Quaker worship began without pastors or clergy leading. It was a simple gathering, where Friends would seek to hear what the Spirit of the Living God had to say in their midst. Out of the silence, a Friend would speak when they felt led by the Spirit to share what they heard in their hearts.
This sitting in silence together, in the presence of Christ Jesus who “is come to teach the people himself” (an early statement from George Fox about the real presence of Christ in their worship gatherings), was for Friends their practice of communion.
There are still many Friends who meet in this expectant waiting silence today, but the “unprogrammed” meeting is no longer the only way Quakers gather for worship.
In a programmed meeting, one or more members of the Friends community may serve in a pastoral role by leading everyone in song or prayer, sharing a reading from the Bible, or offering a prepared sermon. Such meetings tend to take place in intensely Christian Quaker communities, which are often known as “Friends’ Churches,” and are increasingly the norm in Quaker communities outside the United Kingdom and North America. But these activities only take up a portion of programmed meetings—room is still made for for everyone to listen for a divine prompting in the communion of expectant silence.
“True silence is the rest of the mind,” William Penn, a famous early Quaker (and the founder of Pennsylvania), wrote, “and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.” The goal of this silence is to make ourselves more receptive to divine revelation. Think of it like a dimmer switch on a light bulb: When you “turn up the silence,” so to speak, you increase the potential of connecting with the presence of the divine. And when you make that connection, as the Faith and Practice handbook of Britain Yearly Meeting describes it, “the sense of wonder and awe of the finite before the infinite leads naturally to thanksgiving and adoration.… As, together, we enter the depths of a living silence, the stillness of God, we find one another in ‘the things that are eternal’, upholding and strengthening one another.”
Next: Will I be welcome at a Quaker meeting?
Learn More at Friends Journal
“Pastoring Without a Pastor,” Kathleen Costello Malin
“No Such Thing as Silence?“, Kevin Holm-Hudson
“It’s the Spirit That Makes It Beautiful,” Cherice Bock
“A Bargain with the Giver,” Edna Whittier
“For some people the silence is uncomfortable. I know for me, initially it was, with my first unprogrammed Meeting, but then I learned to love it. Because I was given the opportunity to go deep inside, and to listen to that internal antennae that I could turn on and hear God’s voice, and search for guidance.”