How Do Programmed Friends Worship?

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Transcript:

When we went through the pandemic and we didn’t sing together for that whole time, that was something that I missed the most about meeting for worship. We can meet in silence, or we can listen to a message on Zoom, and you miss some of the being in-person part of that but it’s doable. But singing over Zoom just does not work. And so, a really powerful experience for me was actually the first time after the pandemic started that I sang with other people. I was in Minnesota for the treaty people gathering where the addition of people invited others to come and support their activism against the Line three pipeline. We were taught some songs that we could sing together that were kind of protest songs — but also kind of holding the spiritual space — and just to hear and feel everyone’s voices resonating with each other, and we’re all there to to be in community with the natural world and with one another, the sound and the ways that the sound moved through my body was just incredibly powerful.

I’m Cherice Bock and I use she/her pronouns. I’m from Oregon. I live on Kalapuya land, Willamette Valley. I’m a member at North Valley Friends, which is a programmed to friends meeting. We differentiate programmed and unprogrammed among friends because unprogrammed is Friends who come together and meet in silence for an hour until somebody feels a leading to share something, and then they sit down and maybe somebody else feels a leading to share something. A programmed meeting generally has elements that you might see in another church service from another denomination or Christian tradition. You know, it doesn’t have as much liturgy as maybe a Catholic service, but it has several of the same elements.

In programmed Friends meetings, many of them release a pastor, which means they pay the pastor to do the work of ministry. And this allows those folks to feel called to this ministry, to not have to have another job. You know, surface level it seems kind of the opposite of Quakerism. Quakers at the beginning got rid of hireling ministers because they’re seen as, you know, they’re just kind of working for the money. But at this point in history, if we do this well, I think it can be really meaningful to be able to, as a community name that we see gifting in this person and that we see that God or the Spirit is calling them to a particular ministry and we want to support that ministry so much that we are going to offer funds from our own coffers, of every level that we have, to contribute toward that ministry and release them to be able to give their gifts among us. Being able to release someone from the concern of having to earn a living in another way is a way to open up space for the spirit to move in their life when they have a particular calling to care for the community as a pastor.

For a programmed meeting, we have a program. We have a plan of what is probably going to happen, and that is always subject to change — especially for Friends. They may be paying attention to the movement and the spirit and be like, “Well, this is what we planed, but we feel like the spirit is moving us in a different direction right now.” There may be a a time for announcements, of course. We can’t have a Quaker meeting without announcements. And also there’s usually a prepared message. Somebody gives a message and the community spends time in waiting worship, listening and kind of processing that message and seeing what the spirit has to say to them and maybe through them, if they feel that to speak out of the silence. Usually there’s a time for prayer requests or sharing joys and concerns, music, and scripture reading. Music is a big part of that. Usually, there will be several songs in a programmed worship service, and so

Music in worship is meaningful to me because we get to all use our voices together and music allows us to express different feelings. And so, it’s a way to express those feelings together as a community. So maybe it’s like a really sad and lamenting song and that it’s not how we’re feeling that day, but we know that that’s important for the community to hold that space in case people are feeling that, and because we do sometimes feel that way and we know it’s important to have that space to lament and to grieve. Maybe it’s a happy and joyful song and we’re not feeling that way, but we know that our community can still express that together and we can be part of it even if we’re not feeling that way. But it’s a way for the community to show and express together a range of emotions and to have that be part of how we show up in that space. A lot of times music can also be prayers, it can be cries of our heart. It can be ways that we express the desires that we have for connectedness with the divine and with our community present there, or with the broader community, the community of all life. And so, it can kind of inspire us to live in the ways that we would like to live in relation to God in others.

Discussion Question:

• In what ways are programmed meetings meaningful to you?

The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.