IMYM Faith & Practice, 2009, pp 39-43

Worship Sharing: Building Community in a Fragmented World

In today’s world, where people are mobile and divided by distance and circumstance, the unconscious familiarity with one another that underlies communities that have shared lives for generations is for the most part long gone. Worship sharing takes us intentionally beyond appearances and prejudices and often leads to profound connections between participants. When we join in with open minds and hearts, worship sharing can be as gathered as any meeting for worship.

Worship sharing is a small-group exercise. Eight members is a good number. With fewer than six present, individuals may feel too exposed; with more than ten, the process can become cumbersome. The composition of worship sharing groups differs depending on their purpose. There is usually a facilitator, and often there are queries to consider. When worship sharing takes place in a larger gathering, the context and purpose of the gathering may be sufficient to provide a focus. Worship sharing is confidential—what is said within the group stays within the group and may not be repeated elsewhere without the specific permission of the original speaker. In many cases, due to the nature of the sharing, permission should be obtained from the whole group.

The facilitator reviews with the participants the characteristics of the worship sharing format and may read one or more queries. After settling into silence, participants speak. 

Participants may speak as they are moved, or sometimes, depending on who is present, the participants may be asked to speak in turn. This is a good approach when the group has not met before and is unfamiliar with worship sharing, or when there is a wide mix of ages. It is helpful to the facilitator and the group if a person who wishes not to speak to a particular query “passes.”

Sharing is based on personal experience, coming from the heart. Each contribution is heard and is framed in silence. Having addressed a query, one does not speak to it again until everyone has had a turn, and rarely then. This process is intended to free participants from any need to consider a response or plan a contribution while someone else speaks. When one speaks, one resists the temptation to ask follow-up questions of a previous speaker, contradict or debate a point, give advice, or practice one’s diagnostic and therapeutic skills. Any of these might be illuminating, but they allow the speaker to hide from personal sharing.

Although participants are mindful not to take more than their share of time while speaking, when the worship-sharing session is on a schedule it is important that the planners allot sufficient time to it. The facilitator brings the group to a close when the appointed time has passed. Closing the session may include handshakes, hugs, and further silence. 

Other Issues…

Clearness committees help us discern the Truth of a leading.  Friends called to an undertaking or ministry may seek a clearness committee to help discern whether or not the calling is from God. Those who serve on a clearness committee help us find answers from within while refraining from giving advice or guidance. Obstacles or impediments to moving forward can be examined while seeking the inner guidance. When our way is clear, we may proceed with the calling or may realize that it is, indeed, the wrong step at this time.  

When the meeting as a whole is included in the outcome, such as in marriage or membership, the clearness is dual. In order to go forward, both those seeking clearness and the meeting must become clear.  All involved must discern the rightness of the action.

Clearness committees may be requested by anyone for many other reasons. Unless a leading may affect the meeting as a body, these do not require a report to the meeting for business and require clearness of only the seeker. Confidentiality is standard practice for all clearness committees.     

Eldering calls up the classic Quaker aphorism “Thee canst not elder one whom thee dost not love.” It is a Spirit-led, loving action which awakens and encourages the inner wisdom in each of us. This could take the form of a gentle admonishment—discouraging and/or questioning another’s inappropriate behavior or speaking. It could also encourage the timid to share their gifts with the meeting. Seeking the counsel of more experienced Friends may help when eldering another is considered. Determining the best way to approach someone requires that discernment be used in order for the Light to be seen as loving and caring. True eldering does not shame or scold another. 

Threshing sessions are important meetings where all aspects of an issue can be shared and explored; where the ‘wheat and chaff’ can be separated without rancor. No decisions are made at a threshing session. Various formats may be used in these meetings for discussion and airing of opinions and feelings. It is not uncommon for there to be several threshing sessions when difficult or contentious issues arise. Threshing sessions can lay the foundation for seasoning an issue as a meeting seeks unity.  

The Stillness at the Heart of Things

 As we look at Friends’ worship practices, we often hear characterizations akin to: “It is not a debate.” We are not trying to impose our will or our ideas on the community. We work together because the Spirit works in and through all of us. In all forms of worship, we open ourselves and still ourselves so that the noise of our busyness does not overwhelm that other voice we so long to hear. The Spirit unites us. We live best when we live within that Spirit.

1. One definition of mysticism: “ . . . the belief in or reliance on the possibility of spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect.” The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
2. Robert Barclay,  Barclay’s Apology in Modern English, Dean Freiday, ed.  (Newberg, Oregon: The Barclay Press, 1991), p. 239.
3. Barclay, Apology, p. 243.
4. When Friends were viewed as a suspect cult, they began to “disown” the unFriendly behavior of people who might be seen as Quakers by the outside community. Later, disownment became a tool of social control. It is rarely used today.  
5. Friends today are divided in their forms of worship. Some, including meet-ings in Intermountain Yearly Meeting, practice the silent meeting. Other meetings have pastors and follow a program when they worship—thus the distinction between “programmed” or pastoral meetings and “unprogrammed” ones.
6. Thomas R. Kelly, The Eternal Promise, (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1988), pp. 44-45, as quoted in Britain Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice, 2.36.
7. John Punshon, Unpublished writing, 1987. Quoted in Britain Yearly Meet-ing Faith and Practice, 2.37.

• John Woolman, See p.160 of this book, in section on “Friends Speak: Meeting for Worship,” 4:04.  From Journal 1740, quoted in Pendle Hill Pamphlet #51, Worship, 1950. 
• As one story tells it, a Friend approached another after a meeting for wor-ship and said, “Thee preached a pretty sermon today,” to which the other replied, “I know. The devil told me so as soon as I sat down.”
• Patricia Loring, Spiritual Discernment: The Context and Goal of Clearness Committees (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Pamphlet #305, 1992), p. 3.
• Lloyd Lee Wilson, Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order, (Philadelphia, PA: Quaker Press of FGC, 2002), p. 178.
• Punshon, Encounter with Silence (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1987, p. 78. 
• Sources on individual practices include Listening Spirituality, vol. 1 by Patricia Loring and John Punshon’s Encounter with Silence.
• George Fox, Epistle 162, 1658, as quoted by Howard Brinton in Pendle

Hill Pamphlet #65, Reaching Decisions: The Quaker Method (Wallingford,

PA, 1952), p. 12. The complete epistles can be found in The Works of George Fox, Vols. VII & VIII (State College, PA: New Foundation Publication, The George Fox Fund, Inc., 1990).

1. The principles and procedures that apply to meeting for business apply to committee meetings and any other gatherings of Friends to seek a way forward.
2. Patricia Loring, Spiritual Responsibility in the Meeting for Business, (Philadelphia: Quaker Press of FGC, 1993). 
3. Loring, Spiritual Responsibility in the Meeting for Business.