He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. These questions arose several times during the conference and it seemed that the inclusion of worship as part of the project was an answer many folks agreed on. Perhaps it's because I grew up in another church and, as a skeptical teenager, grew very dissatisfied with what I saw as an emphasis on form over substance and a dissonance between what we said and what we did.
Quakers work to live our faith on a daily basis.
The service we do as part of our Intermountain Yearly Meeting-AFSC Joint Service Projects and the community we create among participants are expressions and practice of our faith. Yes, we often have worship sharing or join a local meeting for meeting for worship, but not always. The conference included Friends of many persuasions. I was glad to be exposed to these different backgrounds and pleased that the format of the conference honored many viewpoints. As we continue to struggle with the questions in the first paragraph, my hope is that we will appreciate the diversity of answers.