My essay for the Friends Quarterly competition on the future of Quakers in Britain is a bit long for a blog post, so here is a summary:
– I consider the period up to 50 years from now (until my 80th birthday)
– We’re a persistent group, but need to tackle some problems to ensure our survival
– Survival in my view turns on the question of identity
– We should:
- avoid using a superficial unity of practice as the source of our identity
- instead, recover a stronger sense of the ‘essentials’ or common Quaker starting points
- prune time-consuming elements of bureaucracy (make our business as lean as our worship)
- radically rethink structures which currently place much of our resources and faith in action at arms’ length
- spend more time in study and worship together to forge a stronger sense of identity
– These steps should give us a more coherent voice in the world, hence boost our chances of survival
things that might have been otherwise 
but just to clarify, when you type about pruning back some of our bureaucracy & making our business as lean as our worship, what are you considering to be ‘the fat’, & where are you thinking the workload that is pruned should be directed ?
Hi simon,
No specific ‘fat’ in mind, but see under ‘ministry at arms length’ in the main essay for some areas where we invest a lot of energy (but might not need to).