Synopsis
Friends speak of “concerns” as the spiritual promptings that come to us, revealing our own particular God-given responsibilities in a world that so truly needs our love and our service. When we yearn to act, help, or respond, how do we know whether that yearning comes from our own feeling of urgency or our own sense of obligation, or whether it is something more, something that the Holy Spirit is asking of us? Jack Kirk discusses how concerns arise and are opened to us, how we may test them, and how we may find in them a center of spiritual gravity for our lives. How do we discover our callings as individuals, and what is our calling as a community of Friends? Discussion questions included.
About the Author(s)
Jack Kirk grew up in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, where he was a member of Willistown Meeting. He attended West Chester Friends School, then Westtown School, where Thomas Brown’s Quakerism class first awakened him to “the exciting spiritual dynamics in Quakerism.”
At Earlham College he was further inspired by Landrum Bolling, Elton Trueblood, and Hugh Barbour. In 1965 he received the M.Div. degree from Christian Theological Seminary. He was recorded as a minister in Western Yearly Meeting during the 1960s.
He has served as pastor for Fairfield Meeting in Indiana, New Garden Meeting, Archdale Meeting, and Greensboro Meeting in North Carolina, University Friends in Kansas, and Bakersfield Meeting in California. He has served as director of the Quaker Hill Conference Center in Richmond, Indiana, as editor of Quaker Life magazine, and as field secretary for Friends United Meeting. He represented Friends United Meeting in the New Call to Peacemaking endeavor with the Brethren and Mennonites.
Pendle Hill Pamphlet #404
