First aid or anchor? Gill Grimshaw wants a rethink on eldership

‘Should we value eldership more highly?’

An elder was once asked, ‘How do you differentiate between mediation and worship?’ They replied that, ‘If I am meditating, I still myself to connect my body with my surroundings. If I worship I still myself to connect with the divine.’ In all our Meetings for Worship we seek collectively to connect with the divine as our guide to living our lives, and focussing our actions. Quakers don’t differentiate on this according to the purpose of the Meeting. Whether purely for worship or for business, learning or threshing, all seek connection with the divine, with something beyond ourselves as a guide for our actions.

Each of us is responsible for maintaining our spiritual community by upholding the Meeting and the Friends within it. We can look to our elders for support and insight into sustaining our worship and worshipping community. 

With respect to Local Meetings (and Area Meetings), many facets of eldership are clearly set out in Quaker faith & practice (in chapter 12). But it is more challenging when eldership is perceived as necessary in other contexts: Meetings for Learning, Quaker committee work, Yearly Meeting and those situations where Friends say to each other, ‘We should appoint an elder’. Quaker faith & practice has little to say on such situations and, in some respects, it can feel, when asked to act as an elder in these circumstances, that one is being handed the first-aid box of eldership, with the expectation that, if anything disruptive happens to shatter our discernment, the appointed elder will know which bandage to pull out, and how to apply it.

There is another way of perceiving eldership that may be more helpful to us. This could be expressed with a metaphor that parallels the advice given to Area Meeting elders appointed to serve their Local Meetings. If we use the metaphor of an anchor, Quaker faith & practice seeks to expand the concept of elders anchoring the Meeting spiritually into considerations of how the eldership anchor is laid, on how our time together is anchored or grounded. This can be through making sure Meetings for Worship are held when most appropriate and needed, in nurture for ministry, in care for the individual, or in signposting opportunities to learn about being a Quaker, to name a few.

For a small vessel it may be enough to quickly hook the end of an anchor rope to the seabed. But what about other vessels and situations? Those with nautical knowledge will know that the anchor chain is just as vital as the hook at the end. In fact, it is the chain rather than the hook that does most of the work. This is partly because of the additional weight of the chain – and partly through friction. A large or complex vessel will lay many metres of chain along the seabed; we can only see around twenty per cent of the anchoring, the visible part that joins to the ship.

We see the visible part of the eldership anchor when elders close worship, or intervene in problematic ministry. What we don’t see is the laying of the length of heavy chain along the seabed that grounds elders in what they do, or how they act, yet this leads to our experience of a grounded community. In our Local Meetings the chain of eldership is built not just on elders’ personal devotional practices, but on foundational micro-acts that build a worshipping community. For example, offering quiet, personal thanks for ministry, giving individual pointers to a resource, making caring enquiries about learning needs, recognising that Meetings for Worship may need to be offered on different days and at different times, planning and supporting more difficult discussions, or working with pastoral Friends to support individuals in need; the list is long.

‘Effective eldership can anchor our community, through disciplined, humble leadership.’

In other contexts, for our other activities the contrast between being handed the first-aid box and having time to plan to lay the anchor is stark. For example, Yearly Meeting elders now undertake year-round preparation, as a team, to reflect on and discuss with others the myriad issues that contribute to a gathered Yearly Meeting, spirit-led and grounded. It has helped that Central Nominations Committee now recognises this in consideration of the timeliness of its appointments to Yearly Meeting elders.

The question that has arisen for me is whether we should think more carefully about all of our worshipful activities. Would we benefit if eldership in Quaker committees, or Area Meetings for Business, or Meetings for Learning – or indeed any other times when we meet as a Quaker community – were also seen not as first aid, but rather as an anchor laid to steady the activity in worship?

One implication is that we may need to appoint elders, specifically tasked with how to support worshipful discernment, at the start of planning of an activity or an agenda, rather than just saying, on the week before, or the day before, ‘Oh, we realise we might need an elder, would you be prepared to act in this role?’ It is difficult for this individual to be prepared if this request is not timely.

Effective eldership can anchor our community, through disciplined, humble leadership, in what we often refer to, and hopefully experience, as the power of a community in right ordering. 

How does this right ordering work in our central committees, learning activities, Quaker Recognised Bodies? Do we fall back on the first aid model? And how can eldership be enhanced and supported in these parts of our organisation? Clearly each of us, as individual Quakers, share the responsibility for right ordering, but could we also make better use of Friends appointed to have a special care of this? Could, and should, we value eldership more highly? Can we form further opportunities for elders acting in roles outside Area Meetings to support each other and pass on knowledge of how to anchor and ground these other activities? Could a deepening of eldership – from reactive to proactive – facilitate the transition to Yearly Meeting in its new round-the-year format, and help all of us approach that with hearts and minds well prepared? 

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Comments

I like the analogy with an anchor chain.  During MfW s an elder I feel that weight in my shoulders.

In the updated BoD, in the church government section, might there be definition of what Special Interest Groups and other organisations must include in order to use the label Quaker ...? Might this also include a requirement their governance includes an elder? Should the list of duties of an elders be reduced in such cases?
- Stephen Petter

By steve petter on 5th February 2026 - 10:46

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