If a Church or Meeting has lost its faith vitality, ministry that rises out of the waiting silence can bring the living Presence into the lives of the worshippers and the tired Church or Meeting can come alive. This transformation is disturbing for some who feel safe in the way things have always been. This ministry stirs people up. Like Jesus did. He was lovingly ferocious with the local priests of his time, the Pharisees. They were keeping the Church as it always had been.

However, it had lost access to the living Spirit. Mostly Jesus was a prophetic minister, but he was also a teaching minister. However, his way of teaching mixed the prophetic with the teaching.

I was eldered in a loving way once after a sermon I gave in Durham, Maine many years ago. Margaret Wentworth told me that early Friends had a revolutionary faith that did not abolish ministers but abolished the laity. Each Friend who said "yes" to giving their life to God in the silence was called to ministry, to serve God, to be an instrument of God’s blessings in the world.

Prophetic ministers among Friends had a small committee of overseers who sat with them and sometimes sat on them. Without loving and prayerful oversight the minister listening for God’s inspiration in the silence can easily get off track.

It is unfortunate for friends in New England that prophetic ministry has all but been lost and when we record a minister we do not insist on loving and ferocious overseers.

Thus, ministry has mostly lost vitality and if there is no vital ministry the worship becomes worn and ritualistic.