prayerful fellowship with them, to be led unitedly with them to a deeper understanding of what underlies those sacraments, and so to share a richer experience of the mind of Christ.

-- Gerald K. Hibbert, Quaker Fundamentals, 1941

Meetings for worship may be programmed or unprogrammed, structured or unstructured, pastoral or nonpastoral. The components of programmed worship, such as music, the sermon, reading of scripture, vocal prayer, and silence, draw the worshipper into the presence of God. A hymn may express deeper feelings than can its words alone. A sermon may challenge, support, sustain, and encourage us. A message specifically for children may offer insight to each of us. Giving an offering may make us aware of how gifts to the meeting can be used in God's service. In programmed and in unprogrammed worship, our awareness of the presence of God has much to do with what we bring to meeting. When we have meditated and prayed throughout the week, we are more prepared to feel the workings of the spirit in meeting than if we come anticipating that the pastor and others will have done our preparation for us. In unprogrammed meetings there is no set order of worship and no appointed leader; in programmed meetings the appointed pastor helps find a spiritual focus. Either form of meeting calls us to be fully engaged in worship.

Let us listen tenderly to all messages, even those that may not seem to speak to our condition. The call to ministry may come to any worshipper, and the more we listen, the more we ourselves become aware of -- and are able to follow -- spiritual leadings, including those to speak in meeting.

When you come to your meetings ... what do you do? Do you then gather together bodily only, and kindle a fire, compassing yourselves about with the sparks of your own kindling, and so please yourselves, and walk in the "Light of your own fire and the sparks which you have kindled"? Or rather, do you sit down in True Silence, resting from your own Will and Workings, and waiting upon the Lord, fixed with your minds in that Light wherewith Christ has enlightened you, until the Lord breathes life in you, refresheth you, and prepares you ... that you may offer unto him a pure and spiritual sacrifice?

-- William Penn, "A Tender Visitation," 1677

In gathered or covered meetings individual separateness recedes, and we become more of a community under divine guidance. Words offered by different speakers may relate to a common theme and echo the unspoken worship without seeming to break the silence.