New Membership, Growth on Capitol Hill, and Missional Faith–Micah’s Ministry Newsletter #24

 

Dear Friends of Jesus,

As the month of October draws to a close, and the daylight hours grow ever shorter, we here in Washington, DC are seeing autumn at its apex. The trees are in the final throes of their changes of color; soon they will be entirely bare. Winter is coming.

During this time of seasonal change, my wife Faith and I are experiencing our own transitions. This month, we became members of Rockingham Monthly Meeting, in Harrisonburg, Virginia. We have been attending Rockingham regularly, about once a month, since last November, and it became clear to us and to Friends at Rockingham that we were effectively becoming a part of the fellowship. At Rockingham's October meeting for business, we were formally accepted as full members of the Meeting.

Faith and I are pleased to become a part of Rockingham Meeting, and, by extension, of Ohio Yearly Meeting. This feels like a good fit for us, first and foremost because of the bond that we feel with Rockingham Friends in the Spirit of Jesus. We deeply respect their integrity, discernment and love for one another in the Lord. In the time that we have been among them, we have indeed come to feel ourselves a part of them, and them of us.

While it was sad for me to release my membership in Heartland Meeting and Great Plains Yearly Meeting, I believe that membership in a Meeting should reflect real commitment and involvement. Because of the great distance between me and Friends in the Great Plains, coupled with my lack of plans to return to live in Wichita at any point in the future, I felt that my membership with Friends there was increasingly becoming a formality, rather than a lived relationship. I believe I am being faithful in changing my membership status to reflect the human and spiritual realities of my life as it is now.

I will miss being a part of Great Plains Yearly Meeting, and I do continue to pray for the Yearly Meeting as a whole, as well as for each local Meeting. The end of my membership does not signal the end of my caring for each Meeting and each person in GPYM. I pray that the Lord will present opportunities for me to be of service to Friends there in the future. More importantly, I pray that God raise up the local leadership that Great Plains Yearly Meeting needs to be revived. I trust that God will be faithful in leading us, if we will be faithful in waiting on the Holy Spirit and putting Christ's commands into action.

As new members of Ohio Yearly Meeting, Faith and I are getting the chance to become more deeply involved in the ways in which God is moving in this fellowship of Friends. The weekend after we were accepted into membership at Rockingham Meeting, we attended Stillwater Quarterly Meeting. Stillwater Quarter rotates its sessions in a two-year cycle, which allows each Monthly Meeting to host. This time, the sessions were held in Chesterhill, Ohio, at Chesterfield Friends' Meeting House.

Faith and I were honored to stay at the home of Richard Wetzel, who is mayor of Chesterhill. He was a wonderful host, and gave us a nice tour of the town and the surrounding countryside on the evening that we arrived at his house. The next day, we attended Quarterly Meeting at the meetinghouse. It was good to see many familiar faces, as well as some new ones, and I was pleased to be able to be a part of the answering of the queries as a Quarterly Meeting. At this particular gathering, the entirety of Rockingham's full membership was able to be present, which was truly a blessing to me.

I appreciate very much Ohio Yearly Meeting Friends' commitment to gathering together on a regular basis, despite the distances involved. The drive out to Chesterhill from Harrisonburg is about five hours in either direction (and six from Washington), but I do believe that Friends had a sense that the effort and cost of gathering together was well worth it. Stillwater Quarter is an immensely dispersed fellowship, ranging from Flint, MI in the north; Atlanta, GA in the south; and Lancaster, PA in the east. I believe there is a sense that Stillwater will eventually need to set off a new Quarterly Meeting, but Friends have not yet seen clearly how to divide the Meetings. The Quarter has been growing in recent years, and I suspect that continued growth may provide a clearer solution.

We continue to see signs of new life at Capitol Hill Friends in DC. Our meetings for worship in the downstairs conference room of the William Penn House have been well-attended, and morale is high. We have been greatly blessed by visits from Rockingham Meeting, as well as by a number of other Friends from around the country. We feel presence of Christ in our meetings for worship, and we have a sense that we are growing - both numerically and spiritually - as a small Meeting of the Body of Christ.

Seeing how this little fellowship of God's people is being drawn together is one of my greatest joys, and I am deeply grateful for everyone who has been praying for us and encouraging us in our ministry here in DC. Soon, I will be preparing a more structured request for prayer support, which I will be sending out to some folks by email. If you would like to be involved in intentionally supporting Faith and me in our ministry with Capitol Hill Friends, please get in touch with one of us so that we can add you to our prayer partners list. And, as always, I invite you to let me know how we can be praying for you, as well. We hold many of you in prayer already, but it is helpful to know how to pray specifically for individuals and Meetings.

I would like to mention one more thing before I close: I have recently begun to publish a series of essays entitled Missional Quaker Faith on my blog, The Lamb's War. In this series, I am attempting to sketch out a vision for what our lives and church communities might look like if we laid aside everything to be fully available for Christ's mission for us in the 21st-century West. I hope that you will join me in exploring these issues, and share your comments as you feel led. You can easily subscribe to The Lamb's War either by email or by RSS feed; just look at the upper right-hand side of the blog to see how.

I pray that you are experiencing the living power of Christ with you in your daily lives and in your Meetings. Trusting together in the Seed of God, who is the root and reward of our friendship, we will be remade in the image of Christ.

In the Love that is beyond the world,

Micah Bales

Micah's Ministry Newsletter #13

Dear beloved sisters and brothers in Truth,

The past few weeks have been a time of getting settled into a new way of life. I have begun to adjust to life in the District of Columbia, at the William Penn House. I have taken time to be present with my wife, my housemates, and my neighborhood; and I have spent a good amount of time alone seeking God's guidance for me in my next steps in this new chapter of my life. As I have sought to be intentional about giving myself time to develop roots here in DC, I have also spent some time exploring my relationship with the wider Mid-Atlantic region. This month has been a time of rest, renewal, spiritual growth and deepening relationships.

Life at the William Penn House is good. It has been a joy to be present on an ongoing basis in the community where my wife has lived and worked for more than two years. I have been impressed with the professionalism and good management that I have observed at the House, and it has been a particular joy to see Faith at work, exercising her considerable gifts of administration and hospitality. I feel that I am able to participate in the community life of the house to a great degree, but I appreciate that I am also given the space I need to focus on my own work and recreation.

I have attended a couple of Friends Meetings in the DC metro area. The first was Friends Meeting of Washington, part of Baltimore Yearly Meeting. I attended this Meeting alone, because Faith had work that day. Friends Meeting of Washington has three worship services on Sunday, two of them concurrent. Of these two simultaneous services, there is the larger one held in the main worship room, as well as a smaller one held in an adjacent building. I had already attended the larger service a number of times, so this time I tried out the smaller one. It was, as advertised, a quiet worship service. There was only one spoken message, and I gathered that most Sundays are either entirely silent or with very few spoken messages.

On another Sunday, Faith and I attended the Friends Meeting in Alexandria, Virginia, also a part of Baltimore Yearly Meeting. Faith and I had visited this Meeting once before, and we were pleased to be among them once again. Friends in Alexandria are a very sweet community of seekers, and we felt very welcomed among them. Faith and I felt blessed that each of us were called upon to deliver vocal ministry during the meeting for worship. We pray that our visit was profitable in building up the Body of Christ in Alexandria.

On the first Sunday of this month, Faith and I visited Friends near Harrisonburg, Virginia, at Rockingham Friends Meeting, part of Ohio Yearly Meeting. We had been excited to visit this Meeting for months, and it was a joy to be with them for worship, followed by a meal. We were honored to join them for their monthly meeting for business, and we were very impressed by the gospel labor of spiritual nurture and evangelism that this small Meeting is involved in throughout the world. This tiny group of Friends has care of a worship group outside Atlanta, Georgia, as well as serving a large number of affiliate members throughout the world.

Rockingham Meeting is two and a half hours South of DC. Despite the distance, Faith and I hope to return on a regular basis. We sense a deep spiritual affinity with these Friends. Of all of the Meetings that either of us have experienced in this region of the United States, Rockingham is the one that we feel most akin to. This feeling of affinity was further confirmed when I visited the Stillwater Quarterly Meeting of Ohio Yearly Meeting the following Saturday, in Bird-in-hand, Pennsylvania. I was very impressed by the ministers and elders of Stillwater Quarterly Meeting, to which Rockingham belongs. Their dedication to the gospel of Jesus Christ as understood in the Friends tradition is inspiring to me, and their emerging focus on evangelism is in line with my own concern to share the good news across borders, cultures, languages, national identities and ethnicities.

Almost one week after traveling to Pennsylvania for Stillwater Quarterly Meeting, my work with Earlham School of Religion took me North again, to the city of Philadelphia. I spent the better part of a week meeting with Friends in the Philadelphia area. I met with a number of young Quaker leaders, talking up the YAF gathering that will be happening in Wichita next May and hearing their questions, concerns, and feedback about the event. This was a very valuable experience for me; I felt like I learned a lot about the needs and perspectives of Young Adult Friends in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. I was made more sensitive to how to work more effectively with Philadelphia YAFs as we seek to share the love of Christ with all people.

While in the Philadelphia area, I was also able to travel to Pendle Hill, where Betsy Blake spoke about her experience of Jesus. (She was magnificent!) In addition to the blessing of being present for Betsy's witness, it was also a delight to be present with the wide array of Friends who attended the lecture. It felt great to connect with many Friends that I had not seen in months or years, as well as to make connections with Friends I had not previously met. After all of this, I drove from Pendle Hill to New Jersey to have a brief but blessed late-night opportunity with Martin Kelley and his family.

I feel very blessed by all of the work that God has been doing in my life these past weeks. I have experienced times of spiritual darkness and desolation, but I have been repeatedly delivered and built up in Christ. I praise God for the spiritual baptism that the Holy Spirit is working in me as I pass from darkness into light, from death into new life in Christ. I thank God for every single person and event that has been placed in my life and for the way that God works through all things for our transformation and reconciliation to God in Christ.

May each of you know the tender love of our blessed Savior. Pray for me as I pray for you. Peace and grace be with you in the Lord.

In brother- and sisterhood,

Micah Bales

Micah's Ministry Newsletter #10 - Ohio Yearly Meeting

Dear Children of Light,

Following Northwest Yearly Meeting, Faith and I flew back to Ohio. She soon returned to the William Penn House, in Washington, DC, while I made my way to the sessions of Ohio Yearly Meeting, in Barnesville. I was pleased to return to Barnesville after being away for the past year. I feel a special peace and tenderness to the Lord when I am among Friends in Barnesville, and I was grateful for the sense of homecoming I felt at Stillwater meetinghouse after what had been in some ways an emotionally and spiritually difficult summer. I arrived fairly early, so I had about a day to settle in before the business began. I had a good time shucking corn, cutting up fruits and vegetables, and catching up with friends.

I had experienced Conservative Friends' business the previous summer, when I visited Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) and also sat in on a small bit of North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative). Having had that experience, business at Ohio Yearly Meeting was familiar. I was again impressed by the Conservative tradition of having the clerk both preside and record. I found it particularly good practice the way in which Conservative Friends prepare their minutes during meeting for business, presenting the wording of each minute for approval at the time it is being discussed. This way, there is no need to go back and review minutes and approve them at a later time. Each minute is composed and approved then and there. Friends worked together to guide the body's discernment and come to Spirit-led decisions; and most of the time it seemed like there were many clerks, not just the one at the clerk's table.

Business at OYM is slow. Sometimes breathtakingly so. There are long stretches of silence between items of business, allowing the clerk time to compose a minute to be approved then and there by the body. One thing that particularly struck me about the business I observed at OYM was the way in which the clerk would wait and ask questions of the body to ensure that there was indeed clarity of God's will for Friends. Even when Friends were in easy agreement, the clerk would wait and encourage Friends to seek clarity from Christ. I believe this is valuable. It was recently pointed out at a clerking workshop at Northwest Yearly Meeting that the times when we are in most danger of making a mistake is when all are in agreement from the beginning. I respect the way in which OYM takes the time to sit with questions that they think they know the answers to, leaving room for God to work and overturn their assumptions.

A great amount of the business this year had to do with queries. OYM takes a great deal of time answering queries: First on a Monthly Meeting level; then synthesizing these answers at their Quarterly Meetings. Finally, at the Yearly Meeting, the Quarterly Meeting responses to the queries are read and synthesized into a single response for the Yearly Meeting as a whole. This year, in addition to answering the queries as a body, the Yearly Meeting also undertook to revise one query which speaks to oaths and gambling/speculation. The query had read in a way that admonished Friends not to sign statements "under penalty of perjury," nor to "affirm." Some Friends pointed out that signing a statement "under penalty of perjury" or "affirming" a legal statement is not equivalent to swearing an oath. Instead, signing or affirming such statements is a statement of agreement to be held legally liable for falsehood. Friends accepted this correction and amended the eighth query accordingly.

Seeing how much time and energy OYM Friends devote to them, I came to appreciate what the queries have to offer us as Friends. Friends at OYM discussed why the queries were important to them, and their reasons included the importance of the queries in: establishing and maintaining Christian identity and spiritual understanding as a corporate body; teaching us how to live as Christians and helping us be accountable; and encouraging Meetings to have a corporate relationship with Christ and to be established as a Christian body. They also spoke of how the queries were useful for individuals: challenging us to greater faithfulness; calling us to accountability to one another and to Christ; and providing a sense of connection between (affiliate) members who live at a distance and correspond with their Monthly Meeting, giving their individual reponses to the queries.

Overall, I was very impressed by Ohio Yearly Meeting. I am comforted to see a Friends body that is unreservedly Christian and clearly committed to the Friends tradition, including waiting (unprogrammed) worship. I think that Friends in Ohio often feel compelled to over-state their Christianity as they seek to distinguish themselves from other bodies of Friends that disregard the centrality of Christ Jesus. While there is sometimes a certain rigidity in their stance, there is also undeniable truth in it. This truth attracts me to Ohio Friends. I appreciate their unwillingness to water down their theology or their practice.

And I'm not the only one who is attracted. Ohio Yearly Meeting, after more than a century of decline, is growing once again. It is growing numerically, spiritually and in terms of morale. This year, Friends celebrated as they welcomed Crossroads Friends Meeting into full Monthly Meeting status. This was the second Monthly Meeting to be added to OYM in two years. The last time that two Meetings were added to OYM in such a short period of time was in 1866. This growth is due in large part to a new wave of evangelism undertaken by OYM Friends in the past years. Friends are laboring to encourage new Conservative worship groups across their region, throughout the United States, and even in other countries. If the Lord wills it, we can expect to see continued growth among Friends in the tradition of Ohio Yearly Meeting - Meetings that bear witness to the Quaker understanding of the gospel of our Risen Lord, Jesus Christ.

During this period of new growth and vitality, there seem to be two primary tendencies or streams in the body of Ohio Yearly Meeting: The first is those who are of an Evangelical bent, but who appreciate waiting (unprogrammed) worship. It is important to them to be clear on the fundamental doctrines of Christian faith, as well as practicing a listening spirituality. The other significant group is those who are attracted to the hyper-traditionalism that OYM allows room for. Of those in attendance at OYM this year, I would guess that roughly half were in some form of plain dress - that is, they wore clothes that visibly marked them as separate from "the world." This ranged from those whose dress was remarkably simple to those who wore Quaker attire that would probably be suited for historical reenactment of eighteenth century Friends. Many men wore suspenders, broad-brimmed hats, buttoned-up shirts, non-descript slacks, and black shoes. Many women wore bonnets or other head coverings, as well as a simple dress and simple black shoes. Many Friends, both plain-dressed and not, used plain speech ("Thy fly is unzipped, Friend"). I enjoyed the plain language, and used it myself often. It serves as a form of intimate address among spiritual brothers and sisters.

After Ohio Yearly Meeting, I caught a ride with Tyler Hampton and a couple of folks from New City Friends in Detroit. At this time, I am staying with Tyler and Ray at their home in the city of Detroit. I praise God for allowing me this time of rest and reflection as my wedding approaches. In the past weeks, I have been increasingly feeling that God is calling me to prayer and rest from labor. I pray that I may be faithful in resting, just as I have sought to be faithful in laboring. In many ways, resting is harder.

I appreciate the correspondence that I have received from Friends, and I hope that you will continue to write to me as the Lord leads. I hope to see many of you at Faith and my wedding on September 5th, at Stillwater Meetinghouse. All are invited. (Click here for details.)

God bless you. May each of us continue to be brought more deeply into the Way of Jesus.

With love,

Micah Bales

Micah's Ministry Newsletter #9

Dear Friends of Truth,

Faith and I were pleased to be with Friends in Northwest Yearly Meeting during their annual sessions this year in Newberg, Oregon. Northwest Yearly Meeting is a group of Evangelical Friends churches in the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. I have personal connections with Northwest Friends, as my father grew up in this Yearly Meeting, and my grandmother and aunt are still active members. I had visited them last year, and I was very pleased at what I observed and experienced among them. I feel confident in saying that they are one of the healthiest Yearly Meetings in the United States, standing firmly in the Quaker tradition while also embracing their Evangelical heritage.

Colin Saxton, NWYM's superintendent, gave the opening sermon on Monday night. It was an impactful message, calling us to greater faithfulness in our spiritual lives as we prepare for the inevitable spiritual storms that threaten to tear us apart as individuals and as the Body of Christ. Colin said that the word that God had kept giving him as he prepared for that night's message was, "deeper." Colin emphasized that, as important as "bigger and better" can be, all of our efforts are for nothing if they are not built on the Solid Rock. He encouraged us to get serious about our spiritual disciplines and to pay attention to the ways we are called to deepen our lives in Christ, to become a holy people fit for God's work. Colin called us to be a people focused on being what God means us to be - not just on good works and achievement based on our own goals and expectations. It seemed that God was using Colin to call Northwest Yearly Meeting to prepare spiritually for the difficult times that are coming.

This year's sessions were mostly easy. Last year, there had been a minute brought by a couple of the local churches regarding immigration and the US government's response in curtailing illegal immigration. The minute was not ultimately approved, as Friends did not feel clear that they understood the issue sufficiently to approve a statement. This year, instead of trying to pass a minute, the Yearly Meeting approved forming an Immigration Taskforce. This working group will focus on three areas: 1) Providing accurate information to the churches about the realities of immigration to the United States and the injustices faced by many visitors in this country; 2) Carrying out advocacy to influence more just legislation and governmental policies towards visitors in our midst; and 3) Engaging in direct action to help immigrants in local communities, providing assistance and aid to those in greatest need. I was impressed with the way that NWYM moved forward, not trampling the concerns and perspectives of Friends on of this hot-button issue, but engaging with it in a way that will hopefully allow the Yearly Meeting to gain greater clarity and unity as they move forward in the ways that God is calling them.

I was pleased to meet with Ángel and Hernán Díaz, two leaders of the Spanish-language Friends Church movement in the Pacific Northwest. Ángel is pastor of a Spanish-language Friends church in Newberg, Oregon, and Hernán is a pastor in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. Together, they are helping to develop an energetic Christian ministry among Spanish-speaking Friends in their areas. I was very impressed by them and the work that they are engaged in, and I pray that God will continue to guide them as they build up the Church in their communities. I also pray that God will continue to open ways for Spanish-speaking and English-speaking Friends to work together more closely as time goes on. This is an acknowledged concern of Friends in NWYM, and I hope that they will be encouraged as they seek to make their Yearly Meeting more integrated across cultural and linguistic barriers, so that the world may witness the Truth of Christ that breaks down all barriers of class, culture, race, nationality and gender.

The main speaker for Northwest Yearly Meeting this year was Bob Adhikary. Bob has previously spoken to Friends in Eastern Region, Mid-America Yearly Meeting, and at Barclay College. At these two last, there were widely publicized reports of spiritual outpourings that overwhelmed those present to hear him speak. Many came to Northwest Yearly Meeting wondering whether Bob would bring Revival with him, though we were cognizant that it is only God who can bring Revival, and that Bob could at best be an instrument of God's work among us. Unfortunately, Bob's style and message were uncomfortable for many of those gathered in Newberg, and deeply offensive for some. A hint of this is present in NWYM's 2009 Epistle, which cites the Senior High Epistle, saying that, "The meeting was encouraged by [Bob Adhikary's] passion for evangelism and the excitement in his message, but some of his statements caused a difference of opinion among the members of our group." Adhikary's statements included that the September 11th attacks and the Hurricane Katrina disaster were God's Wrath on the United States for accepting sin - in particular, homosexuality.

The intensity of Bob Adhikary's rhetoric led to some amount of response from the gathered body over the course of the week. During open worship in business, near the end of the sessions, several Friends stood up and reminded us of God's universal love for all people. While Bob emphasized God's anger at sin, some Friends felt led to encourage us to focus on God's love and mercy. They reminded us that we are judged by God for how we treat the outcast and marginalized.

Colin Saxton's message near the beginning of the sessions, calling us to go deeper and to make sure that we are truly grounded in Christ before the storm comes, was surely prophetic. Northwest Yearly Meeting is likely headed into a period of stretching and difficult discernment around the question of homosexuality in the Church. One of the local churches in the Portland area recently adopted a minute which states that they do, "not judge a person’s ministry and leadership on the basis of any incidental characteristic. It is our experience and testimony that God works through people without regard for race, age, gender or sexual orientation." It seems inevitable that in the coming years Northwest Yearly Meeting will be challenged with divergent understandings of God's work through people of differing sexual orientations and gender identities. I am confident in the human leadership of Northwest Yearly Meeting to guide the Yearly Meeting through these birth pangs. I pray that the one true Leader and Guide of Northwest Yearly Meeting, Jesus Christ, might be present with all Friends as they seek together the will of God and learn to walk together in Christ's Way.

I have great love for Friends in Northwest Yearly Meeting. They feel like family to me. To be fair, that may be because much of the Yearly Meeting literally is family, to greater or lesser degrees. I hope to be able to continue to visit Northwest Yearly Meeting in the years to come. I pray that they will stay low and open to God's present guidance in the way I have seen them be receptive these past two years, especially as they encounter greater challenges as a Yearly Meeting. I see God at work in Northwest Yearly Meeting, and I have greater hope for the future of Friends because of it.

Next, I'll be visiting Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative), in Barnesville, Ohio. I am looking forward to spending some quality time with what is, in many ways, the most traditionalist of our Yearly Meetings. I am particuarly interested to see how business is conducted among them, and I pray that we will experience a palpable covering of Christ's Spirit as we gather together this week.

Finally, please pray for Western Yearly Meeting. I am receiving reports that they are having very difficult sessions this year and could use our spiritual support. Please pray that they may be covered with the uniting and healing power of Christ.

Your brother in Christ Jesus,

Micah Bales