Duncan Worship Group is a small group of Friends (Quakers) from around the Cowichan Valley and beyond. We began meeting more than 30 years ago.
From September to June Meeting for Worship is held on first and third Sundays at Providence Farm. Meeting for Worship starts at 10:30 AM
For more information:
We invite you to join us in our adventure of faith.
Our Quaker Meeting for Worship is an attempt to be open to the movement of the Spirit within ourselves and within the group. It uses no program, priest, or creed. Instead, we use silence to allow us to discover the inward stillness where we can best hear the small, still voice of God.
Some of us might be led to share aloud a message received in the silence, which will be followed by a period for this ministry to be absorbed. The Meeting is not an occasion for debate, but an opportunity to let the truth of the words find their own place within us. Other times the entire meeting will pass in silent communion.
After about an hour, the Meeting will close with the holding of hands. Introductions, announcements, and conversation follow. Please ask any of our Members for more information about the rich Quaker tradition.
The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) has local Meetings for Worship
in various other island locations:
For more information about any of these Quaker groups, call 250-595-3697 or visit http://www.quaker.ca
The Religious Society of Friends began in England about 1650, in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation. It began as a religious protest against what many perceived as the hollow formalism which marked the established church at that time.
George Fox, the founder, underwent a profound religious experience that he described as a voice answering his spiritual need: "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition". The immediacy of Christ became the heart of his message and ministry, the beginning of the Quaker movement.
Early Friends were seeking authentic spirituality, a return to primitive Christianity. Known originally as Friends of Truth or Friends of Jesus, taken from John 15:15, they were often called Quakers because of their religious fervor as well as their belief that all should quake before the majesty of the Lord.
Friends believe that there is a measure of God's spirit in all people, known as the Inner Light, the Christ Within, or the Inward Teacher. The Inner Light illuminates the difference between good and evil, informs conscience, and reveals that which is eternal. Through its guidance we may become conscious of the oneness of humankind and all creation.
Friends believe in continuing revelation - that God speaks directly to people today. Through silent worship in community we seek to discern God's will and act upon it
Friends have no formal creed, no single statement of religious doctrine accepted by all. Each Meeting within the Religious Society of Friends is guided by its Book of Discipline or Faith and Practice. Contained therein are the distinctive Advices and Queries by which Friends examine their lives in relation to the faith and collective standards of conduct.
Early Friends found that they could experience God directly in their lives without clergy, liturgy, or church. Friends continue today in the belief that every soul can have immediate communion with God, and that where two or three are gathered, Christ is present in the midst of them
Worship in Duncan is held in the manner of early Friends. Sometimes known as unprogrammed or silent worship, it is held on the basis of holy expectancy or waiting upon the Lord. Worshippers gather and sit down quietly with no prearrangements, each seeking the light within. Worship proceeds beyond individual meditation to a sense of seeking as a gathered group. It is out of this sense of gatheredness in the divine that one may be moved to rise and offer spoken ministry.
It is Friends' belief and practice that all are called to the ministry. Each worshipper contributes to the Meeting for Worship by the determination to listen and be responsive to the still small voice within.
Meeting for Worship lasts about an hour, and is closed by an individual appointed by the Meeting. She or he turns to the person seated nearby and shakes or holds hands. It is Friends' custom for others to do likewise.
Meetings for Business also proceed in the spirit of worship and openness to divine leading. Decisions are made and matters resolved through a process of collective discernment - the seeking of God's will. No vote is taken. Questions are not decided by majority rule. Strongly opposed views are often reconciled through suggestion of a divinely inspired Third Way or in a period of silent worship.
Decisions may be held over to a later meeting, awaiting further insight, information, and understanding.
When the Clerk of the meeting senses that unity has been reached, she or he phrases what she or he believes to be the "sense of the meeting" until approval is voiced or apparent.
Friends "let their lives speak", to testify and give public expression to their beliefs. Traditional means of witness have been called the testimonies, and include:
- The Peace Testimony. Peace is much more than the absence of war. It begins with one's inner peace and expands to include right relations with others, and working for a more just and equitable social, political and economic order. It seeks to mediate and reconcile, and neither employs nor condones violence in word or action.
- The Testimony of Simplicity calls for a detachment from obsessive grasping for possessions and worldly aspirations, honesty in speech, and integrity in personal relations and business dealings. This testimony arises from the conviction that simplicity enables us to grow in communion with God.
- The Testimony of Equality recognizes the essential oneness and equality of all before God, without regard to age, gender, race or religion. This belief has found expression in Friends attitudes and concerns, mission and service outreach, programs of education and action.
- The Testimony of Integrity calls for correspondence between the inner life and its outward manifestations, between belief and practice. It seeks coherence among the various realms of our lives - life in the family, interpersonal relations, dealings in the marketplace. Integrity is the quality or state of being complete and undivided.
John Greenleaf Whittier