Spiritual on Demand

I suppose it hadn't occurred to me how odd the assumptions behind activity in Brethren meetings are until I saw the interest sparked by my comment on preparing for preachings. At some level I know it isn't standard, but it's all so familiar to me that it doesn't arouse much thought.

There is a slightly awkward mix of spontaneity and pre-planning in most brethren meetings, the result of the belief that all participation should be the result of spiritual promptings and not "the natural mind", combined with the usual pragmatism about what works in practice. Even in the most spontaneous of occasions the format is quite rigid, for example.

In a reading meeting, which is typical of the way the brethren work when gathered, one man acts as a sort of chairman of a discussion, and all questions and remarks are addressed to him. Somebody else usually has the responsibility of selecting this chairman. Theory says that whoever is asked to "take the meeting" should be ready and willing to do so, and should be open to whatever God gives him to say to get things going. Normally, though, several people refuse to do so for assorted reasons, and are prepared to accept the implication that they aren't close enough to God for the messages to get through, before somebody actually does the job. If there are too many refusals then distress can build up among those taking it all seriously, because they conclude that there is too much slackness in the company for anybody to have God's word for them. However, there is a subtle social jostling going on in all this, because taking a meeting implies acceptance of the fact that the person doing so has been given (by God) what is required for the whole company gathered, yet it is wise for the person concerned to be humble - often humble enough to deny that they should be taking the meeting at all. So the ideal situation is for them to be pressured into doing so because then they get to combine the prestige and the humility. The result of all this is that it can be quite complicated getting these meetings started at times, as people dance between what is said and what is actually meant, and the selector tries to judge whether the person they've picked on is really unwilling to bite the bullet or they're still fishing for more pressure.

Preachings actually follow a similar pattern with one key difference: the selection is not done in public. Typically two men are responsible for picking preachers in each place where preachings happen, and it is done outside meeting times. For some reason, better excuses are required to refuse to preach, although obviously nobody could practically be forced to do so. The fact remains that the stakes are altered by the lack of publicity, and I suppose that is one cause of a taboo against refusal - otherwise it could prove even harder to persuade potential preachers. There is little prestige in preaching because everybody is fully aware that the preacher is the preacher because he was asked to be (and I'm not sure why this differs from readings, but I can only conclude that the difference derives in some way from the visibility of the selection process), and so few people enjoy the responsibility.

Here again, preaching is theoretically the giving of a message from God provided at the time, which is the apparent reason why it is bad to refuse: the person refusing puts themselves in the position of declaring themselves unready to receive such a message. In reality, though, it is only human to prepare if you have advance notice, especially for the many who don't preach very often. The rationalisation of this says that God will speak to a person in the right "state" (broadly the current degree of moral cleanliness and harmony with the divine), and therefore the preacher will take extra care to be so by doing good brethren things such as reading the brethren literature and taking time out to think about spiritual matters. It is axiomatic in the brethren system that the person will then get some kind of message to give.

It is a clear enough pattern, indeed, that when a preaching follows a reading the person charged with finding the man to take charge for that reading will normally hit first on those he knows will be preaching ... because it is hard for them to claim they have no message! The only trump card in this case is to claim to be so dependent on the provision of this message at the time it is required that the reading beforehand is too early to have received it, and usually this is quite hard to pull off, not least because someone so in tune with the spiritual needs will surely also be able to perform in both cases.

Younger men, being less aware of the complex etiquette and social belief around all this, tend to be a bit blunter in their methods when asked to preach. They know they are supposed to be a mouthpiece for the Holy Spirit, but make as sure as they can that they don't dry up entirely the moment they stand up in front of everybody, and that usually means pretty blatant preparation, not least because they know for a fact that their usual lives don't bear much resemblance to the way people who get messages from God are supposed to live! Consequently it's usually apparent that they've arrived with their message spelled out in their heads to some degree, and the rest of the congregation indulge them in that. I do recall one case where a young man gave a surprisingly coherent blood-and-thunder preaching, and a friend afterwards discovered it written out word for word in his bible ... but that is very definitely frowned upon. Most at least TRY to include some spontaneity.

Other meetings have different balances, but I think this is long enough for now.