An Incubator for Public Ministry #
The Friends Incubator for Public Ministry is currently accepting applications for their 2026 2-year ministry fellowship. I recently joined the Friends as a Seeker attendee back in April of 2025, after being called to Christ to minister to his people. I have been planning to attend the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary once I can build enough tuition to attend, and this fellowship caught my eye as I was browsing the Friends’ Journal.
The timing and fit of this fellowship couldn’t be better in my eyes and so the Spirit moved me to submit and application to become a minister through this fellowship and incubation program. My hope is perhaps, I can learn new skills for ministry and get incredible guidance from Friends already skilled in ministry as I build plans and a vision for my own ministry.
My Submission Letter #
Hello, Friend.
I will try to be brief. I’m autistic. I’m fast approaching 40. I was atheist for 18 years. I’ve worked in tech startups about the same amount of time. I’ve been a Buddhist for six years. I’ve been a Christian Quaker for a few months. I’ve been called by Christ to minister to his people. During 2020, and 2021 I was a medic for the Black Lives Matter Protests in Columbus, Ohio. I am staunchly anti-Fascist, pro-LGBT, pro-equality and pro-peace. When I was first called to Christ, I asked him where I should study and the Spirit led me to the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary here in Pittsburgh, which I intend to go to in order to attain a Masters of Divinity. I then asked him which Church I should call home, and then the Spirit led me to the meeting house where he told me “This is where you shall make your home.”.
Not shortly after I was called to ministry (it had to have been less than a month after), I met a retired pastor who gave me his entire stock of ministry books and binders. I am currently working through those binders to build a vision and plans for my ministry. I have a journal filled to the brim with ideas, doctrine, scripture, strategy, product ideas, outreach and growth ideas. I have already begun working on my first campaign which contains a few things:
1. A series of "Quaker Cards", which are two-sided index cards that are laminated with specific topical guides for newcomers and seekers. Including a "Who was?" series that talks about specific Quakers and their ministries or writings.
2. A website for the ministry with a basic introduction and doctrine.
3. A couple games, and activity sheets.
I have a background in publishing tabletop games, and so this approach to printed materials which feed to a website is a good “small scale” campaign to MVM (minimally viable ministry) this out. So in summary, a incubator like this, for me, right now is about perfect timing and fit – provided you still have room and the vibes work out. I would love to join you and learn from you and other friends, if you would graciously accept me amongst you. :)
Bad news, friend, I failed. This isn’t going to be brief – but it will be interesting. Here is the long story. :)
I think the Bible was written as an anti-Fascist document. I think it is a kind of technology in that way. That is, after the Late Bronze Age Collapse the ancient people of Judea and Israel sat down and started writing their origins, histories, and laws down. Why did they do this?
Because they literally experienced a Fascist Apocalypse brought on by the Mycenaean invasions into the Levant and Egypt, which preceded the near-complete societal collapse of almost every major empire in the Mediterranean (except…like…4). Most scholars now believe that The sea peoples, the Acheans, and the stories of the Illiad/Odyssey are likely all the same people and event describing a period of raiding and warfare in the LHIIIb-LHIIIC period around 1250 - 1150 BCE during the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Ramses III ruled at this time in Egypt and resettled some of them into Canaan as the Philistines around 1200 BCE. ]
(Pelset (Egyptian) = Philistine (Hebrew) = Palestine (Modern Area in the Levant) = Acheans (Greek) = Ahhiyawans (Hittite) = Mycanean Greeks (Modern English))
So the Israelites wrote it down. They wrote down the rules and the laws and when Ramsses III resettled some of them into Canaan, when Moses led his people out of Egypt as a Levite priest, and said “this is how we’re going to do things now.”, the reason for that happening is because the Bronze Age Collapse literally ended kings and empires and brought much bloodshed to entire towns and regions and they wanted to stop that from ever happening again. So the Bible is a technology against Fascism. This, I am convinced.
Fast forward 600 years and we get Egyptian Priests in Alexandria during the Ptolemy’s rule and specifically Ptolemy II Philadelphus where Manetho (Egyptian Priest/Historian) basically makes up a list lining up the ruling periods and lives of various Pharaohs to align along a long mythic cycle (the Sothic cycle) – a period of 1461 years that just so happens to line up with Philadelphus’s coronation (surprise!), and thus we get the introduction of Hermetism as a kind of joint venture syncretic God between the Egyptian Thoth and Hermes of Greek Myth to combine as Hermes Tristmegistus. These priests mixed Greco-Roman religion with Egyptian religion and thus we get a merger of ideas that result in a bipartate then a tripartate God – a teaching of Father, Son, and Spirit. (The unbegotten, self-begotten, and begotten Gods of gnosis). About 280 years before Christ.
Hermetic texts hit their peak distribution sometime around 1AD and faded rapidly by 100AD. Their study relegated mostly to early Christian scholars like Iamblichus and Origen of Alexandria. It’s probably worth mentioning that Christ’s family, when in exile from Jerusalem stayed in a city in Egypt, which was the center of Hermetism as the name of that very city is Hermopolis and had a well-known temple dedicated to Thoth/Hermes that was active at the time of Christ’s birth. Curiously, Hermetic Treatise promise their adherents that they can become a Son of God. It uses that term. “Son of God”. This is again, a a couple hundred years before and after Christ, when this religion thrived.
It was made up by Egyptian priests. Well kind-of. It was more of a – sigh – stereotype appropriation. You see, the Greeks fetishized Egypt. Yeah… so the priests of Egypt who now were no longer really had much power or respect due to the Ptolemies (Greek rulers of Egypt) were now needing to acquire their funding from other places so they exported parts of the Egyptian religion to cater to the stereotypes that the Greeks had about them in order to capitalize financially on the perverted interest in Egyptian theology. Of course, to make it palatable to the Greeks they had to merge it with Platonism and some Pythagorean ideas.
Those ideas then get exported into Christianity. The timing and knowledge of these facts forces us to ask some very important questions. Questions like, “Was God invented or discovered?”, “Is any part of the Bible literally or factually true? How should this document be read with a critical scholarly eye and faith in mind?”
Hermes taught that the key to salvation was reverence for God’s creation, and knowledge of how it works. Interestingly enough, the staff that Hermes carried – the Caudacus has two snakes wrapped around it. These snakes are named “Agathos Daimon” and “Agathe Tyche”, or to translate “Good Spirit and Good Fortune”. That is to wrap the philosophy of Hermetism in the Spirit and reverence for God’s creation, and in fortunes that knowledge of his creation brings us. Agathos Daimon is also the name of the snake that wraps the Rod of Asclepius, which you can find on every single EMT and Medic badge in the country. Agathos Diamon here representing the Spirit of life itself. “The Miracle of One Only Thing”, Sic Mundus Creatus Est. Life itself.
Is it any wonder that some of these ideas makes their way into Christ’s teachings in his ministry?
Christ taught us to have reverence for God’s creation and by extension to love each other as we love ourselves. In Matthew and Luke he is quite clear that “You cannot serve God and wealth.”. He tells a rich man “go, sell your things to the poor and follow me”. He says to all who listen “What you do to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you do unto me!” and yet we still refuse to listen. He tells people not to worry so much about sin, but just to do your best and repent. He tells us to forgive not seven times, but seven times, seven times. He tells us to give the victory to our attackers; to turn the other cheek to have empathy for our enemy to convert them to friend.
We are in a situation in this country where a large majority of rural white evangelical Christians are abandoning the commandments God has given us to love each other, to not oppress the alien, to help the vulnerable and the needy and have replaced it with a gospel of strength, raw power, violence, and which has become completely unbounded from and in-fact hostile to any truth or fact that doesn’t fit their narrative. We have young, Gen-Z men Heil Hitlering on podcasts, and genuinely engaging in dialog about Nazis like they are a sympathetic people worthy of empathy or respect. We have preachers running tent revivals talking about members of their community like they are demons deserving of death because they are gay, or brown, or an immigrant. We have liars and charlatans and frauds going on podcast after podcast selling lie after lie so they can hock penis pills and crypto to a foolish audience that just wants to be validated in their beliefs no matter how abhorrent or immoral those beliefs are.
When Christ was alive he railed against the hypocrites of his time. The priests who pray in publish so people know the depth of their devotion but who upon receiving the reward of their own egos, lose their reward in heaven. We have Moses bringing people out of Egypt into Canaan and writing this history of their people down into books to codify morals so that people stop engaging in behavior that brings about death and destruction.
I had made the mistake of letting my guard down. I thought we had this. That the evils of racism, bigotry, ignorance and hate were fading and I am tired of being reminding I am wrong. Make no mistake. I have never been clearer on what needs to happen, and what I am called to do. I am called to the truth! Will you help me bring it to them?
Cheers,
Raymond Chandler III
A friend and minister to be
P.S. This window on this webform is like 80 pixels high and you cannot resize it. So I had to copy and paste this into that tiny box before hitting send. I hope the formatting is okay. haha
P.P.S. It is a bit dangerous to ask open ended questions of autistic people, if you leave it too open we tend to infodump. I hope this is the right amount of content and context and I haven’t overwhelmed you. If I have, I apologize. It might just be easier to hop on a call. :)