Before the Resurrection: Transitions and Endings in Quaker Meetings and Churches

by Emily Provance

Publisher:

Resource Publications

, 2025

Overview

How do Friends’ meetings and churches adapt to changing or shrinking communities? A smaller or older meeting is no less valuable to God than a larger one, but the “more is better” messaging of modern culture tells us otherwise. This book weaves together logistical suggestions with eternal spiritual principles to help meetings right-size their institutions. Whether a group is altering its committee structures, restructuring entirely, selling a building, or laying itself down, the steps are essentially the same: recognizing the need for change, discerning the will of God at this time, caring for one another, and stepping forward into a new thing.
Friends are a resurrection people. We know there will always be a renewal of life. But resurrection is not the same as resuscitation. How do we best make space for what God may do next?

Praise for Before the Resurrection

Thank you, Emily! This book is ‘a faithful recognition [of] a pre-existing truth.’ The concise and clear presentation will be helpful to Friends in local, quarterly, and yearly meetings, across all the branches of Friends, and around the English-speaking world. Highly recommended for folks with gifts in pastoral care or a concern for property and finance, and an interest in the future of the Quaker movement.

——Robin Mohr, Former Executive Secretary, Friends World Committee for Consultation, Section of the Americas

Before the Resurrection grows out of Emily’s deep observations from her extensive travel among Friends. To our benefit, Emily offers us her gift of sensing and naming what is—opening us to what might be made new within our Quaker communities. She says Quakers are a resurrection people, and she takes us though practical and meaningful ways a meeting can recognize and move through its life stages. Inspiring, challenging, and practical, I recommend this to anyone who is part of a beloved spiritual community.

——Gretchen Castle, Dean, Earlham School of Religion, Richmond, Indiana

Product Details

• Title: Before the Resurrection: Transitions and Endings in Quaker Meetings and Churches
• Author: Emily Provance
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Print Publication Date: 2025
• Logos Release Date: 2025
• Pages: 150
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9798385228706, 9798385228690, 9798385228683
• Resource ID: LLS:9798385228706
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-23T00:24:40Z

About the Author

Emily Provance is a Quaker traveling minister from 15th Street Meeting in New York City. She is an associate of Good News Associates.