Ministry in Community

Prepared message given as part of Three Rivers worship on Zoom, 28 May 2026.

Oh, it is good to be with you this morning. I want to start by expressing gratitude to Callid Keefe Perry for laying the groundwork for this message. Both by bringing a message to weeks ago that I'm going to build on and for being really a primary mover in the document: "What is Ministry at Three Rivers?" which is a document that we are exploring as a meeting ministry and council is exploring it and we're going through it in some detail, the pieces of it and some of the implications of it during our worship time. So I'm gonna build on that. .

So this message continues the series that explores some aspect of that document. This morning in this Pentecost season, I wanna explore from this document how tending ministry in the meeting is an invitation to become more fluent in the many languages of the spirit among us.

Two weeks ago, we reflected on ministry as the practice of intentionally stewarding leadings and spiritual gifts. We noticed, or rather, Callid lifted up for us, that word practice, that ministry is something we learn by repeating, by experimenting, risking, listening, and beginning again. And we also noticed the word stewarding, that gifts are not possessions.

He talked about manifestations. A gift may be real in us or on us, a manifestation of the spirit, but it's not ours to own. We were reminded that it is God's life moving through us for the sake of the body, and I want to stay with that piece for the sake of the body this morning. Among friends, we often give a great deal of attention to public ministry, to traveling in the ministry, or carrying a concern among friends.

Being sent out in some visible way, and that kind of ministry is very important. But I am convinced that the foundation of that outward facing ministry is the ministry that happens within the meeting. It's from the well tended soil of a meeting that ministry grows. And that soil is tended when we come to know one another in that which is eternal.

We know one another, not only by name or role or opinion or history, but by something deeper, by the shape of each other's faithfulness, by the tender tenderness of one another's hearts by the rhythms where life is rising and, where we hold our grief, our ministry document says that if we wanna nurture ministry among us, we need to know each other well enough that it feels right and safe enough to share our struggles and failures as well as our successes and growths.

And that feels really important to me. Because spiritual gifts rarely arrive fully polished. Leadings often begin, as we heard last time, as nudges. They may feel uncertain or awkward, inconvenient or tender, and if we don't really know one another, we might miss them because sometimes they're also very quiet.

There is in the document a quotation from Friends Meeting at Cambridge, member George Selleck. I won't read it here. You can follow the link that's in the chat later and go read it yourself. It's long and it's good. Basically, it says that a healthy meeting carefully preserves and encourages both something called the "universal ministry" and something called the "particular ministry."

Universal Ministry reminds us that anyone may be moved by the spirit. This is a particular mark of our religious society. Ministry is not restricted to a professional or priestly class. Particular ministry reminds us that some friends may carry sustained or intensified leadings to which they turn their lives over.

Those leadings may need nurturing. They may need opportunities for being used, for making mistakes. They require accountability and they require community support. A healthy meeting needs both universal and particular ministry, and both of those depend on community. If we don't know one another, how will we recognize the gifts that are rising among us?

If we do not know one another, how can we help test a leading? If we don't know one another, how can we encourage that friend who is just stepping at the edge of faithfulness. If we don't know one another, how do we notice when someone's service has become too heavy to be carried alone? So perhaps one of the invitations in this lengthy document is pretty simple and maybe kind of ordinary.

Let's know one another more to walk together. To call one another, to share meals, to gather in small groups, so we might ask better questions and listen for more than updates. I think that this is not just social, it's part of our spiritual infrastructure. It's part of we become able to recognize leadings to nurture ministry. Actually for us to be changed by ministry that rises up in the meeting.

We are in the season of Pentecost, and if you know me, you know I love this most Quaker of church seasons as the story is related in the book of Acts. Jesus has left his pals and co-conspirators for good as he has returned and ascended to God. The disciples were gathering in the morning to celebrate shavuot, the feast of the first grain, and then all of a sudden there was a sound, like a mighty roar, a whoosh and explosions and little tongues of fire alighted on everyone present.

The story goes through the power of God and these leaping tongues of fire. Each of those gathered was able to speak in a new tongue, a new language, and testify to the truth about God's love that they had known through their experience in this Jesus movement. In that moment, the disciples are empowered to speak some 15 different Mediterranean languages, not their own.

There's a metaphor in here about how the spirit speaks to all of us in a language we can hear. Maybe it's English or Spanish. Maybe it's in art. Maybe it's in music or tears. The still small voice isn't always a voice. The miracle in this moment wasn't sameness. It was recognition.

People heard the incredible news of God's hope for the world and the language of their own hearts. And maybe that's part of our work too, to learn the many languages by which the spirit speaks among us. The language of vocal spoken ministry, yes, but also the language of caring for each other, the language of service. The language of repair, the language of organizing, teaching, holding grief, making food, moving furniture, asking good questions, showing up over a phone call or a cup of tea. Many gifts, many kinds of service, one spirit.

You might think I've digressed from our ministry document. The connection I want to make is this: if ministry is the practice of intentionally stewarding, leadings and spiritual gifts, then ministry is not private. Gifts may be given to a person, but they're given for the life of the entire body, and because of that part of our invitation as a meeting is to become the kind of community where gifts can be noticed, named, tested, encouraged, and held in love. And even though this 17 page document can feel theoretical and abstract, I think the invitation before us is not only to support ministry, in theory, it's to practice being the kind of community where ministry can actually live, to listen for the spirit in whatever language it might be speaking. This is spiritual work and it's also counter-cultural because it asks of us our time, and it is a meeting that's primarily online. It asks us or invites us to be creative in how we connect, to go for a walk while simultaneously on the phone to find that person in your own watershed and connect with them to gather a small group of people who love to knit and talk about your favorite rivalry pattern, to make space in a world that is full of activity that asks us to be rushing and Is full of distraction. Ministry isn't simply what one friend does when they're sent out into the world. It is here in the life of this body growing out of the soil that we tend to together.

So as I send us into small groups, I have some very practical queries.

What would help me become more available to know and be known in that which is eternal?

What small active connection might help tend the soil from which ministry grows among us?

And that second one is really an invitation to think about how might you make a creative connection to someone else in our Three Rivers community.