Steven Dale Davison

In this very helpful pamphlet, Davison offers us a clear description for the much neglected practice of how a meeting can nurture Spirit-led vocal ministry in its meeting for worship, and explains why this is so important in the spiritual life of a meeting and its members.
He starts with carefully laying out the essential basis of traditional Quaker worship and vocal ministry for the many Friends who lack this background and rely on the inadequate method of learning it by osmosis. He show more explains what we seek and what we're doing in worship, ways to center down, where truly Spirit-led vocal. ministry comes from, and its important role in ushering us into a gathered meeting. And then he describes the needed Quaker practice of recognizing and nurturing both spiritual gifts for vocal ministry and a calling to that ministry. And very practically, he gives us ways to do it. Note here, he gives both helpful recommendations on how to encourage and nurture Spirit-led ministry and how to address problematic speaking in meeting.
There is a lot of valuable information packed into these 32 pages, clearly expressed, and so important that it will reward some rereading and discussion. If your meeting frequently experiences a gathered meeting for worship, you're clearly on the right track. If not, this pamphlet offers a practical, traditional, and responsible way to nurture this. There are helpful references listed at the end.
This pamphlet could serve as a short course on a lot of fundamental Quaker understanding about worship, Spirit, spiritual gifts, leadings and ministries, and responsibilities to each other in meeting. It is also a highly useful advice booklet for committees and elders, all Friends really, on the responsibility for spiritual support by a meeting to its members. It is a fundamental resource for all committees on worship and ministry.
If we actually did these things.... show less

This is a fabulous Pendleton Hill pamphlet. But I must ask: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING to name it after Thomas Kelly's book by the same title? Such a shame.

Davidson did a wonderful job of putting in writing how possible it is to remain open to the Lord, Spirit, Source (name it what you will) in religious venues that are unlike one's normal setting for worship. I especially found resonance with the notion that "we are all clerks" (25). Just as holding the recording clerk in the Light while show more contemporaneous minutes are being written produces demonstrably a better record, it would seem to me that Davidson's admonition that we all bear responsibility to listen for the movement of the Spirit, and to help move the body towards the Truth. show less

Stephen Davison lifts up the gathered meeting for worship as the essence of the Quaker way. He puts it in historical context within the Christian and Quaker traditions and considers the state of the gathered meeting in our own time. By describing the gathering in detail from his own experience, he also quotes Thomas Kelly, William Taber, and Patricia Loring. He explores the "faith" of the gathered meeting and how it fulfills the promises of the Quaker way. Most importantly, he describes what show more fosters the gathered meeting. In the holy communion of the gathered meeting lie the soul of the Quaker faith and the hope for a Quakerism that remains vibrant and relevant into the future. Discussion questions included. show less

Davison describes what a gathered meeting is and lays out concrete things we can do to foster this experience of communion in our meetings more often. While it is impossible to fully convey spiritual experience in words, his descriptions may help us to avoid barriers and open to the way toward this quintessential Quaker experience of a shared sense of presence, knowledge of the Truth, unity, joy, and love. Some of his suggestions for worshippers and meetings may be familiar: come prepared, show more on time, seasoned by regular devotional practice, deepen the vocal ministry, hold the meeting and each other in the Light; but new and old, they are powerful seen together.
He declares that meetings need to take responsibility for preparing worshippers, with a robust religious education program about Quaker faith and practice, and a meaningful approach to spiritual formation. Rising to this challenge, both as individuals and meetings, can lead us to the distinctive form of spiritual experience that Friends can offer of the gathering presence of the Holy Spirit. And he points out that it is in this encounter that Quakerism remains a living evolving religion. show less