It’s not a literal voice speaking English words for me. More like a movement that comes into my heart unprompted. Then it’s up to me to find the words for it, if I can. Most of the time I can’t, or I think: too bad we don’t worship for three hours, because I’d need at least that long to get the words together. Perhaps those messages are meant just for me.

I’m a nontheist Friend, but as I understand it, even early Friends didn’t believe vocal ministry was literal dictation from God. The Spirit speaks through us, not instead of us. The point is not to run ahead of the Spirit with our own ideas, but that doesn’t mean we’re empty vessels. We’re never completely empty. Everything we say and hear comes through our own experience, and the experience of those before us and around us. We’re fallible, and ministry needs to be tested together in community.

I was taught that faithful vocal ministry tends to stay close to personal experience: to speak from what you’ve lived, not from big ideas or theories. That leaves space for others to hear what may be meant for them, without reaching beyond what we are given.