Traveling Ministry is a very old tradition among Friends that stretches back to our very beginnings in 17th century Britain and the American colonies. There were about 60 Friends (at least a dozen of whom were women) who were particularly gifted in preaching about the experiences and beliefs of the new “Children of the Light” (as they called themselves then)—both to non-Friends in public places like market places, homes, and fields, and also providing support and encouragement to the new meetings that were springing up across Europe and America.
Traveling ministry continued to be a regular practice with ministers both nurturing the life of meetings and holding public meetings for newcomers, but this tradition lapsed in the twentieth century. It received new life when Friends General Conference had a program for about 15 years encouraging traveling ministry under the leadership of Deborah Fisch of Iowa Yearly Meeting, Conservative. In earlier periods, traveling ministers mainly delivered spirit-guided vocal ministry in the context of waiting worship. More recently those traveling under concern have often carried other concerns such as peacemaking, right relationships with Native Peoples, or religious education.
I have felt a leading for a long time to nurture the life of Quakerism. I’ve been teaching courses and leading retreats for Friends since the 1990s. Both my previous meeting in Pennsylvania and Mt Toby Meeting have supported this work. I began to feel a motion to travel among Friends more recently and received a Minute of Travel under Religious Concern from Mount Toby Meeting in 2024, which was endorsed by Connecticut Valley Quarter and the Yearly Meeting Permanent Board. Since receiving this minute I have visited two yearly meetings (Iowa Conservative and North Carolina Conservative), more than 25 local meetings, and several Quaker gatherings.
During the past few years, I have gotten to know a gifted young adult Friend living in England named Matt Rosen online at meetings of Quaker Spring. I finally got to meet Matt in person about a year ago. I knew that Matt had traveled to many (over 80!) British Meetings over the past few years. I asked about accompanying him this past fall, and he said that he would welcome it. I received grants from the Legacy Gift and Obadiah Brown Benevolent Funds to support a 5-week trip to the UK last fall.
I had some health challenges during the month before leaving and wasn’t even sure I should go forward. My family also wasn’t sure this was right! My doctors, however, urged me to go ahead with the trip. It got off to a rocky start when I missed my scheduled train from Oxford to Glenthorne Quaker Retreat Center in the Lake District. I also realized I should have arranged for cellular service in the UK rather than trying to rely on WiFi all the time, which was frequently unavailable as I traveled. I continued at first having anxiety and doubts about my health.
Once my partner Annie helped me sort out my phone service and I arrived safely at Glenthorne things quickly shifted. I had a powerful experience the first night there feeling deeply held in God’s love—a love and accompaniment that I felt would never leave me. I felt strong and healthy and was able to take long walks and hike up to a mountain “tarn” with a family on school holiday. My good health continued throughout the trip.
I ended up visiting six meetings with Matt, accompanied in some cases by a second young adult Friend with whom Matt has traveled before. I visited four meetings accompanied by Ruth Gaston, another Friend I had gotten to know online through Quaker Spring, and three other meetings. It was a new experience for me traveling to meetings without any pre-arranged topic or program. I learned to trust that God would give me words to speak. I also spent lots of time listening to and learning from the Friends I met with! I particularly enjoyed meeting with two young adult Friends groups and a number of YAFs individually.
I felt deeply blessed by all the sessions, formal and informal, that I had with Friends. I also had many opportunities to talk with Friends about Inward Light, the online Quakerism library that I have been building with the help and support of New England Friends. The staff I met with from Woodbrooke (British Friends’ “Pendle Hill”) and Britain Yearly Meeting all expressed keen interest in helping make lectures, books, and pamphlets of British Quakers available for this online library.
Friends in Britain are wrestling with many of the same issues as those in New England and other unprogrammed yearly meetings here: aging membership, outreach, welcoming young families and People of Color, how to respond to the huge challenges of the world around us, exploring what we share in common in our meetings when many of us have different ways of experiencing and speaking about the Divine at the heart of the life of our meetings. Although many meetings are dwindling in numbers and aging, there are also some meetings attracting large numbers of young adults, many of whom are gay, nonbinary, and/or trans. The yearly meeting is wrestling with the issue of reparations for its involvement in the enslavement of Africans and other systemic harms. There is significant conflict among British Friends around issues of gender, especially whether gender-affirming medical care should be available for young people and their families. This weighs heavily on young adult Friends.
Many Friends were deeply interested in and responsive to encountering traveling ministry, often for the first time. There is a deep-felt hunger for more gathered worship, Spirit-guided vocal ministry, and for ways to respond to issues like immigration and war. I joined a number of Friends who gathered to support several Quakers taking part in nonviolent civil disobedience against the designation by the British government of a group working for Palestinian rights and opposing genocide in Gaza as a terrorist organization. I think it is clear that the Living Spirit at the heart of all is at work among Friends everywhere. Supporting the call of Friends to do traveling ministry is one way that we can support God’s work among us.