There is a yearning and a need among Friends for a book about the Quaker spiritual practice, ministry, and discipline of eldering. A new emergence of eldering, part of a continuum beginning with early Quakers, has been bubbling up to meet the needs of our times. While there is no going back to the Quakerism of yore, we do have within us the same Spirit that has always brought forth the gifts of eldering among Friends.

This book will help guide, enrich, and nourish elders both seasoned in the gift and new to it. It may also open new understandings for meetings who want to encourage and support the elders among them, whether these elders are formally named or not. Each chapter ends with queries for reflection and discussion to help readers connect with their own experience and understanding. Additionally, varied stories from elders and others are included to illustrate the breadth and the depth of the experience of eldering. It is hoped that these queries and stories will lead to openings in this vital ministry for individuals and meetings.

This book has its origins in a simple yes-in fact, in many yeses over many years. It also has its roots in questions and curiosity about the Quaker history and ministry of eldering. May you say yes to developing your knowledge, skills, and experience in the Quaker spiritual practice and discipline of eldering.

Elaine Emily's understanding of eldering began in her earliest days of spiritual awakening and grew through her work in a variety of Christian churches with Ched Myers, an activist theologian with whom she co-founded Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries. Mary Kay Glazer began learning about Quaker eldering as a ministry at a workshop in the mid-2000s, after which Elaine Emily invited her to a small gathering of elders to tell their eldering stories. Bruce Neumann, Janet Gibian Hough, and Mary Kay have all participated in School of the Spirit programs. Elaine, Mary Kay, Janet, and Bruce have all had experiences, deep learnings, and God moments throughout their lives that have brought them to this moment and these words. All are members of the Religious Society of Friends.

The Religious Society of Friends arose as a passionate missionary movement in the 1650s and suffered through decades of persecution before gaining legal toleration in 1689. The new religious sect questioned the fundamental values and underlying principles of English society, pointedly challenging the social, political, and religious status quo. From its inception, members of the Society felt divinely called to model a God-centered alternative to the surrounding culture. Outwardly, this was manifested by such things as distinctive ways of dressing and unique forms of speech. Inwardly, Friends were characterized by their faithful dependence on the immediate direction of the Inward Light of Christ in all aspects of their lives. As the years passed, the outward forms dropped away and the peculiarities of the Quaker way of life gradually disappeared. While in some ways Friends today continue to resist the world's ways, they have largely accommodated themselves to the forms, customs, and standards of the peoples they live among.

Primitive Quakerism Revived challenges contemporary Friends in each of the Society's branches to reexamine their fundamental beliefs and practices, to identify the changes and additions that have been made in the past three and a half centuries, and to acknowledge which of those are unacceptable compromises that need to be abandoned. This book is a plea to reclaim the essential Quaker principles and mission by modeling a joyfully faithful community of God.

Our Life is Love describes the transformational spiritual journey of the first Quakers, who turned to the Light of Christ within and allowed it to be their guide. Many Friends today use different language, but are still called to make the same journey. In our time people seeking deeper access to the profound teachings of Christianity want more than just beliefs, they want direct experience. Focusing on ten elements of the spiritual journey, this book is a guide to a Spirit-filled life that affects this world. Quakers in the seventeenth century and today provide examples of people and communities living in the midst of the world whose radical understanding of Christ's teachings led them to become powerful agents of social change. The book offers a simple, clear explanation of the spiritual journey that is suitable not only for Quakers, but for all Christians, and for seekers wanting to better understand our spiritual experience and the fullness of God's call to us. The book would make an excellent focus for study groups. Marcelle Martin has led workshops at retreat centers and Quaker meetings across the United States. She served for four years as the resident Quaker Studies teacher at Pendle Hill and was a core teacher in the School of the Spirit program, The Way of Ministry. She is the author of the Pendle Hill pamphlets Invitation to a Deeper Communion and Holding One Another in the Light. In 2013 she was the Mullen Writing Fellow at Earlham School of Religion while working on this book.

A Quaker prayer life arises from a life of continuing daily attentiveness. The first generation of Quakers followed a covenant with God, based on assidious obedience to the promptings of the Inward Light. This process did not require the established churches, priests or liturgies. Quaker prayer then became a practice of patient waiting in silence. Prayer is a conscious choice to seek God, in whatever form that Divine Presence speaks to each of us, moment to moment. The difficulties we experience in inward prayer are preparation for our outward lives. Each time we return to the centre in prayer we are modelling how to live our lives; each time we dismiss the internal intrusions we are strengthening that of God within us and denying the role of the Self; every time we turn to prayer and to God we are seeking an increase in the measure of Light in our lives. David Johnson is a Member of Queensland Regional Meeting of the Australia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. David is a geologist with both industry and academic experience, and wrote The Geology of Australia, specifically for the general public. He has a long commitment to nonviolence and opposing war and the arms trade, and has worked with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. David delivered the 2005 Backhouse Lecture to Australia Yearly Meeting on Peace is a Struggle. He was part of the work to establish the Silver Wattle Quaker Centre in Australia in 2010, and is Co-Director of the Centre for 2013-14.

In 1828, Elias Hicks was the best-known Quaker in the United States. He was a deep and original religious thinker, a commanding and compelling preacher, and though eighty years old, still a faithful traveling minister. Whenever God said, Go he went. If he is remembered at all today, it is for his role in the most traumatic events in the history of the Religious Society of Friends - a series of separations that split American Quakers into two hostile camps - one of which came to be called Hicksite. Over the years, his memory has been lost to stories told by his friends and his opponents. Much of what people believe about him is false. The truth is, Elias Hicks was a minister, a mystic, a farmer, an environmentalist, an abolitionist, a father and a husband. This book aims to reveal the real Elias Hicks and his understanding of what it means to be a Quaker. Elias Hicks has much to say to Friends today. Paul Buckley is a Quaker historian and theologian, well-known among Friends of all stripes for his workshops, short courses, and retreats. He has written books on William Penn and Elias Hicks, and the Lord's Prayer; and co-edited The Quaker Bible Reader.

Throughout history, those who have been guided by divine Wisdom and then faithfully followed the leading of the Spirit have experienced divine love and healing power flowing through them into the wider world. God leads faithful individuals and groups to undertake particular actions and ways of life. Some are led to follow what has been variously named a call, leading, ministry, covenant, or spiritual commitment. Courageously faithful people have catalyzed important social changes and have been a force for reconciliation, education, peace, justice, and healing. Following the divine call is not easy, however, when it guides us to live and act in ways different from the prevailing culture. To be faithful, most people require the support of at least a few companions who understand how the Spirit leads individuals and groups to undertake specific actions and ministry and who also understand how to support one another in responding to those calls. In our time, the call to faithfulness is urgent, and people need practices that support both a deeper awareness of the movement of the Spirit and a courageous responsiveness.

This book explains what faithfulness is and how it can be cultivated by a community that practices ways to listen inwardly together for divine guidance. Above all, this book is a guide to faithfulness groups, a practice that holds great potential for supporting individuals of any faith in allowing the work of the Spirit to become manifest through them and their communities.

Marcelle Martin is a member of Swarthmore Meeting, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, which has taken her ministry of spiritual nurture under its care. For four years she served as resident Quaker studies teacher at Pendle Hill Retreat and Study Center. She helped to create and was a core teacher of The Way of Ministry program under the School of the Spirit Ministry and of two nine-month programs on nurturing faithfulness held at Woolman Hill Quaker Retreat Center. She has traveled widely to teach and facilitate workshops in Quaker settings. She is the author of Our Life Is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey and writes the blog A Whole Heart (https: //awholeheart.com).

William Penn's classic 1696 work, Primitive Christianity Revived, describes how the ways of the early Christian church as established by Jesus and his apostles had been restored in the Faith and Practice of the People called Quakers. Central to this short treatise is the Quaker belief in the reality of the Light of Christ in Man, as the Manifestation of God's Love for Man's Happiness. This doctrine, he wrote, distinguished the Religious Society of Friends from all other Christians, and as the Fingers shoot out of the Hand, and the Branches from the Body of the Tree; So True Religion, in all the Parts and Articles of it, Springs from this Divine Principle in Man. This book was written by a Christian Quaker to other Christians, and it remains an invaluable resource for twenty-first-century Quakers and Christians.

William Penn outlines in only a few dozen pages the beliefs and behaviors that define the Friends' way of life. The simplicity and precision of Penn's description is unsurpassed in the three centuries since it was first published, but seventeenth-century English vocabulary and grammar have obscured his message. In this new edition, Paul Buckley has translated Primitive Christianity Revived into modern English, revealing the straightforward clarity of Penn's reasoning for a new generation.

In the course of his life, Elias Hicks (1748-1830) penned hundreds of letters, while writing only one book. The Journal of Elias Hicks is a record of service to the Religious Society of Friends, revealing a man repeatedly called by God to travel among and minister to Quakers in North America. In the Journal, he describes the hundreds of Quaker meetings he visited, scores of public meetings he conducted, and gives some account of his life as a Long Island farmer. Complementing the framework in the Journal, Hicks' letters flesh out details of his life and his beliefs. They reveal a thoughtful man of deep devotion - a man devoted to his wife and family, to his neighbors and friends, to the Religious Society of Friends, but more than anything else, a man simply, humbly, and steadfastly devoted to God. Some of his letters recount the trials of a traveling minister in the early 19th century. Others lay out his understanding of what it means to live faithfully as a Quaker in those times of conflict and change. Most controversially, some put forward his theological beliefs and the scriptural basis for them. Paul Buckley has compiled and transcribed a selection of Elias Hicks' letters and essays from the original manuscripts. To assist the reader, he has added footnotes and scriptural citations to the text, as well as appendices explaining Quaker terms and structures, definitions of archaic and unfamiliar words and phrases, and biographical sketches. This is a book for anyone who cares about the Society of Friends and wonders how it became what it is today.

This book advocates a renewal of the traditional Quaker peace testimony, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The liberal Quaker renewal of a century ago fostered a pacifist ideology that diverged from the existential faith-commitment to peace manifested by earlier Friends. But the optimism that world powers could be persuaded to adopt peace faltered as military-industrial interests grew more entrenched during the 20th century. Today's darkening human prospect forces Friends to reclaim their identity as a people of God that resists the dominant culture and wages an anti-war, a militant inversion of empire's militarist imperatives. Two inverse perspectives are required to reframe the issues. Peace Finds the Purpose of a Peculiar People begins with a close reading of 1 Peter 2:4-17. It then describes how the peace testimony developed among early Friends in the 17th century. The essay concludes by applying the framework of peculiar peoplehood, derived from 1 Peter and early Friends, to the current state of the Religious Society of Friends. The other essay of this book, Militant Peacemaking in the Manner of Friends, examines the issues inversely. It begins with the Book of Revelation, seen as an apocalyptic unmasking of the Roman Empire's demonic structure and a call for Christian resistance. Then it examines the early Quaker Lamb's War as a nonviolent social revolution inspired in part by a socially engaged reading of Revelation. The essay concludes with fresh perspective on the Quaker social testimonies as an anti-war that inverts and subverts today's imperial militarism.

In 2007-2008 David Johnson was led to read the Gospel of John, verse by verse. For eight months he read nothing else, and the Spirit took him through the gospel, opening its meaning for him. This experience convinced David that the gospel is not just a record of Jesus' ministry; it is also a consummate guide to the spiritual life. The reader starts at the beginning and progressively enters more and more deeply into a relationship of holy faithfulness with Jesus.

John's gospel on Jesus opens up a new spiritual world that concentrates on our being in the here and now. Jesus demolishes religious, cultural, and gender walls to reveal a way of being that transcends these regulations. The spirituality of Jesus is eternal and universal and is of the heart, not of buildings and doctrines. It is time to recover the wonderful impact of Jesus' teachings anew.

The narrative of Jesus' ministry in the Gospel According to John forms a very clear teaching about the spiritual life. For many, this sequence parallels the spiritual lessons and changes we each go through.

David Johnson is a member of Queensland Regional Meeting of the Australia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. He has a long commitment to nonviolence and opposing war and the arms trade and worked with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. David delivered the 2005 Backhouse Lecture, entitled Peace Is a Struggle, to Australia Yearly Meeting. He helped establish the Silver Wattle Quaker Centre in Australia in 2010 and was C0-Director of the Centre 2013-2014. David is also the author of A Quaker Prayer Life.

This memoir tells the story of a man's life, particularly his spiritual journey as a minister in the Religious Society of Friends. Lloyd Lee Wilson began keeping a journal when he was eight years old, and he has kept journaling his entire life. This book contains descriptions of events taken from the journals, including recountings of vocal ministry and prayers; other writings by Lloyd Lee (and the writings of others); and Lloyd Lee's reflections on events and his inward journey as well as his inward state today as he looks back on his life.

Lloyd Lee writes in his introduction to this book: A wise Friend once said that since Friends have no creeds to define us, we have to tell our stories in order to remember who we are as a particular people of faith. These stories from my own life are shared as insights into who Friends have been in the places and times I have occupied, to help us remember. They are an account of my trying to be faithful to a call into public ministry among Friends and others and of my consequent struggles to find the support and accountability among my faith community to answer that call faithfully.

It is the intent of the publisher to bring this book into print for the benefit of the reader so they might use it in reflecting on their lives and discerning choices and possible calls laid before them. The spiritual journey that leads to putting God at the center of one's life is the beginning point for doing good works in the world.

Lloyd Lee Wilson has been active in the public ministry since his youth on the eastern shore of Maryland, becoming a Methodist certified lay speaker at age fourteen. He encountered Quakers while attending MIT in the late 1960s and soon became fully committed to the faith and practice of Friends.

His service to Friends includes time spent as general secretary of Friends General Conference, serving on various Friends United Meeting boards and commissions, and yearly meeting appointments in New England, Baltimore, and most recently North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative), where he has been presiding clerk and clerk of the yearly meeting of ministers, elders, and overseers. Lloyd Lee has written a great deal on Quaker faith and practice as well as given talks and lectures and led workshops and retreats. He has been a recorded minister in four different monthly meetings of the Religious Society of Friends.

Our Life is Love describes the transformational spiritual journey of the first Quakers, who turned to the Light of Christ within and allowed it to be their guide. Many Friends today use different language, but are still called to make the same journey. In our time people seeking deeper access to the profound teachings of Christianity want more than just beliefs, they want direct experience. Focusing on ten elements of the spiritual journey, this book is a guide to a Spirit-filled life that affects this world. Quakers in the seventeenth century and today provide examples of people and communities living in the midst of the world whose radical understanding of Christ's teachings led them to become powerful agents of social change. The book offers a simple, clear explanation of the spiritual journey that is suitable not only for Quakers, but for all Christians, and for seekers wanting to better understand our spiritual experience and the fullness of God's call to us. The book would make an excellent focus for study groups. Marcelle Martin has led workshops at retreat centers and Quaker meetings across the United States. She served for four years as the resident Quaker Studies teacher at Pendle Hill and was a core teacher in the School of the Spirit program, The Way of Ministry. She is the author of the Pendle Hill pamphlets Invitation to a Deeper Communion and Holding One Another in the Light. In 2013 she was the Mullen Writing Fellow at Earlham School of Religion while working on this book.

William Penn's classic 1696 work, Primitive Christianity Revived, describes how the ways of the early Christian church as established by Jesus and his apostles had been restored in the Faith and Practice of the People called Quakers. Central to this short treatise is the Quaker belief in the reality of the Light of Christ in Man, as the Manifestation of God's Love for Man's Happiness. This doctrine, he wrote, distinguished the Religious Society of Friends from all other Christians, and as the Fingers shoot out of the Hand, and the Branches from the Body of the Tree; So True Religion, in all the Parts and Articles of it, Springs from this Divine Principle in Man. This book was written by a Christian Quaker to other Christians, and it remains an invaluable resource for twenty-first-century Quakers and Christians.

William Penn outlines in only a few dozen pages the beliefs and behaviors that define the Friends' way of life. The simplicity and precision of Penn's description is unsurpassed in the three centuries since it was first published, but seventeenth-century English vocabulary and grammar have obscured his message. In this new edition, Paul Buckley has translated Primitive Christianity Revived into modern English, revealing the straightforward clarity of Penn's reasoning for a new generation.

By considering the prophetic ministry an ordinary consequence of listening for the Spirit of Truth as often as possible in all we do, space opens up for this way of being to be part of our life journey. The awareness of God is an awareness of the value of all life. Considering this as part of a journey makes it easier to accept setbacks and mistakes and to notice growth and newness, whether our journey is one of radical witness or of loving care for our neighbors.

Often the prophetic work starts with self-knowledge and personal healing. The Light, which is such a powerful instructor about the way forward, is also relentless in allowing us to see the painful corners of our attitudes and behaviors. Peace is not just about opposing war but is also about establishing justice, and it is initially felt within each heart and soul.

We have the choice to shift our focus from what is ours to what is infinite. Early Quakers again and again pointed out that the kingdom of God is within and that we will find this new creation within. The prophetic voice is nurtured by communities that know the reality of the new creation. Such a community is filled with everyday prophets and the occasional radical prophets who call the community to account as well as carry their deepest hopes to the wider world.

Elizabeth Mills is an ecumenical Christian, and a member of the Religious Society of Friends, and she is actively involved in her local meeting for worship for healing. Her love of stillness has led her to share times of stillness with others through quiet days, Taiz worship, and guided meditations. Writing has always been part of Elizabeth's spiritual journey as she seeks to walk a contemplative path in the midst of daily life. Her poems, prayers, and reflections have appeared in a number of periodicals, magazines, and church newsletters. Elizabeth states: These words have been written in times of quiet prayer, and they are offered with love. I hope that in some way these words may be helpful to you and encourage your own spiritual journey.

It is the hope of the publisher that this book may aide those who turn within seeking divine guidance to reach their destination.

Quaker spirituality is at its core a contemplative practice which is based on the path taught and lived by Jesus. The traditional Quaker experience is that the Spirit of God communicates directly to each and every person, especially when we spend time in silence, and is experienced mainly as an Inward Light in the conscience. Further, as this Inward Light is followed, we are granted more light and greater purity of heart or holiness, and we become reborn inwardly as the Spirit of God (Christ) takes hold of our lives.

Many of the quotations in this work are deliberately sourced from the first Quakers, whose remarkable spiritual strength opened up a vision of true Christianity and changed the world around them. The language of the 1600s sounds foreign to our ears until it becomes familiar. Many words have had different meanings over the centuries, as is clear in the different wordings of the King James Version and Revised Standard Version translations of the Bible. Readers are urged to sit and feel for the underlying spiritual message of these written experiences of our Quaker ministers and elders as well as of the selected excerpts from the Scriptures.

The Quaker experience and understanding are that God is always ready to guide and lead us and goes before us, though we may be called upon to wait till we have been inwardly prepared. 'Way will open' in God's time rather than in our own time frame.

This memoir tells the story of a man's life, particularly his spiritual journey as a minister in the Religious Society of Friends. Lloyd Lee Wilson began keeping a journal when he was eight years old, and he has kept journaling his entire life. This book contains descriptions of events taken from the journals, including recountings of vocal ministry and prayers; other writings by Lloyd Lee (and the writings of others); and Lloyd Lee's reflections on events and his inward journey as well as his inward state today as he looks back on his life.

Lloyd Lee writes in his introduction to this book: A wise Friend once said that since Friends have no creeds to define us, we have to tell our stories in order to remember who we are as a particular people of faith. These stories from my own life are shared as insights into who Friends have been in the places and times I have occupied, to help us remember. They are an account of my trying to be faithful to a call into public ministry among Friends and others and of my consequent struggles to find the support and accountability among my faith community to answer that call faithfully.

It is the intent of the publisher to bring this book into print for the benefit of the reader so they might use it in reflecting on their lives and discerning choices and possible calls laid before them. The spiritual journey that leads to putting God at the center of one's life is the beginning point for doing good works in the world.

Lloyd Lee Wilson has been active in the public ministry since his youth on the eastern shore of Maryland, becoming a Methodist certified lay speaker at age fourteen. He encountered Quakers while attending MIT in the late 1960s and soon became fully committed to the faith and practice of Friends.

His service to Friends includes time spent as general secretary of Friends General Conference, serving on various Friends United Meeting boards and commissions, and yearly meeting appointments in New England, Baltimore, and most recently North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative), where he has been presiding clerk and clerk of the yearly meeting of ministers, elders, and overseers. Lloyd Lee has written a great deal on Quaker faith and practice as well as given talks and lectures and led workshops and retreats. He has been a recorded minister in four different monthly meetings of the Religious Society of Friends.

Looking at the ills of our times--the horrible things humans inflict on themselves, on almost all living things, and on the Earth itself--it seems that early Friends had the antidote that is so desperately needed today. They experienced the simple but extremely difficult Truth that we are loved unconditionally and are called to live lives of integrity and love--and to do this together in community. They understood this required surrendering their self-will in order to discern and obey the Inward Guide teaching them how to create a more just and loving society. Perhaps too many Friends today have forgotten or lost sight of the radical call of these life-changing experiences.

In A Call to Friends: Faithful Living in Desperate Times, Marty Grundy argues that we need to envision a different way to organize society that is not inherently exploitative, hierarchical, racist, and patriarchal. New economic and political systems can evolve from a Spirit-inspired vision of a different social system.

To better understand this deeper relation with the Spirit that inspires a new vision, Grundy suggests that we go back to the early Friends. They summarized their experience, which they shared with anyone who would listen, as Christ having come to teach his people himself. To more clearly understand this, we need to look at what Jesus of Nazareth was teaching the people of his time in Palestine under the crushing power of the Roman Empire. This is our call and our challenge, individually and together: to listen to that Inward Light, to keep close to what it shows us, and to come into obedience to its guidance--as a gathered body.

This book makes available many of the letters of John Woolman and offers Drew Lawson's reflections on themes arising from Woolman's letters in the light of Lawson's own experience of the spiritual journey. The book investigates the following themes: the love of God, brokenness, abandonment to God, being led through God's love, crucifixion (paying the price of faithfulness), and resurrection. Woolman's words describe the eternal in ordinary events and resonate across time.

All of Woolman's writings - journal, pamphlets, and letters - issued from a life lived deeply within the culture of the Religious Society of Friends in the eighteenth-century Atlantic colonies. This was a culture steeped in the Christian tradition, in Scripture, in a life lived within a faith community, and in a deep understanding of Quaker ways and what it meant to be a Quaker.

Woolman was committed to the life of his faith community. He was immersed in the sacred texts of the Bible and in the young, one-hundred-year-old tradition of the Religious Society of Friends. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Woolman helped give his inheritance new life and an original expression, and that is why his writings are still of great interest to Friends and the wider Christian community.

Woolman's letters raise questions on how we listen to a voice from the past, a voice steeped in the love of God. How do we interpret words written from the Silence?

This book makes available many of the letters of John Woolman and offers Drew Lawson's reflections on themes arising from Woolman's letters in the light of Lawson's own experience of the spiritual journey. The book investigates the following themes: the love of God, brokenness, abandonment to God, being led through God's love, crucifixion (paying the price of faithfulness), and resurrection. Woolman's words describe the eternal in ordinary events and resonate across time.

All of Woolman's writings - journal, pamphlets, and letters - issued from a life lived deeply within the culture of the Religious Society of Friends in the eighteenth-century Atlantic colonies. This was a culture steeped in the Christian tradition, in Scripture, in a life lived within a faith community, and in a deep understanding of Quaker ways and what it meant to be a Quaker.

Woolman was committed to the life of his faith community. He was immersed in the sacred texts of the Bible and in the young, one-hundred-year-old tradition of the Religious Society of Friends. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Woolman helped give his inheritance new life and an original expression, and that is why his writings are still of great interest to Friends and the wider Christian community.

Woolman's letters raise questions on how we listen to a voice from the past, a voice steeped in the love of God. How do we interpret words written from the Silence?