The Quaker tradition of traveling in the ministry – and the challenge of responding to invitations to speak as a public Friend – sometimes encourage and sometimes undermine the discipline of “waiting in worship for the message to rise.” Without coming up with a recipe or manual, Benigno will explore experiences that intensify our focus on what the Holy Spirit is calling us to do when we respond to an errand with external expectation from the nature of our concerns or the interests of our hosts. Does Love remain the first motion? How does our monthly meeting test the leading to go on the road? How do we benefit from the experience of other ministers? Do we free ourselves from all else that distracts us while engaged in the ministry?

Benigno will also explore the concept of listening or baptizing – soaking – in each other’s condition, so the message given can speak to that condition. He will also encourage us to think, feel, and ask about the role of our very few Quaker centers for contemplation left for us to foster the future of our ministry.

Thanks to the generous support of the Friends Foundation for the Aging, we’re able to make this and other free, online programs accessible to f/Friends of all ages.

Leader

Benigno Sánchez-Eppler has traveled in the ministry among Friends in Cuba, Peru, Bolivia, Central America, the US Pacific Northwest, Rwanda, and Ireland. In 2023, Benigno stayed at Pendle Hill as a Carroll Scholar for Biblical and Quaker Studies. He explored how the book of Exodus can speak to our intentions of becoming an anti-racist people. He also prepared to carry to Spanish-speaking Friends in Friends World Committee for Consultation, and to the Quaker Peace Institute of Cuba Yearly Meeting what he learned while translating Brian Drayton’s On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry (QuakerPress of FGC, 2019).

Benigno has served as clerk of his monthly meeting and more than once as recording clerk both for Northampton Friends Meeting and New England Yearly Meeting. He teaches at Amherst College in Massachusetts, and at the Cuban Quaker Peace Institute of Cuba Yearly Meeting. Together with Susan Furry, he is a founding co-editor and translator for the website  www.raicescuaqueras.org, an online library of Quaker classics in Spanish. Three decades of work as interpreter and translator for the Friends World Committee for Consultation led to his service as Co-Clerk and Field Elder for the 2014 Quaker Youth Pilgrimage in Peru and Bolivia and as Clerk for FWCC Section of the Americas between 2015 and 2019.

Travel directions to Pendle Hill. Please make sure to review our health and safety expectations at https://pendlehill.org/stay/covid-19-information/.