Conversations on "the Church" and Quakerism

During my last year in seminary, I took what is called Comprehensive Seminar, which was designed as a place where each of us answers two questions from eight perspectives.  We were asked to write a one page paper from each perspective on each question, using what we had integrated from the previous three years of study.  These were not meant to be research papers; rather we were to speak from where we stood.  I have been asked to share these papers, and so am posting them here, as this is a convenient way to do so.

The first question we were to consider was given to us by the seminary, and the second question we were to devise ourselves.  The eight perspectives were:  personal response, Biblical reflection, church history response, theological response, denominational response, cultural response, area of emphasis response, and ministry setting response.  The last two spoke to our selected areas of concentration while in seminary.  My emphasis was Writing As Ministry, and my supervised ministry project was a writing project - a book on theology for the bewildered, for those who are interested in religious questions but not attached to specific theologies proposed by established churches.  At the end of these eight essays, we were asked to write an additional integrative summary for each question.

The question given to us by the seminary was : What is the Church and what is its mission today?  As you will see, this question challenged my Quaker principles, in that "church" is not a concept that works well for us.  Thus, I asked that my second question be : What is (unprogrammed) Quakerism and what is its mission today?  The following eighteen posts are my responses to these questions from these perspectives.