On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 13:54:26 -0700, M----------- A----------- wrote:

>Timothy,
>
>Is there something relatively compact which talks about the current (Book of) Discipline revision process?  How much are you expecting to revise?  New sections? What is driving this?

There isn't anything extant that explains what we are up to, except small snippets in various minutes of the NPYM steering committee.

It all started with the recent recurring ruckus over the junior friends and the five or six year struggle to get control of that situation, mostly by drawing the line between the high school and the post high school people who congregated under that banner.

I was one of the parents concerned about having his children, at fourteen, hanging out with junior friends in their mid twenties, especially because of increasing and well documented instances of...well, perhaps you know all about it.  If not, just leave it at it was not a wholesome scene (from the point of view of the parents) and many families from all over the YM were reluctant to allow their children to participate.

In working with this situation I learned that the Discipline had some things to say about what was junior friends and what was not.  When I pointed out that junior friends was supposed to be a high school group I was told that was "changed" since the book was published.  I took the position that the process of change described in the Discipline, itself, had not been followed in order to make these changes and that, therefore, these changes should be changed back until such time as the changes I was told we had to live with were made by the process that was shown to us the last time we were in unity.  (I was led to minister at a business meeting at YM, when we were in the midst of some rather trying times through which  I explained we would not be struggling as we were at that moment if we had followed the Faith and Practice. We were out of right relationship, I preached in the scolding way I can when I run beyond God's light and start working with my own,  with one another because we had not followed the process.  If we had worked with these changes that were causing problems by using the process in the Discipline we would not have the disunity).

The process for selecting junior friends advisors that is described in the Discipline did not work out, for some reason, and people just improvised.  They did not seek to incorporate this improvisation into the Discipline and that started a process in which other improvisations were made (including expanding the age of membership upward) without the process of the Discipline involved.  Once these improvisations that were contrary to the Discipline were pointed out to the junior friends, and to their advisors, they took the position that since these were now the practices they followed that it was "Quaker process" to continue to follow them until the YM reached unity to go back to what was in the Discipline (or to something else).

I also learned, when I came on steering committee, that, contrary to the Discipline, steering committee itself often "changed" the Faith and Practice through its own process without consulting with the monthly meetings about the efficacy of these changes.  There is an index of such changes that have been made over the years.

The  book we call our Faith and Practice does not describe our practice because there have been changes made by the steering committee and by other less "formal" means.  The book, if read by an outsider or even by Friends, does not give an accurate picture of what's happening or how we do things.

Also, in the process of becoming a monthly meeting, we in Bridge City discovered that the guidance about that process is both vague and ambiguous.  As we turned to other meetings that had recently attained that status we discovered that they had gone through frustration similar to ours in "making it up as they went along."

I became clerk of this committee very reluctantly.  I have a conservative view of the role of a Discipline in that I believe it's a reflection of the unity of Friends as discerned from the movement of God/the Spirit/the Transcendent Reality among us and that it is not to be deviated from lightly and certainly not to be deviated from just because those who are doing the deviation have not made themselves familiar with what's in the book, in the first place.  No, I don't believe it has to followed as a form, but I do think that when people make changes they should go through the process to institutionalize those changes and make them known to others.  That way, not only does everyone know what's what but everyone has the opportunity to provide light to the process of change.

I was put on the committee because I was so outspoken about the need to follow the Discipline, including changing it by the process it outlines.  When I was asked to clerk the committee I said I didn't want to do it because I am so strongly identified with this conservative position (there are others who believe that the Discipline is a mere suggestion to be followed or not.  This dispute is organized around different readings to the post script of the Balby Letter--see, aren't you glad you asked?) and I didn't want the process of working on the Discipline to be weighed down by the reluctance of those who hold a view different from mine, by their thinking that I would be pushing my own agenda.

D---- F----, who was on Nominating, took my answer back to the committee, he reported to me.  He said that he believed that when I was clerk of Bridge City Preparative Meeting my clerking didn't reveal my own feelings about the various matters of business that came up, even when he knew I had strong feelings about a particular agenda item.  He came back and told me that the committee wanted me to consider whether or not acting in the role of clerk might check my own partisan feelings about things and at the same time give the YM the benefit of my concern and leading in regard to working with the Discipline.  Be that as it will work out or not, it was the light I saw in agreeing to clerk the committee and I have asked Friends, and will continue to remind them that I have asked, that they hold me to that light. 

We changed the name from the discipline committee (which the Faith and Practice says is supposed to be an ongoing group but which steering committee some time ago "laid down" by its own--not the Discipline's--process) because "discipline committee" sounds as though it functions as the vice principal.  Committee on the Discipline is the nomenclature we are working with, now, and, yes, I am aware of the irony that steering committee made that change, which I wanted, in its own extra-Faith and Practiced process, the following of which is, in my view, part of the problem.

Our first step was to get the Discipline into a form we could work with and so one of our committee members scanned it into a word file.

Our next step is going to be to go through index of changes that steering committee has made over the years and integrate those into the Faith and Practice where they "fit in."  That will give us an up to date version of what we are actually operating under.  I think it will be interesting to make that available to the monthly meetings so that Friends can see just how different the book in their hand is from what the "official" Discipline is.  I anticipate that will create some issues for us to look at, as a YM.

I also think that there will be other suggestions from Friends about things that should be looked at (among these, I think, will be additional guidance for preparative meetings wishing to become monthly meetings).  Who knows where this will go?  Well, of course, God knows, but I mean besides God, who knows where this will go?

So, there you have it.  This is going to be difficult because the members of the committee come from the different Quarterlies and we are spread out.  Meeting will be challenging.  Also, no one from Montana has yet come forward to be part of the process, but we are working on that.  The committee, so far, consists of H--- D---, J--- T-----, D------T---, S---- K------, D-- C------- and me.

I believe that what has happened in regard to the Faith and Practice (and this is my own personal belief with which I know that many will take exception) is that in neglecting the unity to which we all came at one time and place, and updating "process" by some  without updating that unity, caused us to fall into grave disunity which created much discord and division among us.  I believe that having a Discipline that describes who we are and how we do things is far more important than other people seem to believe it is.  I realize that the campsites of our ancestors are not to be clung to without question, but I also think they are not be discarded without understanding why they provided safe rest and haven to them.

As I say, aren't you glad that you asked?

Timothy

"The experience of being gathered by God leads into
the experience of being guided by God.  This was not
 just the experience of individuals, as important
though this is.  The key to the development of
Quakerism is the understanding of corporate
guidance which tests and informs individual
leadings.  At the heart of this is the meeting
for worship where Christ, the Inward Light,
is present and is met.  Fox often wrote that Christ
 has come to teach his people himself.  From this
 teaching comes Quaker faith and practice."
 
            The book of Christian Discipline
           of the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
           in Britain (second edition)

7:40:21 AM