Friendly Persuasion

I recently had the privilege of speaking at a gathering of Young Adult Friends in Wichita over Memorial Day weekend. The 75 participants (ages 18-35) represented nearly every yearly meeting (regional organization of Quakers) in the United States and Canada. Needless to say, it was an extremely diverse group, both culturally and theologically.

The theme for this gathering was "Bearing Witness to the Word Among Us: Witness, Testimony and Transformation." The two messages I shared were based on the theme Scripture (1 John 1:1-3). With the Lord's help, I did my best to present the simple, core message of the Gospel, focusing on the call to respond to God's love for us, as revealed so clearly in and through Christ, by obeying the Great Commandment to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. As Jesus himself declared, "You are my friends if you do what I command" (John 15:14).

Apart from speaking, I had the opportunity to engage in a number of fascinating conversations with the participants. One of the most disturbing, enlightening and ultimately encouraging conversations took place following my first message on Saturday night. This message emphasized the necessity of having personal, firsthand, "eyewitness" experience with Christ (following the example of the early church as well as early Friends) in order to bear faithful witness to "the Word among us" today. As everyone was leaving the room, a young lady came up to me with a big smile on her face. "Your message was beautiful and deeply moving," she said, "which I never would have expected, since I come from a very different tradition than yours." When I asked her what tradition that was, she told me she had become actively involved in a "new age, liberal" community of faith after experiencing years of harsh, legalistic religious life in a conservative, Protestant denomination.

This was a repeated theme throughout the weekend. I talked with one young person after another who had left a conservative, evangelical church tradition due to an ultimately irreconcilable dissatisfaction/disconnection with what they described as predominantly "pastor-centered"/"entertainment-oriented"/"rule-dominated" forms of organized religion. In fact, many of them had been deeply wounded by those claiming to be Christians. And yet, they all expressed a deep and genuine longing to know and follow Jesus. As Dan Kimball has articulated so well, They Like Jesus but Not the Church.

My experience at this gathering of Young Adult Friends reminded me of an old movie called Friendly Persuasion, based on the book by Jessamyn West. Set in southern Indiana in 1863, the story follows the lives of the Birdwells, a peace-loving, Quaker farming family that is confronted with the hard realities that accompany the onset of the Civil War. Even though the film deals with some very gritty issues, it's a sweet, gentle, funny movie. The title is inspired by the traditional Quaker tenet of meeting hostility with mercy, illustrated by Mother Birdwell's gracious offer of food and lodging to Confederate soldiers when they invade their home. The strategy is successful, and the enemy is won over by this family's "friendly persuasion."

Based on my conversations with the young people I met in Wichita this weekend, it certainly appears that we could use a lot less "armed resistance" and a lot more "friendly persuasion" in our churches these days. If not, we will only find ourselves escalating our religious wars, producing more and more casualties along the way. As my grandfather used to say, "There was nothing 'civil' about the Civil War."

Lord, have mercy!