The internet, ministry, and witness

Recent and not-so-recent posts among Quaker bloggers and readers have made me think about the growing online community of Friends and its intersection with Quaker practices, such as engaging in spiritual discernment, providing and receiving eldership, bearing witness to our faith, offering ministry, and testing a leading.

This growing phenomenon about online communication through blogs, personal websites, and emails begs the question:

What happens when we cross the electronic world of the internet with the interpersonal, living corporate body of Friends, which has historically depended on seeking the guidance of the Spirit together, face-to-face, and in a covenant community?

Lots of questions; few answers

Are there elements from the tradition of epistles as written by early Friends that can be applied to blogs and how to respond to what we read? Might each Quaker blogger (and regular commenter) write an epistle, to be shared with fellow Quaker bloggers and their readers; or perhaps distributed more widely? Might there be a way to share our responses to one another's epistles, as Conservative Friends still practice? Is there Life to such an idea?

Are there some elements of our collective or individual Quaker witness that are acceptable when borne out online, while other elements of our Quaker practice are not? Are there some elements of our online witness that need to be reigned in? How would we go about discerning such things?

Should there be explicit norms and boundaries around electronic forms of ministry that parallel the implicit norms and boundaries around vocal ministry? Does it matter to define norms and boundaries, or are we discovering and developing such norms as we go, in a more organic manner?

Important questions for Friends who are engaged in the Quaker blogosphere and elsewhere online.

Examples of our musings electronic

Some time ago, Kwakersaur made this comment over on Of the Best Stuff But Plain:

...Last night I spoke with one travelling in the ministry -- she expressed doubts about the internet as a source for spiritual community and Quaker work and witness.

Beppeblog has a post about this sort of thing as well. On his post, he reminds me of a comment I left somewhere in the Quaker blogosphere:

But since there is not much infrastructure to Quaker blogs as far as online testing of leadings, corporate discernment, and nurturing of gifts, I am uncertain how to respond. Just how Quaker are Quaker blogs? Do the principles of Quakerism get left in a cubby on our desks when we log onto the internet and start reading one another's blogs?

Beppe goes on to say:

There always seems to be these struggles within Quakerism regarding just how much of our lives, how much of the details of our lives, is under the authority of God. Traditionally, at least based on my limited understanding of historic Quakerism, part of this submission was to the community: one's leadings always came under the inspecting light of communal insight as well as Biblical understanding.

And the question that Robin raises in her remarks is:

I'm wondering about how to consider eldering on purpose in public. Showing support in public is usually even more welcomed than in private, but how can an online community know what accountability has been asked of or shown by a Friend?

What happens when a portion of an online faith community that is journeying with one another in listening for the Spirit, and is sharing with one another revelations made clear by the Inner Light-what happens when that virtual community is faced with the need to make a decision or have some input into a certain situation? Can the Spirit be discerned miles apart from one another? Can we know one another in that which is Eternal if we don't share the intimacies of our daily lives with one another? And is such intimate sharing necessary in order to discern the movement of the Spirit?

I have expressed my own doubts as well, especially as I was discerning starting up a blog. I went even further in another post:

A local Quaker community helps hold Friends accountable for the right use of their gifts, the right use of their ministry. ...[Knowing one another] "electronically" is not the same as knowing [one another] as part of a Quaker meeting, as knowing [one another] in that which is Eternal...

Experiences with Quaker practices online

I do not have the gift that others do when it comes to surfing the 'net, but there have been a few internet sites I have stumbled across that seem to parallel what is experienced in the life of a Quaker Meeting. In addition, I've had a few experiences online myself that mirror my in-person Quaker life.

Here's the list of online Quaker practices and experiences that I've come up with:

1. Online books of discipline and faith and practice.

2. Online worship opportunities.

3. Online Friendly bible study.

4. Epistles from yearly meetings that are posted on the internet, such as this example, from Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative.

5. Quaker listserves and other forms of electronic bulletin boards, which allow anything from open discussion about a topic to a moderated conversation that may be a form of electronic worship sharing.

6. My own experience with writing and receiving personal epistles, or at least personal letters of spiritual matters, exchanged over email.

7. My own experience in helping discern the Spirit in preparing an epistle entirely through email for a Quaker organization.

A personal testimony

It's this last item on which I want to expand; its outcome perhaps the most surprising.

In the fall of 2004, I was led to serve on a small ad hoc committee to write an epistle about a sensitive concern that had been brewing for some time. The three of us on the committee, like good Quakers, were extremely busy in our everyday lives. We lived in different parts of the country.

Since I had already experienced grounded worship and spiritual discernment over the phone with other Friends regarding another matter, I felt certain that we would put aside time to be in touch via phone when it came time to discern the way forward, to craft, revise, and eventually submit a finished epistle.

God seemingly had other plans.

When I asked about setting up a time for an initial phone conference and a tentative follow-up conference call, the two other committee members instead put forward the preference for working via email (or such is how I remember it, anyway). I was reluctant, I was skeptical, I was concerned about just how discerning the Spirit might work with miles of distance between us and not even any verbal cues for guidance, to boot.

Often one who prefers the "experiment" as a way to test what is possible, I agreed to give email a chance.

Looking back, I cannot see how doing it any other way could have yielded a better result! As the paragraphs and portions of the developing epistle circulated among us, we each commented to one another, via email, how strongly we experienced the Presence in what we were reading. Each of us, at one time or another, added our own shard of Light as to what worked, what didn't seem to resonate with the Truth, what was the point that we were really called on to put into this epistle. Each of us openly shared via email what we were holding tenderly, what we were wrestling with, where we felt called in terms of continuing the crafting process.

Even when we had what we felt was a completed epistle, one of us felt the nudge to share the draft with another Friend who had been present at the discussion that led to approving the formation of an epistle committee. The other Friends agreed.

Again, I feel as though we were well led, despite the cyber-discernment in which we were engaging. The additional Friend's input proved significant. First, she affirmed the right order of what we had crafted up to that point. Second, the suggestion she made ultimately impacted only two words: the removal of one and its substitution with another.

We made that change and submitted the epistle to the Friends who were responsible for adding signatures, putting it on letterhead, and distributing it.

From books to blogs

How can I say that the internet should not be used "as a source for spiritual community and Quaker work and witness," as Kwakersaur's acquaintance had suggested, when my experience tells me otherwise? How can this small but cybernetically bonded group of Quaker bloggers, and our faithful readers, testify otherwise when so many of us have found a deepening, a quickening of the Spirit, as a result of our sharing?

Should printing presses be dismantled and epistles be shredded, should I stop ordering books from QuakerBooks of FGC because books and epistles cannot be a substitute or source for direct Quaker work and witness? Or am I simply carrying on the experiment of sharing the measure of Light I have been given, through methods of information-sharing that are evolving, from ministers to epistles; epistles to journals; journals to books; books to blogs? One has not replaced the other; they co-exist with one another. Might they all be part of the source—part of the capital-S Source for community, work, and witness?

Maintaining a weblog can indeed be a solo proposition in which my ego or my own will can leak out in unintended ways. So there remains a question that I revisit, in some shape or form, from time to time. I should check with my blog-elders about this question, too:

Am I tending to the roots of the Spirit at home so that this electronic ministry is clear of my own ego-trappings and remains in service to the Spirit?

I hope so.

Blessings,
Liz

UPDATE: Alice from Public Quaker has a related post, Plainer thinking - how does the internet really fit in?

UPDATE, Oct. 2005: Martin at Quaker Ranter has some reflections on his two years of blogging about Quakers and where he finds himself as a result.

UPDATE, April 2006: Lorcan at Plain in the City has offered the possibility of creating an online Faith & Practice for Quaker bloggers. Already there are a number of responses to that concept. Additional ideas might be found at a separate site, Blogging Faith & Practice.