On of the many benefits of practicing Quakerism is one is not beholden to a chain of command when it comes to beliefs handed down from "on high" (snicker).
I classify unprogrammed Qs (as distinct from the evangelicals) as one of those practices not that into what we call "head beliefs" i.e. some credo one should be prepared to stand and recite, like a loyalty oath.
Per Karen Armstrong, Some Protestants are really into that; they think religion is about "what's in your head" in terms of whether you've absorbed Calvinist eugenics or some other Genesis-based racism (anything invoking "Noah's sons").
However, we do recognize everyone is entitled to a private "bag of beliefs", much like a spleen, a personal organ, and one engaged in filtering out the old while training for the new.
T-cells and B-cells (antidote beliefs, the immune system) get a workout, as the macrophage dogs force-retire the red blood cell imposters, no longer able to perform their role. Everybody needs a healthy counterintelligence system.
Whether one wants one's private bag audited by others is a different matter. What others might be available? We have Clearness Committees for those wishing to enter a peer review process.
If you plan to go out into the world advertising your Quaker status, while meanwhile unfurling some elaborate ministry, you're expected to gain clearness and support from your local meeting, or else be prepared to explicitly state that you've bypassed that route.
Thanks to this workflow, established over the centuries, other Quakers will know that, if you're out there sounding crazy, you might be doing so on your own recognizance, with no meeting expected to back you up.
We have a lot of Quakers exercising this freedom, well-complemented by the Bill of Rights, should the happen to be US-American or akin to same. These Qs not officially "released" -- meaning freed from committee work -- so as to speak their truth to whatever powers.
In my own case, I wanted to protect local Qs from having to vouch for my ministry in any way and so laid down my membership without lowering my level of participation.
As far as my ministry goes, according to my version of Quakerism, all meeting positions are open to non-members, including clerk, as to be a member mostly means to be openly publicly a Quaker, not afraid to journal and/or list oneself in the public domain. In terms of workflow, unprogrammed Friends pride themselves on transparency and inherently have no secret rituals, even if they deal in confidential information.
As a non-member, I was cleared by Oversight (so-named back then) to clear members for membership. I saw nothing the matter with performing this role, as an "experienced Friend" as Friends called me. However other meeting-goers did express their reservations about my faith and practice, as would be expected.
That's back when I joined QuakerQuaker, a discussion board devoted to hashing out (threshing about) such issues. Said board seems these days moribund, probably because the attempt to upgrade the underlying framework failed.
From my angle, many non-members are more courageous than members in this respect. Some are just shallow status seekers.
