Extending into the Eternal

The Experience of Gathered Worship

I was among around 50 people on the final morning of a weekend retreat at Pendle Hill study center in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. During the meeting for worship, we were brought into the experience of unity with God and a sense of oneness with each other. The air somehow felt thick, as though we were palpably held by a sacred covering. The worship lasted significantly longer than an hour and seemed to extend into the eternal; it was both long and timeless. Some of the vocal ministry spoke about becoming more receptive to the power of love. I felt strengthened and nourished by the sense of Divine Presence and by a tender spiritual intimacy with the others present.

Near the end of the worship, in a timeless stillness, a clear knowing entered my mind, a divine message. I knew that such focused meetings for worship used to be more common among Friends, and I sensed that God wanted me to help make it possible for Friends to worship this way again more regularly. I felt led to engage in the work of fostering such meetings for worship, of nurturing spiritual renewal among Friends. Later I learned that another Friend, Louise Mullen, who was also present in that extended worship, felt a similar leading, and we joined together in the task.

The experience of being brought together in a sense of unity with God and with one another has in more modern times been referred to as a “gathered meeting.” Such meetings are often characterized by a sense of Divine Presence or spiritual power, or an almost electric feeling of being spiritually renewed and enlivened. Sometimes the experience of being gathered manifests in the coherence of vocal ministry, coming through several people, which conveys a unified and helpful teaching from God or Christ. 

Our Quaker form of unprogrammed worship has been designed to help us enter together into the gathered state, in which we receive divine healing, teaching, and guidance. The divine fountain of life wants to pour upon us the gifts of the Spirit. Each one of us individually and all of us collectively were born to play a role in manifesting the kingdom of heaven on earth, the peaceable kingdom (or kin-dom) promised in Scripture.

The late Bill Taber, author of the wise Pendle Hill pamphlet Four Doors to Meeting for Worship, sometimes said—with a twinkle in his eyes—that meeting for worship was a “Quaker technology for shifting levels of consciousness.” We usually live with the sense that we are separate people, but when we are gathered in a meeting for worship, we are able to become aware of the deeper levels of our being and to experience the truth that in a fundamental way we are not separate. We are part of a spiritual oneness with God, each other, and all things. When our consciousness changes levels, our minds and hearts become more sensitive to the Divine Presence that is always with us, in us, and among us. In that state, we can best receive the spiritual sustenance that we need in order to fully live our lives and purpose.

Although there are other ways to access these levels of awareness, the gathered meeting may be the simplest way for a group of people to experience this together. In the gathered meeting, the spiritual focus and yielding of each person helps the others present to open to that state. Together we can make it easier for each other to be receptive to the Spirit.

A gathered meeting can happen within minutes of a group coming together with the intention of truly opening up to the Spirit and surrendering their lives to God’s service. If a few people come together who have practiced this receptivity and wholehearted self-giving, a meeting can be gathered very quickly. More often, it takes time for this to happen: time for each person present to gradually let go of the daily preoccupations; loosen the attachment to persisting emotional conditions; and enter into that place of peace and oneness that is available to all, though often not easily accessible.

Daily times for individual spiritual reflection, worship, prayer, meditation, or communion with God in nature are important and necessary, yet human beings are communal creatures. We find our authenticity most readily when we are connected to a healthy community. Our collective spiritual practices enable God to shape us and our lives in ways that are necessary for the fulfillment of the divine design for healing the world. It is important, therefore, to revive practices and spiritual orientations that enable us to receive gifts of the Spirit.

Our Quaker form of unprogrammed worship has been designed to help us enter together into the gathered state, in which we receive divine healing, teaching, and guidance.

Gathered and Extended Meetings Today

British Friend Ben Pink Dandelion has said that Friends have lost an hour of worship every century. The first Quakers held meetings for worship that lasted three hours or more. In the next century, the meetings for worship lasted two hours, and in the twentieth century—as the sense of Sabbath disintegrated and Friends’ lives became increasingly busy—the Sunday morning meetings for worship were generally shortened to an hour. However, the Spirit still leads Friends to settle into worship beyond an hour. At Newtown Square (Pa.) Meeting, where I was a member, the silence in meeting for worship was rich and deep, full of a sense of Divine Presence. On the days when we felt sweetly gathered by the Spirit, we sometimes didn’t want to move at the end of the hour, and the worship extended beyond the appointed closing time.

Reading about the experiences of the first Quakers made me eager to experience the kind of powerfully gathered meeting that they described. When I studied accounts of their experiences, I noticed that they were often preceded by hours of waiting upon God in silence. In 1997, Louise Mullen and I—both from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting—felt a leading to gather Friends for a Saturday that would include an entire morning of unprogrammed worship. It proved hard, however, to resist the expectation to create a programmed “workshop,” even after we were joined in our leading by Michael Wajda as a third co-convener. Only two years after the gatherings began did the conveners decide to go beyond expectations and simply prepare for a full morning of unprogrammed worship, followed by fellowship after lunch and worship sharing in the afternoon. These gatherings for what came to be called “extended worship” were held three times a year at various meetinghouses for the next 13 years. (I’ve written about these gatherings in my Pendle Hill pamphlet Invitation to a Deeper Communion.) Friends who participated were often those who already made time in their lives for prayer, meditation, devotional reading, or other spiritual practices, and they felt a longing for companions who shared an earnestness about the spiritual life or felt called to nurture the spiritual lives of others.

After 15 years, the original conveners felt called to other tasks. After a year or so without the extended worship gatherings, other Friends felt led to revive them, and they were held three to five times a year at different meetinghouses. Beginning in 2020, as necessitated by the pandemic, these gatherings for extended worship have been convened online on the first Saturday of the month, with a full morning of worship, a break for lunch, and time for worship sharing in the afternoon. Even when held online, these meetings for worship often become gathered.

Many who participate in extended worship find they are more likely to experience a gathered meeting during the longer period than during one-hour meetings for worship on Sunday mornings. The spiritual preparation and orientation of those who attend seems to make a difference. Ann Watkins finds great spiritual depth in the worship at her home meeting, but the longer period of time during the extended worship helps her to settle and soothes her soul:

I love how deeply settled I am able to be in extended meeting. There is no rush and yet the time does not drag or feel endless with restlessness. . . . Simply sitting in the Light, in the openness and thickness of Spirit with many others, brings a depth of contact during that extended time that brings solace to my soul and ease to my heart. There is plenty of time to wait into any messages that mean to come through.

New England Yearly Meeting Gatherings for Extended Worship 

For several years now, two Friends in New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM), Michael Wajda and Jean Rosenberg, having felt a leading to foster deeper experiences in meeting for worship, have been organizing Saturday gatherings for extended worship at different meetinghouses in NEYM. They have occurred around five times a year. Jean reports on the various experiences of participants:

Typically, a number of folks will say that they are so grateful to have a longer time than the typical one hour of meeting for worship, because it takes them most of the first hour to settle and center and go deep. And some will also say that they were surprised to find that they could worship for three hours, but they could! And some will tell us of deep experiences of revelation or healing. Many participants feel a real bonding with each other, especially after the sharing of what their experience has been. In every extended worship session, there has been vocal ministry, and we have always found it to be deep and vital. In my experience, it has been deeper, more seasoned than in a regular one-hour meeting.

Many who participate in extended worship find they are more likely to experience a gathered meeting during the longer period than during one-hour meetings for worship on Sunday mornings. The spiritual preparation and orientation of those who attend seems to make a difference. 

New York Yearly Meeting Meetings for Discernment

In 2007, New York Yearly Meeting (NYYM) began holding meetings for discernment two times a year, which they called “an ongoing experiment in extended worship.” The three goals were to help strengthen connections between local meetings and the yearly meeting; support individual leadings; and help discern emerging directions within the yearly meeting. The winter meetings for discernment take place on a Saturday in March and travel each year to a different region of the yearly meeting. The summer meetings for discernment take place during NYYM summer sessions.

Unlike other extended meetings for worship described in this article, these gatherings take a form called “focused worship.” The yearly meeting publishes queries in advance. Then, in several periods of extended worship, the gathered body is invited to focus their vocal ministry on these queries. Because one purpose of these meetings for discernment is to become aware of emerging ministries and concerns, the steering committee takes notes on the vocal ministry. Recognizing a need to keep the gatherings grounded in the Spirit, NYYM invited many elders to participate and to hold the clerks and the body prayerfully during the worship.

During their summer sessions in 2011, NYYM gathered for two periods of extended worship and focused on this query: “How has your faith helped you to keep your spiritual grounding, hope, and optimism while living your witness in the world?” Out of profound, spacious silence, moving accounts were shared of divine revelations and leadings that had been transformative, and of the Spirit-led action that followed. A report available on the NYYM website describes what happened:

Friends offered many examples, through personal stories, of how their witness was grounded in their faith. Clearly, Friends’ witness does not stand on its own apart from spiritual concerns. Rather, witness and spirituality are woven together, and the fortitude and persistence of a difficult witness often draws upon the strength of a deep spiritual reservoir.

Over the years, the NYYM meetings for discernment have focused on a range of topics: racism among Friends, the peace testimony, integrity, what faithfulness requires, nurturing discernment, dreams and hopes for meetings and the yearly meeting, and other topics. Both the number of people who attend and their positive responses to surveys indicate that Friends value these opportunities.

Extended Meetings for Worship at the Friends General Conference Gathering

Since 2004, Jorge Arauz has been convening extended meetings every weekday during the annual, week-long Friends General Conference (FGC) Gathering. These are offered as an alternative to the morning workshops. For some this opportunity is the place where their spiritual needs are best met at the Gathering, and they attend year after year. Others come as needed or drop in for a morning or two.

Jorge senses the presence of the Spirit on the first day, when he sees “a group of people coming together to sit in the silence, to wait in the wilderness of nothingness for about three hours each day for five consecutive days.” He finds inspiration and comfort in witnessing a group of people opting for “the old path of simple reliance on God” and trusting that even in the desert of silence, something or someone will “speak to our condition.” For him, this “feels like a reenactment of early Friends’ exodus, looking for a direct, unmediated connection with the Seed, the Guide.”

During the course of the week, Jorge witnesses “the quiet growth of the invisible chords of love, care, and respect, weaving themselves within the group,” and he views this growth as “creating a spiritual community that is robust and trustworthy, a vase apt to contain and support everyone, in their pilgrimage and their search for truth, peace, clarity, and spiritual integrity.”

He writes that the vocal ministry tends to arise toward the latter part of meeting, and then “it frequently comes, like the young woman of gospel fame, pregnant with the Word. And the words shared by Friends do not seem to come on their own, alone—their utterances tend to entwine together, echoing, enhancing, uplifting each other.”

When we are not sensitive to the Divine Presence and don’t receive the spiritual sustenance available to us, we become more vulnerable to fear, false narratives, manipulation, and social conditioning. Our nervous systems are hijacked, and dysregulation causes us to focus on what we fear. In such conditions, subtle spiritual realities can become difficult to perceive. In times of growing social distress, such as what we are living through now, it is important to find practices that help us receive spiritual strength.

The gathered meeting is a divine gift that centers communities of Friends in the Spirit, helping them find the strength, guidance, and courage needed to live faithful lives. For many Friends, gathering for extended worship has proven helpful in opening to the gathered experience and receiving more fully the gifts of the Spirit. Wider participation in extended worship may play an important role in an increasing revival of the spiritual experience and bonded communities known by the first Quakers during their own time of great civil unrest.