Children Go Where I send Thee (and in March, it was Tennessee)

About 2 dozen Friends participated.  We met Friends who are recorded Ministers, Friends who serve on Yearly Meeting Committees that support visitation, and Friends who serve as staff.It was an opportunity to reflect, over a few days, on the practice of visitation among Friends, the historic roots, where and how Friends are visiting today and how Spirit moves through this traditional practice. 

As I consider how best to support visiting among Friends in Canada, here’s what caught my attention.  If you want to read the complete notes on the retreat, click here.

• “How fares the Truth among Thee?” – the traditional question of traveling Friends
• There are different types of travel – what is the purpose?
• Intentionality vs casual visits
• Ministry of presence vs Travel with a concern – what type of intervisitation is happening?
  

  Porch Meeting

• Need for follow-up (relationship building)
• Unique challenges of small meetings/worship groups
• Send people not paper has been a request of some meetings

Understanding/Defining Intervisitation:

• Can include travel with a concern but can also be ministry of presence
• Discernment is involved … and the first motion is Love
• Do we ever let discernment around ministry be stopped for financial reasons?
• Repeated visits create siblinghood
• Need to have follow-up and build continuing relationships
• Good for meetings to support intervisitation as a way of weaving together the spiritual community of Friends both inside the yearly meeting and between yearly meetings
• Start where we area and don’t try to go too deep to fast, but keep working

Worship Sharing on Stewardship of Resources

• We grow when we struggle with what to do
• The word of God never goes out void – God’s word is Love. We don’t always see the affects as we travel
  

  Intergeneraltional

• It’s okay to make mistakes – Love rules
• As children of Earth we are rooted in “cash register” integrity. On surface we embrace something but we are tied to resources.
• Different kinds of time – no hurry – call persists until way opens. Not our job to figure out the outcome. Sometimes it goes a different way that we anticipate
• Do we want to have a fund available so there is money to draw from or do we want to use getting funding as a test of the leading to travel?
• It is good to involve other Friends and our meeting early in the process so they can help us
  

  Quakers in the Light

Small Group Work

Compassion

• Across differences (age, race, class) – How do we bear up one another as we attempt to see and feel “reality” from the perspective of the other?
• Major value of intervisitation across differences in Quaker meeting cultures (theological, education level,…) – Helping the visitor and those being visited to growing in cross- cultural understanding.
• What supports our learning that we are each holders of privilege and learning that the entitlement we feel in being in that place of privilege is a false perspective?
• Woolman spoke truth, asked hard questions AND he did not go out to change the world, but out of Love. He held them in the transformative power of the Christ.
• When I am not teachable, I am acting from a place of fear.
• Let every encounter start with prayer.
• Listen without judgment. (This is a skill to practice and the ability is achieved through grace alone.)
• If I love you, I will intentionally do whatever I can to further your spiritual growth.

Visiting Small or Remote Meetings

• Take small steps
• Keep it simple!
• Bring something tangible – books, adult education materials, etc
• How do we include young Friends and young adult Friends?
  

  Friendly Knitters

• Separate visitation opportunities for Young Friends
• Mentoring – bring a companion who could learn to make visits from the experience
• PEER CONNECTION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT WAY TO SUPPORT SMALL MEETINGS!

Intervisitation already Happening

• Get started even with small steps
• Raise awareness of the need and about the history of intervisitation
• Provide support for cost of travel
• Encourage meetings that are near to each other to gather for fellowship
• Look for Opportunities to visit
• Rotate yearly meeting committee visits
• Recognize huge difference in geography
• FGC yearly meetings travelers could connect with more than just yearly meeting leadership; -could give a workshop, stay at a local home and visit a local meeting in the same trip
• Paid staff can be helpful in design of intervisitation
• Teach visitors how to do it
• Encourage quarterly or regional events
• NEST Notice gifts Encourage Support Teach – steps to build traveling ministers

Prophetic Ministry Is/Means

• Speaking Truth about the condition of the Body
• Always seems fresh
• For some it was instances of receiving intervisitation that led to the unlocking of prophetic power – leading individuals out to visit other meetings
• Calls us in deep way to be in unity with God & Love. The witness of that Love and unity in the bearer of the message can be transformative even to a listener to whom the words didn’t speak.
• Visitation is a way of knitting the Religious Society of Friends together, expressing Love – to the extent we do that we make prophetic ministry possible (vocal expressions of Spirit-led words and deeds) and prophetic ministry makes that unity stronger.