A personal concern, meant for us individually, might become a concern involving our meeting. Individual concerns can become the means by which the community can bring the power of the Spirit into social action; the method Friends have developed to do this involves the progression and deepening of concerns from monthly to quarterly to yearly meetings. This process is another part of our gospel order, by which we wait with a concern and test it individually, then with a friend or family member, then with a group of Friends and the monthly meeting itself, and finally with quarterly and yearly meetings. Friends are thus available at each step to "test the concern in the Light," to consider the concern in relation to all they know about the situation and the persons involved and, most important, to hold the concern up to the light of the Inward Teacher, although we do not need to share, agree with, or endorse each other's concerns in order to support them. Each group may support the concern; possibly it may commend the concern as a call to action for the greater group of Friends.

In this way Friends have developed (sometimes slowly and painfully) the social witness that we have traditionally called our testimonies. Even such seemingly self-evident truths as the peace testimony or the testimony against slavery did not spring up fully articulated; rather, Friends worked each out over time and in social circumstances that resulted finally in its acceptance as part of our understanding of the will of God.

FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. --Galatians 5:22-3 (KJV)

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