friends have recently developed a new approach to mutual discernment, support, and accountability. Instead of having several Friends provide one-way support to an individual Friend as in a support of ministry committee, three or four Friends meet and offer support to each others’ ministries and leadings. This enables many more Friends within a faith community to receive support in pursuing their own spiritual gifts.