There's a lot of truth in what you're saying. However, I would differ with a couple of points - not major differences, really. For example, I would not want to have to be perfect or my community to be perfect before we begin being prophetic either inside or outside our boundaries. I would not want to wait to have perfect peace in my heart before beginning to advocate for peace outside the boundaries of the peace community. (HOWEVER, I would NOT pretend that I have found the secret of true peace if I have not! To THAT extent I would agree with you 100%.) Quaker evangelism, in my opinion, involves making ACCESS to the Quaker message as universal as possible, so it simultaneously requires building a healthy Christian community AND communicating about that community to those not in it.
Secondly, I wondered a bit about your blunt assertion that evangelical Friends pastors should not represent the Religious Society of Friends to the world at large until they meet your four conditions. Taken just as you've said it, you may have set up a very fruitful potential debate, but ... who decides when the conditions have been fulfilled? I know a lot of liberal Friends who would not meet those criteria very well. And No. 4 seems impossible to fulfill - you're essentially asking evangelical pastors to let themselves be held hostage by those who are most hostile to them in the Quaker world. And I do mean "hostile" judging by some of the anti-pastoral feelings I felt in Southeastern Yearly Meeting. And why single out pastors, when there are lots of evangelical Friends who are not pastors and who are equally gifted as evangelists?
I do know that there are Friends pastors who have come in from other sectors of the religion industry and have set up shop in a Friends meeting without knowing much about their new home. And there are Friends pastors who operate with a chip on their shoulder about this or that aspect of Friends faith and practice that they, for some reason or other, think is "liberal." However, they are a minority among the pastors I've known and observed. Friends also risk getting distorted on the liberal end by becoming codependent to wounded people from outside Friends who have become allergic to anything within Friends that reminds them of the oppressive aspects of their earlier spiritual homes.
This page is moderated by Johan Maurer as part of the "Evangelism and the Friends Testimonies" project, supported during the academic year 2003-04 by the Ferguson Quaker Fellowship program of Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre. Johan has a minute of service from Reedwood Friends Church.
