Download Gospel Order

This is one of the documents used in the EMES Meeting for Learning 11-13 June 2010
held at Svartbäcken, Rimbo, Sweden
Gospel Order
In her Pendle Hill pamphlet entitled Gospel Order. A Quaker Understanding of Faithful
Church Community, Sandra Cronk tells us that Gospel Order is a term that gathers
together the most significant threads of Friends’ understanding of the church
community. She says that George Fox used it to describe Quaker practices of worship,
decision-making and daily living in meetings and everyday lives, and how being led
into God’s new order of love, peace and justice manifested itself in the world. For early
Friends, Gospel Order implied the emergence of new patterns of life, a listening and
responding to the leadings of the Inward Teacher, and being part of a community of
faith. Transformed lives also meant turning to the Light – which led to Christ, the
Inward Teacher and Guide – that revealed what people needed to do in order to live true
and faithful lives. In this sense, Gospel Order meant God’s New Order and alluded to a
reconciled, faithful, personal relationship with God. It also implied being gathered into a
faith community of similar seekers and rejecting all social conventions that were
considered contrary to God’s will. Through Gospel Order people would be restored to a
right relationship with God and with each other. Although Early Friends used the phrase
Gospel Order to describe the communal/ecclesiastical and societal dimensions of this
new ordering, it can also be used to describe the personal and cosmic dimensions of
God’s New Order.
Cronk breaks the definition of Gospel Order down as follows: Gospel refers to the life,
power and reality of our relationship with God, while Order indicates the characteristics
of daily living that flow from God and that allow the faith community to maintain and
deepen its relationship with Christ. George Fox referred to this relationship as a
“covenanted relationship”, which is a relationship of enduring trust and faithfulness with
God and with other people (given that one cannot live God’s New Order alone). For
early Friends the new covenant was Christ Jesus and their living relationship with
Christ. In this context, patterns of life – the ‘order’ in Gospel Order – were a
manifestation of one’s relationship with Christ. The Quaker meeting community as a
whole – and not simply the individuals within it – was also required to embody the new
pattern of life and to bear fruit, i.e. to live out the fullness of a living relationship with
Christ.
Gospel Order means a life lived in transforming, guiding and sustaining power, not the
imposition of a system of “shoulds” and external codes of behaviour. It is based on an
ordered way of life that is tangibly expressed in all areas of living, both outward and
inward and reflects a sense of peoplehood, rather than individualistic actions and
assumptions. According to Cronk, the content of Gospel Order as understood in the
Quaker context is made up of three specific areas:
a) the inward life of worship and discernment: living in a way that nurtures and
maintains the covenant relationship with God, e.g. holding regular meetings for worship
and for business where the discipline of listening together and discerning the inward
leadings of the Divine Teacher and Guide are practised.
b) the interior functioning of the church community, our families and homes: which
grows out of the above and reflects the love and unity of our relationship with God.
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c) the social testimonies of Friends: a prophetic witness to society at large expressed
through the Quaker testimonies that witness to the New Order that God brings to birth
in the world.
In the early Friends model of Gospel Order, socioeconomic and political concerns and
the life of the meeting community were linked and intertwined into an integrated whole.
Today, in contrast, we tend to regard these aspects as separate models and often
categorise into ‘social concern Friends’ (action-based) and ‘inward life Friends’ (prayer
and contemplation-based). Friends in Fox’s day believed that the most basic peace and
social concerns grew out of living Gospel Order. This was reflected, for example, by
their community witness or testimonies to plain speech, simple dress, the refusal to go
to war, take an oath etc., and their consequent living in a new order of peace, simplicity
and harmony. Living like this was seen as a prophetic challenge to all the unjust social
structures of the so-called old order. In other words, Gospel Order grows out of the
interweaving of the inward, communal and social witness aspects of our lives as
Quakers.
Mutual accountability was seen as an important component, in that it provided an
internal dynamic to keep Gospel Order strong within the Quaker community and meant
accountability to each other and to God. This accountability was regarded as the
lifeblood of the process of discipling, i.e. being disciples to one another and helping
each other to become disciples of Christ. In a prophetic context, accountability also
means mutual admonition, given that the Inward Light of Christ also reveals our
unfaithfulness and wrongdoings. Friends regarded admonition as part of a larger process
of spiritual listening, guidance and nurture that meant helping each other to hear and
respond to God’s call, recognise and use spiritual gifts, identify life’s broken and
unfaithful aspects, overcome fear, discern leadings and know when the Inward Guide
had either been outrun or had not been heeded. In this sense, admonition implied
encouragement to: undertake a much needed service or ministry, resist taking on too
many tasks, trust God’s leadings or let go of behaviour or things that prevented a deeper
commitment to faithfulness in all areas of life.
Understanding Gospel Order helps us to hear God’s call to a deeper faithfulness.
Nowadays it does not mean reproducing patterns of the past that do not match or fit our
times. What it does invite us to do, though, is to live in the life and power of a covenant
relationship with God and with each other that speaks and witnesses to our
contemporary world.
Within the meeting community, Elders were regarded as the overseers of Gospel Order.
Their role included oversight of meeting for worship, the spiritual life of the meeting
and the daily life of the meeting community. Another of their roles was to nurture
Friends’ practice and process of listening. Listening to God in community was regarded
as the heart of Gospel Order and the act of faithfulness from which all life flowed. The
Elders’ attitude of deep listening helped the meeting as a whole to centre down in
worship, helped individual Friends within the meeting community to listen and respond
to God, helped to ensure that the inward life of the meeting and of individual Friends
was translated into faithful daily living, and helped to ensure that Friends with special
needs received the help and care they required. Their work also included the oversight
and practice of accountability – in terms of helping to solve conflicts or disputes, the
reconciliation of broken relationships, serving as mediators or arbiters at the request of
the parties involved, encouraging ministry, providing care and spiritual guidance and
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generally watching to see that individual Friends and the meeting faithfully practised
Gospel Order.
Sue Glover Frykman
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