I was
intrigued by the opening quote in a recent article in “Quaker News (Winter
2011, No 81):
“As
Quakers, we don’t do outreach … when people need us, they will find us”.
I have
heard similar remarks amongst Unitarians. We say that as a free and open faith
we do not proselytise and never have done! (Well actually we have done but that
is history).
The
article, by Alistair Fuller, recognises an ambivalence amongst Quakers to
outreach and also that to be truly effective, outreach needed to be an integral
part of how Quakers live, both as individuals and in community.
“Effective,
enthusiastic outreach flows from a meeting that is vibrant, rich, warm and
welcoming, involving Friends who are deeply rooted and nourished in their own
faith”.
So it is
more about how one lives as much as what one says. Quaker meetings are more
successful in attracting, and holding, attenders and enquirers when they have
paid proper attention to the quality of their life together and have similarly
together thought about and planned their outreach.
Quaker Week
is a national initiative with a focus on local activities which has now been
running for five years. The impact appears to have been in two ways; meetings
have been bolder and more imaginative in findings ways to be more visible and
accessible and they have been more effective in outreach when Friends are
excited by their own Quakerism and more confident to share it. “This
relationship between inreach and outreach has been the most significant piece
of learning as a result of Quaker Week”. Nationally the Quakers plan an
outreach conference in January 2013 to explore and develop this thinking.
This
rightly confirms my own thinking that the quality of experience offered by
Unitarian communities is in the end the vital factor of whether people who find
us will actually stay. Raising our visibility nationally, and as importantly,
locally is crucial but what the Quakers call inreach is so important. What
would it be like to enable us to truly say that our congregation is vibrant,
rich, warm and welcoming?
Posts
There's a difference between proselytising, evangelism, and interfaith dialogue.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing wrong with saying "I've found a good thing and you might like it too" (a mild form of evangelism).
There is something wrong with saying "you're damned unless you see the world the way I do" (proselytising).
A Unitarian friend spoke about being disenchanted with an inward looking congregation. This person wanted to belong to a community that was socially and spiritually active and innovative as well as being supportive to each other. They wanted the word to get round so that people would be saying, 'I want to be part of what's going on there!' I said you just have to be that example on your own. I feel most wander in the wilderness without a promised land to dream of or a Moses to lead - those who find this lost tribe usually do so by accident - but mostly they have found their own tribe!
ReplyDeleteFrom a USA UU perspective, but also appropriate to Unitarians in the UK I think, is the need to be "on the radar" when people begin to search and consider changes in their religious journeys. To me this requires a degree of coordinated evangelism. In its absence, other sources will rush in to fill the void, writing our narrative for us, often in a very misguided or unfair manner. When this is the primary message the seeker hears or reads, it makes our work of "sharing our good news" all the more difficult just to overcome the misinformation that has preceded us. In other words, I don't see an alternative but to engage in mature, respectful and, yes, enthusiastic outreach. The visible pride we radiate about our faith-communities will say as much as any words.
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