‘Concern’ is a word which has tended to become debased by excessively common usage among Friends, so that too often it is used to cover merely a strong desire. The true ‘concern’ [emerges as] a gift from God, a leading of his spirit which may not be denied. Its sanction is not that on investigation it proves to be the intelligent thing to do – though it usually is; it is that the individual … knows, as a matter of inward experience, that there is something that the Lord would have done, however obscure the way, however uncertain the means to human observation. Often proposals for action are made which have every appearance of good sense, but as the meeting waits before God it becomes clear that the proposition falls short of ‘concern’.

Roger Wilson, 1949