by William Taber, Jr.
To what extent do modern unprogrammed Friends give pastoral care to our members? The answer is mixed; some seem able to provide good pastoral support, while others do it rather haphazardly.
In traditional Quakerism the source of pastoral care flowed from the life- giving power of the meeting for worship itself. For example, Robert Barclay said about 300 years ago:
When I came into the silent assemblies of God’s I felt a secret power among them, which touched my heart; and as I gave way unto it I found the evil weakening in me and the raised up; and so I thus knit and united unto them, hungering more and more after the increase of this and life.
About two centuries later Caroline Stephen wrote:
On one never to be forgotten Sunday morning I found myself one of a small company of silent worshipers who were content to sit down without words, that each might feel after and draw near to the Divine Presence, unhindered at least, if not helped, by any human utterance…. And, since that day now more than seventeen years ago, Friends meetings have indeed to me the greatest of outward helps to a fuller and fuller entrance into the spirit from which they have sprung; the place of the most soul-subduing, faith restoring, strengthening, and powerful communion. in feeding upon the bread of life, that I have ever known.
In such gathered meetings the Pastor of Pastors was present to bring these people into a spiritual communion which changed their lives forever. The men and women who experienced this transforming week after week, found themselves being sensitized to God’s claim on their lives, so that as they “gave way unto it,” the gifts, the fruits, and the power of the Spirit began to flourish among them. The journals and letters of the first 200 years of unspecialized Quakerism tell us that significant pastoral care was frequently — if not always — extended beyond the meeting for worship through a Spirit-empowered, fluid network of ministers, elders, overseers, and the entire Quaker community.
Precisely because there is no trained human pastor available to nourish, guide, and counsel unprogrammed Friends. it is all the more important that our meetings for worship centers of living spiritual power, a fellowship alive to the Spirit. Only when meetings are thus truly alive in Christ, said George Fox, is it possible for them to what he called Gospel Order, which included the Spirit-given ability to meet specific needs of a specific situation and time, including Spirit-guided pastoral care.
Therefore, the question becomes, “How do we nourish the spiritual life and discipleship of our individual members so that they become more and more sensitive to the Spirit’s leading?” If that sensitivity is faithfully followed, according to classic Quaker theory, both programmed and unprogrammed meetings will find that, through Gospel Order, Friends will be led to give the pastoral care that is needed or to see that someone is found who can do so.
In recent years, exciting new resources have become available to help us work in the spiritual formation and the spiritual nurture on which all else depends. The resources can be found both within the Society of Friends and in the wider Christian world, which, since Vatican Council II, has seen more and more groups seeking to recover what Quakers discovered three-and-a-half centuries ago — the amazing grace which comes to those who spend at least some time before God in daily silent communion, and the gift of discernment which is available to every Christian.
The first of these resources is technically called “spiritual direction,” a label which puts some Friends off until they hear the more Friendly term, “spiritual nurture.” From the earliest days of Quakerism, some Friends, whether called elders or not, have been sought out by other Friends for such spiritual counsel. This work required a very special kind of prayerful listening and responding in order to help people learn to discern the way God is at work in their lives, to help them learn how to recognize the voice of the Inward Teacher.
A number of Friends have or are being trained in this ancient art at the Guild for Spiritual Guidance at Rye, New York, or at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Washington, D.C. Some of the Friends who took this training were either trained counselors already, or they are now involved in psychological training, thus becoming specially qualified to give pastoral care in the unprogrammed meeting community. Here and there throughout the world and especially in the United States there are now Friends who know they are called to this work and to whom other Friends come for the Quaker form of spiritual direction. Such spiritual nurturers are numerous enough in the Philadelphia that they held regular meetings at Pendle Hill for several years to explore the unique character of Quaker spiritual direction. They also led a weekend gathering to explain and demonstrate how the once-common Quaker practice of giving spiritual nurture can be recovered in our own time.
Two Pendle Hill courses designed specifically for the needs of unprogrammed Friends also address the “prior concern” for spiritual nurture. One of these is the five-year-old “Traveling in the Ministry” course each student several chances to experience (with different people and in different settings) the power of the “opportunity,” the old Quaker name for a meeting for worship held by only two people or just a few people, usually in a home. This course encourages us to recover our sensitivity to a vital, once-common Quaker custom. The old journals testify to how these opportunities or “sittings” were often a powerful aid in opening lives to transformation in Christ, and how they often led to significant pastoral care in the modern sense of that term. This is still true for most of the Friends who are again feeling the call to hold opportunities, whether they be held in homes, hospitals, or nursing homes.
In the other Pendle Hill course, “On Being a Spiritual Nurturer,” students practice the spiritual art of deep listening, and they consider ways to nurture the life of the meeting for worship, the spiritual cohesion of the entire meeting community, and to give spiritual nurture to individuals.
In many parts of North America where the Quaker Studies Program (started by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1981) has been offered, it has seemed to start many participants on a path of accelerated spiritual growth. This may be due to the frequent practice of pairing participants in spiritual friendships along with including several retreats in each year of study. Baltimore Yearly Meeting and other Friends groups have developed their own programs for encouraging spiritual friendships and groups for spiritual nurture and discipleship.
Pastoral care can take many forms today. In a traditional unprogrammed meeting this function is the special task of the overseers, as in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. A large meeting may have as many as 20 overseers, and each overseer is responsible for being aware (in a prayerful as well as a practical way) of a small number of members. In some meetings these overseers visit, phone, or write “their” members once or more each year. If they sense that someone needs more help than they can provide, they consult with other overseers. One large and lively meeting in the Philadelphia area asks each family to act as overseers for another family. In newer or smaller meetings the traditional overseer’s function is handled by a committee of the whole, or it may be relegated to a ministry and worship committee, ministry and counsel committee, ministry and oversight committee, or even to the clerk. And, in many meetings there is often one person, no matter what his or her office, to whom people naturally turn in a spiritual or personal crisis.
In my own experience, large and well-organized meetings can be either very effective or very haphazard with pastoral care, and the same is true of new, small, or very informal meetings — some do it very well, and in some it barely exists. What seems to make the difference is whether there is a rich, spiritually based vitality which reaches out to every member and attender so that all know they are deeply cared for. That rich vitality does not depend on systems or organization; it just overflows because people care about people. Such spiritually vibrant meetings often experiment with new ways of increasing their care for one another. For example, they may set up fellowship groups or supper groups (sometimes called “Friendly eights”), or they may arrange for every child to have an adult buddy, even through high school and college. Or they may ask marriage clearness and oversight committee members to stay in friendly, loving contact with each couple “forever.” Or they may provide clearness committees for anyone facing a major decision. When a meeting is alive in the Holy Spirit, it can be exuberantly and endlessly creative about its ways of caring!
Many meetings are fortunate to have members who are trained counselors or psychiatrists who give pastoral care themselves or help the meeting find it. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is fortunate in having a Friends counseling service with professionals available on a sliding fee scale, so that Friends in need can be referred to Friendly counselors.
It would be interesting to discover how many unprogrammed Friends have studied clinical pastoral education or are serving as hospital chaplains; I think the number would surprise us. These people are another resource for Friendly pastoral care as well as for training other care-givers among us. For example, Patricia Brown recently gave a course in nursing home visitation at a retirement center and nursing home in the Philadelphia area.
It might also be instructive to see how many unprogrammed meetings have a member assigned to the local ministerial association who also takes a turn as a voluntary hospital chaplain (as I did at Barnesville, Ohio). I have heard of at least one meeting in which members took part in an ecumenical program to train lay people as hospital visitors.
Clearly, all the training we can get will help our wide variety of meetings do much better at providing pastoral care. But the Holy Spirit is a marvelous trainer of those who are moved in the power of the Gospel to reach out to the pain or need of another. Under the power of this Spirit ordinary women and men have been awakened, again and again, to be present to their brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ, making them bold in risking themselves, tender in being with another, and strong in the assurance of the inward Christ.