Contents
- Harvest
- The Difference Between Welcoming and Integrating New Friends
- Pouring Out Our Lives
- What Are We Advancing?
- L.I. Quarter's Strengthening Connections Program
- Valiant Friends
- Communication
- Outward and Inward:
- Community Building and Public Outreach
- Quaker Quest
- Guidelines for Campus Outreach
- Campus Advancement
- Creative Advancement
- Seeking Light
- Around Our Yearly Meeting
- Notices
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Harvest
November is harvest time, when farmers look to collect the fruits of their labors over the previous months. Year after year, they prepare the soil, plant seeds, nurture the new arrivals, praying for a balance of water and sunlight, hoping to harvest the fruits and vegetables when they grow to maturity.
While it doesn’t follow as predicable a timetable, the process of advancement follows a similar path. Advancement—spreading the word of Quaker spirit and social beliefs—is a process of both inreach and outreach. We begin the inreach by fertilizing the soil within the meeting, to ensure that when seekers arrive, they encounter a spiritually vital community. We enrich ourselves through the discovery of each other’s beliefs, and deepen our understanding of the world around us through social activism.
The outreach seeds we have are many. Some are simple: a good visible sign out front; a telephone (and the phone book listing that comes with it); a Web page. Others are more creative: events at the meetinghouse; peace vigils; movie nights; community participation; a table at a local festival. Each outreach effort is a seed planted, though we may never know when or if they will bloom. Still, if we are true to our calling, the planting process continues, in faith, every day.
When seeds do come, in the form of seekers and visitors to the meeting, they will need to be welcomed. Seeds need water and light; so do seekers. The water and nutrients come from Friends; their collective work keeps the ground moist and fertile. The sunlight comes from the Spirit and shines through each of us, and there is always more light inside of us than we can usually manage. If that light is bottled up inside, then our meeting ground is less productive than it could be.
Finally, the harvest comes when seekers experience spiritual growth and are ready to declare themselves Quakers. This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of advancement (and certainly worthy of its own issue of Spark). We will be successful only when we fully integrate seekers into the meeting by encouraging their leadings, suggesting committee participation, and welcoming the change and growth that inevitably come with each new member.
Inreach, outreach, welcoming, and integration are the four core steps of advancement. The articles here encourage an examination of your meeting’s efforts in all four areas, and offer a trove of useful strategies, suggestions, experiences, and challenges. While planting seeds often does not yield immediate returns, the importance of planting seeds is paramount, and is rooted in faith.
As clerk of the NYYM Advancement Committee, I would love to hear your experiences. You can reach me at cdell [at] monmouth.edu.
The Difference between Welcoming and Integrating New Friends
There is a big difference between welcoming a newcomer and integrating new Friends into the fabric of our communities. When we welcome a newcomer, we are letting them know that they are welcome to join us as we are, to have a seat at the table we have set. When we integrate someone into our community, we make space for them, allowing ourselves and our community to be changed in the process. We ask them to be a part of deciding how the table is set, and what each of us will contribute to that process.
Most of our meetings are good at welcoming. Very, very few are good at integrating new Friends and receiving all that they have to offer. Many of our meetings are concerned about their small numbers and aging population. They see newcomers as the solution to sustaining the life of their meetings. But they are trying to preserve what is, not recognizing that opening that circle to even one new member will change the whole community. Thus, newcomers are welcome to join what is a much-loved community, but discouraged, in ways conscious and unconscious, from doing anything that might change that community. They end up feeling frustrated and shut out. Many leave after a year or two, even when they have felt an initial good fit with the rest of the meeting. If we aren’t valued for who we are and what we bring, if our gifts and energies do not find an outlet in a community, most people will look elsewhere.
A friend of mine from college days, Mary Ann, started attending Twin Cities Friends Meeting in the mid-nineties. After she had been there six months or so, she named loudly and publicly that there was an “inner circle,” a group or a level of community she felt excluded from. Many members were puzzled, as at the time we really needed people to serve on committees. From our perspective, there were openings for being a part of things all over the place. Several of us told her “Try serving on a committee.” She did, and a year later she reported back that her perception had been askew, that by joining in the work of the meeting, she found that the circle was not as closed as it had first appeared. She urged others to also join committees.
What is important for me in this story is the difference in perception between Mary Ann and the rest of the community. She saw a closed door. We saw lots of needs not being met. If she hadn’t been assertive in naming her perception, we would never have guessed that others might also see closed doors. How many of our communities appear to be closed doors to newcomers? Quite a few, I think. I hear a lot from newer members of meetings that they are frustrated and feel shut out. Some are on the verge of leaving. I hear from a lot of meetings that they have lots of attenders coming through, but relatively few “stick.” I hear from youth and young adults that they struggle to find a place in the fabric of our communities. I hear that a very small fraction of the Friends who have worshiped in Prison Worship Groups for 10, 15, 20 years, join in Friends worship upon release. I talked with one woman who is active at monthly, regional, and yearly meeting levels, who said that she experienced the community that forms at Silver Bay to be cliquish and very hard to break in to. I asked her how many years she had attended. She said seven years.
There is a general pattern here we must address. Our self-image is that of a welcoming, open door, but others are perceiving us differently. It is very hard for people who have been a part of a community for many years to see how much they try to maintain the status quo, what is, and how hard that can be for newer people who want to be a part of things. We cannot preserve what we have now by adding new people. What we have will change.
We need to become skilled at integrating new people, new energy, new ideas into the life of our meetings. It is a spiritual as well as a logistical imperative. How can we genuinely welcome all that a new person brings? We have to be ready to be changed in the process.
Pouring Out Our Lives
The necessity of outreach in the sense of marketing and advertising a Meeting is something I am as yet unclear about. On the other hand, outreach as a reaching out with loving acceptance, radical hospitality, and spiritual invitation is something much needed for our continued viability and vibrancy as a religious movement. This kind of outreach is an invitation into the life of the Meeting, an invitation into supportive and challenging community, and an invitation into a path grounded in guidance from Spirit. It was exactly this kind of welcoming embrace that drew me into Rochester Meeting when I first arrived at the meetinghouse.
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| Photo by Rick Jackofsky |
I did not stay because of flyers or food or like-minded individuals. I didn’t even stay because of plentiful and good conversation; much of those first few weeks were awash in a dense fog of Quakerese. I stayed because there were a handful of members that took my seeking seriously, even when I didn’t. I stayed because there were people that invited me into their homes for connection and a deepening sense of a bigger picture and a larger story. I stayed because the history and faith of the Religious Society of Friends were made readily available to me and because our practices work, requiring prayer and action to be bound up as one. If outreach becomes a numbers game of raising attendance without opening lives, well that doesn’t seem much like reaching out at all to me.
The writer Bill Kinnon puts it well: “Church isn’t marketable. Programs, conferences, services even, may be—but the church itself is not.…I believe the Church…is a people who forget about themselves as they pour out their lives for others.…Marketing presupposes a product or service to market. The Church is neither. It is a living breathing organism that exists for those outside of it.”
If our outreach consists of providing greater invitation into the deepening of lives as they are poured out, then it will be outreach indeed.
What Are We Advancing?
What are we Friends hoping will “advance” when we do what we call “advancement”? Are we aiming for better public relations, for higher visibility in the press, for membership growth? We may hope for any of these to emerge as by-products, but real advancement is something far deeper. It concerns the very reason for our existence as a religious society. And it will, if seriously undertaken, require much more of us than mere outreach efforts or publicity campaigns.
What we are really called upon to “advance” is the mission to which we were originally called: to proclaim and live by the values of God’s Kingdom rather than the “worldly” values of luxury, consumption, social position, and military power, and to do so as a community that is gathered in and guided by the God’s Living Spirit, and not limited by barriers of class, race, gender, or nation. To advance that mission we will have to be willing to stretch ourselves and to “advance” beyond our comfort zones in our ways of relating to each other, our ways of responding to the Spirit, and our ways of reaching out to the world around us.
In 1955 the Friends at New York Yearly Meeting sessions, having laid aside the old Hicksite-Orthodox division, proclaimed their unity but also proclaimed their renewed sense of mission to the nation and the world around them, a world then in the throes of cold war, and a nation mired in McCarthyism and fear. Our Faith and Practice quotes the epistle of that 1955 Yearly Meeting as follows (p. 76, 2001 edition):
We seek to recapture the radiance of simple, uncomplicated love . . . such love as will resist evil without violence, without hatred of the wrongdoer, and without compromise.
To the false standards of our time we would offer the greatest opposition, combined with the greatest love. (emphasis added)
If we are serious about following through on that vision we will indeed need to “advance.” We will have to be willing to speak boldly not just about political and moral issues, but also about the living reality of God’s Spirit. If some of us are afraid of the language of faith—especially the language of our own spiritual forebears—then we will have to learn how to face and grapple with those fears, rather than retreat into bland generalities.
But above all, if we are serious about speaking to the world we will have to move beyond talking with each other and become more open. Openness has two dimensions: being open with and being open to.
We are open with when we are willing to share what is important for us even when it has the potential to alienate. Watering down our message would not make it “accessible”; it would just make it watery. People should be able to tell when they come among us that we are a God-centered community, that we reject violence, that we seek for simplicity, peace, integrity, and equality. Earnest seekers should not find Friends unwilling or unable to talk about the One who gathers us.
We are open to the neighbor and the seeker when we welcome them as they are, regardless of their social status, class, race, gender, education level, etc., and are willing to listen to their insights and struggles as well as sharing our own. The farmer, the shopkeeper, the taxi driver, and the waiter or waitress should be just as comfortable among us as the college professor or lawyer. Political party, it should go without saying, should not be a factor. In other words, we may have to give up some of our folkways as a quasi-ethnic group in order to become a truly universal people of God.
L.I. Quarter’s Strengthening Connections Program
Long Island Quarter has a renewal/advancement program called Strengthening Connections that has been supported by Yearly Meeting Advancement Committee. Our program was born from a sense that our monthly meetings were isolated and attempting to do it all with a shrinking membership that lacked the resources or people power to take needed action.
Traveling Friends Program
We began several years ago with a called meeting of individuals who felt called to renewal and advancement work at the regional level. We felt the simplest way to begin was through a Traveling Friends Program of visitation, something that has historically been a critical means of connecting our meetings into a larger body. Seven Friends are currently traveling with the approval of their local meetings. The destination and amount of travel is up to individual leading. Right now, several of us have made a commitment to travel once a month, generally focusing on meetings where we feel some connection and promise for renewal. There is no expectation that visitors will do anything other than be a presence, but meetings, especially the small meetings, report feeling strengthened by the visits. Above all, it’s an opportunity for local meeting leadership to get to know others in the quarter and share their meetings’ joys and concerns. If there is a concern, the travelers usually will know of someone who might have a helpful gift. We now have a group of seasoned Friends who know the condition of our meetings and are working toward renewal.
Taking Monthly Meeting Adult Education on the Road
Many meetings in the quarter have regular adult discussions or study groups led by members. Our Strengthening Connections Program has encouraged these Friends to take their programs on the road and share with other meetings. This enables meetings to take advantage of the educational gifts of others in the region. We have a brochure of eight programs that are available, and many of these have been presented either at monthly meetings or as programs for our quarterly meeting. More programs are being added. Again, these programs help identify gifts and make connections within the quarter.
Regional Youth Program
Several years ago we received a grant from NYYM Advancement Committee to host a youth intern, Margaret Obermeyer. She challenged us to do more to meet the needs of our high school–aged youth. This program has been more difficult to keep going in terms of having a youth worker able to put time and energy into the program and a critical mass of young people. We are tentatively exploring ways of joining with other regions in the downstate area and hope to get Yearly Meeting help for this project.
Strengthening Monthly Meeting M&C
This has been the slowest part of our program in developing. The strongest meeting in our region is strong in part because of an actively functioning Ministry and Counsel that helps facilitate the movement of the Spirit and building of the Meeting Body. Most meetings in the Quarter have inactive bodies. Members of our group have met with monthly meeting M&Cs and offered help, but clearly this is a long-term project that will take time.
Conclusion
The biggest impact of this program has been to make Long Island Quarter more vibrant and active. We now have a reason for meeting and feel that we have an identity and purpose. Quarterly meeting funds have been used to fund parts of this program. The Yearly Meeting has helped. Our quarterly meeting sessions have become more widely attended. There is a leadership group that shares a common commitment to renewal. We have even become more organized and responsible in responding to Yearly Meeting requests. We now have an expectation that monthly meetings will report their covenant donations to our July quarterly business meeting so that we can be responsible to Budget Saturday in October.
There is still tremendous work to be done in revitalizing our meeting communities, but at least we don’t feel alone in this work. There are now connections informed by the Spirit of God to knit us together for renewal and witness.
Valiant Friends
Dear heart, be valiant, and mind the pure Spirit of God in thee, to guide thee up unto God.
—George Fox, Epistle 113, To a Friend in the Ministry
Live faithfully in the Presence and Power of the Living Spirit allowing the Spirit to guide and change us. George Fox spoke of the inwardness of true religion through experiencing the Living Spirit in the human heart. Deep spiritual inwardness expressed in outward forms took precedence. Early Friends felt theological authority was reserved for the uninformed or purely oppositional (Brinton, 1994). Do I attend to my inward experience of the Living Spirit?
George Fox spoke at Firbank Fell to hired hands, their families, and their friends. He spoke to everyone who would listen. He spoke at a church near Swarthmore Hall saying, “Christ saith this and the apostles saith that, but what canst thou say?” Margaret Fell cried out, “We are all thieves, we have taken the scriptures in words and know nothing of them in ourselves.” She realized we are called to open and yield to the Spirit here and now. Do I yield to the Truth working within me and express it in my daily life?
“Let all nations hear the word by sound or writing. Spare no place, spare not tongue nor pen; but be obedient to the Lord God and go through the work and be valiant for the Truth upon earth” (George Fox, 1652).Among early Friends, fervent zeal infused the spread of Truth through powerful vocal ministry and 440 authors, directing others to their own Inward Guide. They were the First Publishers of Truth reaching out to everyone. No one was despaired of: the pope, kings of Spain and France, the czar of Russia, the bey of Algiers, and more. They knew the same Light Within appealed to all people (Brinton, 1994). Do I write about how inward experience guides my life and publish it?
Worldly power does not concede graciously. Friends were cruelly persecuted. Joseph Besse recorded sufferings of 12,000 Friends, an unparalleled record in religious history, and considered their motives: “The call to so extraordinary a service was grounded upon an assurance of faith in themselves, and a most clear and convincing evidence of a divine impulse upon their spirits and a necessity of obedience thereunto.” To draw tens of thousands of people into persecution one must live in the Power that illuminates the paltry power of persecutor or executioner and gives the persecuted a glad heart. One’s heart goes out to the persecutor, who does not know the peace within. “Sing and rejoice, ye Children of the Day and of the Light; for the Lord is at work in this thick night of Darkness…: and Truth doth flourish as the rose, and the lilies do grow among the thorns, and the plants atop of the hills, and upon them the lambs doth skip and play. And never heed the tempests nor the storms, floods nor rains, for the Seed of Christ is over all and doth reign. And so, be of good faith and valiant for the Truth” (George Fox, 1663). Do I live what I know is true, even into inconvenience or adversity, and pity those who taunt or attack me because they know not the Spirit?
Let us remember the original structure of Friends was the traveling ministers. The valiant 60, composed of 54 men and a dozen women, planned their movement. One elder and one younger (as young as teenage) Friend went to selected places to spread the good news, never missing an opportunity to speak, even on apparently infertile ground. People in Oxford were not receptive, but John Camm convinced one simple shopkeeper in Oxford, who later brought William Penn to Friends. Do I plan to speak about Quaker faith and practice to others and share our message even when people are not receptive?
Monthly meetings were later established by ministers to testify to and discern how the Spirit was shaping and guiding their lives and to support those suffering for conscience’ sake. Does my monthly meeting record continuing revelation, hear testimony on people’s experiment with the Spirit in their lives, and support members suffering for conscience’ sake?
Bill Taber noted a growing interest in recovering Quaker ministry. Friends are once again called into traveling ministry, home visitation, and “opportunities” (Taber in Samuel Bownas, 1989). “…at the hearing of the speech of the true minister, there is a joy to all that seek and thirst after righteousness; for the preaching the gospel is the glad tidings, the joyful news, and is a comfort to soul, body and spirit, to all that receive it” (George Fox, Epistle 312). Are joy and comfort palpable when I visit people to share worship, revelation, and how the Spirit moves us today?
Bill Taber noted three steps to Quaker experience:
First, personal transformation reorients the ego—“They were changed men themselves before they set about to change others” (William Penn). Those moments when we have new clarity and freedom to, in John Woolman’s words, “turn all that we possess into the channel of universal love” are often preceded by a difficult and sometimes anguished struggle. Meeting the Spirit in those places where we are broken and inadequate, deeply assimilates humility into our dispositions (Taber in Bownas).
Second, shaping one’s outward life to bear witness to this inward transformation allows the inward to bear fruit in the outward with visible serenity and integrity in life (Taber in Bownas). Noel Palmer says, “Enthusiasm is en thios. to be ‘in God.’ ” Great enthusiasm requires great discipline, especially to harness the overenthusiasm of revelation. Caroline Fox noted: “Live up to the Light thou hast and more shall be granted thee.”George Fox’s “faith, born of much suffering and spiritual distress, sprang first from his boyhood resolution to be honest in all things. Integrity was the keynote. Characteristically, he did not await further enlightenment before he lived by what he believed” (Vipont, 1997).
Third, mature discernment is needed to know when and what is coming forth from the Spirit, when it is time to speak or act, and when it is time to be silent and go inward, so one can trust to purely receive and give forth an inspired message. Then we give forth a motion rather than a notion or emotion. This is the apprenticeship in discernment for “being changed” (Taber in Bownas).
When we are changed ourselves, then we will change others.
References
Quaker Faith and Practice (2005). London, U.K.: Britain Yearly Meeting
Friends for 300 Years (1994). Howard Brinton. Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill (pp. 175–81)
Samuel Bownas, A Description of the Qualifications Necessary to a Gospel Minister (1989). Introduction by William P. Taber Jr. Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill (pp. vii–viii)
Elfrida Vipont, George Fox and the Valiant Sixty (1997). Philadelphia, PA: Friends General Conference.
Communication
To improve communications, both internally and externally, Chatham-Summit Friends formed a Communications Committee (CC) several years ago. We have found that most outreach and advancement activities are not conceived by or implemented by Communications, but rather by other areas of the Meeting that are engaged in activities in which the surrounding community might be interested. The CC helps support the outreach by honing the message, maintaining updated contact and media lists, and helping with distribution of press releases, flyers, etc. We also try to keep up on what’s happening in the Meeting in order to identify potential for outreach where others might overlook it.
Probably the Meeting’s most rewarding outreach activity this past year has been a series of Earthcare Witness Eco-Spiritual workshops organized by the Meeting’s Friends in Unity with Nature Circle, a small but dedicated group of Friends. The intention was to inform ourselves and others and to inspire Spirit-led action to care for an endangered planet. Workshops are held at the meetinghouse on Sunday afternoons from 1:30 to 3:30 P.M. and generally feature several experts in specific areas of environmental concern, sometimes, but not always, specific to our area of New Jersey (e.g., Great Swamp Watershed). At the beginning, our natural audience was the interfaith community of which we are a part. Building on contacts we had from participation in two interfaith organizations in Chatham, N.J., and reaching out to organized interfaith organizations in several surrounding communities, we have gradually built a web of connections not only with “green committees” in the churches in our area, but also among secular activist organizations. Our workshop numbers hover around 30–35, at least half to two-thirds of whom are members of the Meeting. We expect around 50 people to attend our late October workshop on permaculture. Local newspapers carry press releases and calendar announcements about the workshops; we use e-mail heavily and rely on small flyers to some extent.
Advancement and outreach results? The work of the FUN Circle has been exhausting, but our visibility has definitely been raised. We have stuck with one extended topic, about which Friends are passionate, over the duration of a year, and we feel that this says something about witness and commitment and is perceived as such. A fair number of attendees have returned for subsequent workshops, so the focus and quality seem to be trusted. Our relations with the houses of worship in our area have deepened. We have no indication that any new visitors have arrived on our doorstep as a result of our activity, but that was not our intention. And who knows how the Spirit might be working in the meantime? While not provable, our fairly frequent interaction with the media regarding the workshops quite likely raised our visibility and reliability as a good resource. In September, after three workshops, New Jersey’s largest newspaper, the Star-Ledger, sent a journalist/video photographer to cover our International Peace Day event, at which our children made Pinwheels for “Whirled” Peace. The story appeared as a short video piece on the www.nj.com Web site several days later. But that’s another outreach story emanating from a different part of the Meeting, Peace & Social Action in conjunction with the Religious Education Committee!
Outward and Inward:
Scarsdale Meeting’s Advancement Activities
In many ways, efforts toward advancement by Friends is part of Quaker witness. It is a complex task which has a two-pronged focus: aiming both at the greater community and the Meeting community.
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| Photo by Rick Jackofsky |
Scarsdale Meeting has been involved in advancement for a number of years. Our primary aim has been to show the community who we are, and also to invite their participation in both worship and social witness.
Every Sunday a dedicated group of Friends stands outside the Scarsdale meetinghouse in a silent vigil, holding signs that protest the war. Neighbors drive by, often with gestures of support, and in the winter a few come by with hot drinks. We welcome all to join us and, from time to time, we have been joined from people outside our Meeting.
Vigils are a traditional form of protest. We have joined with other Meetings in the quarter, bringing the AFSC Cost of War and Eyes Wide Open exhibits to our greater community. These activities have made us more visible to the community, and we try to have good press coverage (both before and after the event). Highlighting these activities also has a benefit within the local Quaker community: Often Friends within the participating meetings are more conscious of our witness and, hopefully, will be open to join in future outreach activities.
Probably the most promising advancement opportunity comes through Peace and Social Concerns (P&SC) committees. The P&SC Committees of Scarsdale Meeting and Purchase Quarter have organized community programs to reflect our social witness and testimonies of peace, equality, and simplicity. The local programs take the form of “sandwich seminars” at rise of meeting; the quarter’s programs are on Friday evenings and begin with a potluck. Some of our program topics have been on global warming and conservation, Darfur, the effects of white racism in contemporary society, conscientious objection, Voices for African Mothers, and a poster exhibit and program on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A few of the programs are part of a short series, but most are intense one-time examination of a subject. Each program has one or more expert speakers (not necessarily Quakers), and the talk or panel will end with recommendation of actions for change that can be taken by individuals as well as the group. There is never a charge, we provide the food, and we try to get local press coverage.
Another committee-led activity, prison ministry, is also a form of advancement. Our concern for people in prison, which often is actively extended to the time after incarceration, is an active form of witness. Wherever we have prison ministry, we are known—we are a small group, but definitely an emphatic presence! Those in our meetings who do not have active involvement in prison ministry are well aware that we are involved, and many do feel spiritually connected to our work.
Scarsdale MM’s advancement efforts toward our own community have involved Friendly Suppers, which can be a meal, a potluck, or just dessert. A group of Friends and, often, non-Quaker spouses, come together for a Friendly schmooze and learn more about each other. We are also trying to get people together who live in the same small geographic area, so we have made a listing of members and attenders by neighborhoods and will distribute this to Scarsdale Friends.
Our latest effort involves a movie night series. The first one was in late October. The community was invited to view a film with us (we provided the popcorn), with a discussion following the film. Again, this is a witness activity and so each film’s subject will reflect Quaker testimonies and philosophy. The film will be shown on a Saturday evening; the following day at rise of Meeting there is a related discussion at social hour.
One final advancement activity has become an annual event: Every year before the December holidays Scarsdale holds a community tag sale, warmly supported by other building users, to benefit several homeless shelters. This also brings in the community and it is a wonderful avenue of Quaker outreach.
Outreach/inreach—it’s all advancement! It’s an ongoing challenge, a work in progress, but there are no limits. The best part of advancement is trying new things and trying them together. It’s creative and spiritual and a wonderful part of the Quaker experience.
Community Building and Public Outreach
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| Photo by Rick Jackofsky |
Chappaqua Monthly Meeting’s “inreach and outreach” efforts have focused on two main areas recently.
Friendly Dinners
We have been doing Friendly Dinners for the past few years. Friendly Dinners have helped us to get to know one another better and have made it easier to draw newcomers into the community of our meeting. Beginning in late summer, for one or two months we put a sign-up sheet on the bulletin board and ask members and attenders to sign up for potluck dinners as either hosts or guests. A prospective host indicates how many people, children and/or adults, he or she is inviting. About a week before the date set for the dinner, people start calling one another to coordinate their offerings with the host’s menu. Over time, the dinners have helped to build a more cohesive community.
Eyes Wide Open
We have had good exposure to the larger community by setting up the American Friends Service Committee’s Eyes Wide Open (EWO) exhibits in Chappaqua in the spring of 2006 and later in White Plains (in cooperation with Scarsdale and Purchase Meetings) in the fall of 2006. We did it again in Chappaqua in the spring of 2007. One of the pieces of literature that we hand out is a very brief description of a meeting for worship with an invitation to join us, and it includes a list of Friends’ meetings (with address and phone number) in Purchase Quarter. At each event, we had excellent press coverage, both print and broadcast, and we find that the public is grateful for the exhibit and goes away with a positive impression of Friends.
For example, at the Chappaqua 2007 event we began to set up early, so morning commuters could see our signs and know that we’d be there until later in the evening. Clusters of commuters hurried by in the morning. Later people dribbled by in ones and twos. Sam Chay, the father of Staff Sergeant Kyu H. Chay, Chappaqua’s only war casualty so far, came by around 10 A.M. with a framed portrait of his son to loan us for the exhibit and thanked us. In front of his picture, we placed a pair of boots tagged with his name and short statement of why they were there. Kyu H. Chay’s name is now engraved on the Chappaqua Memorial in the little park at the train station.
The public response was very favorable. Some people talked a little with the exhibit monitors. Others spent time reading from the bios on the table. The AFSC collection jar was fairly full. Several viewers expressed their thanks for the exhibit, and the meeting later received a couple of letters expressing gratitude for its effort.
The name-reading ceremony in the evening had 13 readers, most of whom were EWO people. A young woman and her 10-year-old son also participated. We all held candles, and some candles were placed among the boots. People watched from a respectful distance. We learned that some earlier commuters went home to have supper as usual and then returned to the station with their families to observe the reading of names. Some sat on benches nearby; some stood near their cars. Many cars simply drove very slowly around the memorial circle a couple of times. It was a solemn and dignified occasion.
Press coverage was good. The Journal News had a picture on page 1 of the “Life” section, plus Web coverage with slides. Channel 12 reported twice during the day, and one other TV station covered us as well. The Valhalla paper announced the event in advance. My dogs’ vet called me to say thanks after reading and article in the Northern Westchester Express several days later.
We know of only one person who came to our meeting because of the EWO exhibit, but we are sure that many more people now know that Quakers are alive and kicking, and that they have a positive impression of us.
Quaker Quest
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In 2006 I had the opportunity to observe Quaker Quest—a dynamic new outreach program—at Friends House, London. Thirty inquirers listened in rapt attention as three Friends spoke from the heart about the ways in which the Quaker call to simplicity had changed their lives. The evening’s host then divided seekers into small groups, each with one Friend, to talk about the challenges of simplicity in their own lives. Within seconds the room was alive with conversation. The session included a Q&A period and ended with a briefly introduced 30-minute meeting for worship.
The seekers that evening were adults of all ages, most relatively young. Everyone, old and young, seemed thoroughly engaged in the entire two-hour program. Participants also appeared to enjoy refreshments and socializing with Quakers before the program; a number lingered afterward to continue their conversation. Those interested in reading about Friends had the opportunity to browse a table of pamphlets and books to purchase as well as free literature. Quaker Quest seemed—and seems—like a powerful and highly effective approach to outreach.
Quaker Quest began in 2002 when a group of Friends who lived near each other in London shared a concern that very few people had ever heard of Quakers. After a process of worship and discernment, and under the care of their monthly meeting, they began offering Quaker Quest to the public at Friends House, where there is a monthly meeting. While the original plan had been to offer Quaker Quest once a week for just one year, at the end of the year they could not lay the project down. It had become a leading of the entire group. Six years later Quaker Quest is still going strong at Friends House.
In the meantime, visitors who had learned about Quakers through Quaker Quest were appearing at meetings outside London. Soon Friends began to contact the London founders to ask what Quaker Quest is and how they could offer it in their own area. The founders responded by developing a one-day informational workshop, which they brought upon request to meetings outside London. In this way they maintained the quality of what had been developed and honed in London through repeated observation, evaluation, and adjustment.
Quaker Quest has now spread to over 65 meetings around the country in small towns and villages as well as urban and suburban areas. This fall alone 18 British meetings are putting on a Quaker Quest. Travelers report seeing Quaker Quest posters and leaflets throughout Britain. Outside London, Quaker Quest is offered to the public over a few consecutive weeks, not every week all year as in London.
Although much room exists for local initiative in Quaker Quest, a set of basic principles guides the program. The founders ask Friends that if they plan to use the Quaker Quest name to please follow the core principles. This and other information about Quaker Quest in the United States and Canada is online at www.quakerquestfgc.org. The excellent British site is www.quakerquest.org.
Quaker Quest has definitely brought new attenders to meetings in Britain. In London the monthly meeting in Friends House and a nearby meeting have seen a substantial increase in attendance. Most meetings offering Quaker Quest have received an influx of visitors. There are already people active in Britain Yearly Meeting who came to Friends through Quaker Quest.
But outreach is only part of the Quaker Quest success story. Many Friends have reported that their meeting was strengthened internally as they prepared to articulate their faith for the public. The founders ask meetings to allow a six-month period between their decision to offer Quaker Quest and the start of the public sessions. This gives enough time to develop publicity, plan the sessions, and ready the meeting for visitors. When looking forward to offering Quaker Quest, some meetings first set aside time to learn more about Quakerism, realizing that they want to become better able to answer newcomers’ questions. Both when preparing for Quaker Quest and when offering the program itself, Friends experience great joy as they unite in sharing their faith.
In 2007 the Quaker Quest founders asked Friends General Conference to respond to inquiries and coordinate workshops in the United States and Canada. Those interested in learning more can visit quakerquestfgc.org and share the information with Friends in their meeting. If your business meeting decides that it would like to host the one-day workshop, contact Elaine Crauderueff, FGC’s Advancement & Outreach coordinator, elainec [at] fgcquaker.org, 215-561-1700. She can arrange to send two members of the Quaker Quest Travel Team to give the workshop developed by the founders. The workshop is free, but meetings are asked to pay the facilitator’s travel expenses. For Spark readers these costs should be minimal because three trained facilitators live in the NYYM area.
Guidelines for Campus Outreach
For me, ministering to students has been an ongoing learning experience. Things that worked or were relevant yesterday may be meaningless tomorrow. It is important to be open-minded and flexible.
I am part of a working group developing a volunteer-service model for campus ministry, which includes yearly meetings and monthly meetings. The monthly meetings experiment with different modes of outreach, follow up after activities to determine what works, and channel information back to the yearly meeting.
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The monthly meeting is the support base for campus activity, facilitating student religious life, offering a spiritual home for participants, and offering a path from corporate worship to social engagement. The yearly meeting is the network that brings together the efforts all of the monthly meetings—through sharing information, offering guidance when there are concerns, problems, or questions, providing resources to assist monthly meetings, and facilitating sharing and support groups.
In the past, our focus was primarily on four-year colleges and universities. Our efforts should not exclude community colleges and other post–high school educational institutions. Opportunities abound for our voices to be heard and our message shared. Our witness to our testimonies resonates with many students of all ages.
Campus AdvancementA NYYM working group on College Advancement and Outreach is developing ways to bring the Quaker message to colleges and to support student and faculty Friends. If you want to be part of this effort, contact John Menzel, jpmenzel [at] optonline.net, or Helen Garay Toppins, office [at] nyym.org. |
Volunteers will be working with three categories of students. The smallest group will be Quaker students. Even though they come from a Quaker background they may be no more responsive than other students. Also, with the wide differences among Quakers, there just might not be a viable match. Then there are many students whose life experience has brought them into contact with Quakers and Quaker principles through schools, camps, and other programs. This group may include serious seekers.
Finally, there are students who know nothing about Quakers but may share some or many of our beliefs and ideals. All three categories of students may be responsive to our message and seek out our meetings.
The following guidelines, which grew out of informal communications with several sources, can hopefully serve to support volunteer efforts. There will most likely be additional suggestions or ideas that should be considered.
- Because few students will leave the campus to find a Quaker meeting, the place to find Quaker and other interested students is on campus. Informational services, worship, witnessing to Quaker testimonies, publicity, and personal invitations will be more effective on campus.
- E-mail is essential because students use it. If you can get a list of interested students, it is worth the time to keep in touch (personal communications, on-line newsletters, and the like). Be aware that sometimes students will receive communications for a long time before showing up or responding, and some may never be seen.
- Be careful how you word communications or what you say. Most college administrations monitor who is on campus and what they are doing and saying. Anything that appears to be proselytizing will be viewed negatively. Although Quakers are not generally misunderstood, there have been enough incidents to worry administrators.
- If you plan an event that seems to fail, do not give up. We are not concerned about large numbers; one student may be worth the effort.
- When young Friends from monthly meetings go off to school, someone should find the nearest meeting to that school. The meeting should be contacted and asked to reach out to the student. Then the student should be given the information and told that the initial contact has been made. Even though the student may not do anything about the information, he/she may be grateful later.
- It is always important to follow up. There are so many reasons why this is important, not the least of which is that it shows that you care.
Our goal is to support one another and to share information and resources. We will learn by faithfully carrying out our efforts at outreach ministry. There will be successes and failures, and we can learn from both. The purpose of campus ministry is not to increase the monthly meeting membership roles but rather to offer ourselves, our witness, and our spiritual home.
Friends, monthly meetings, and worship groups who seek information, would like to contribute ideas and experiences, or are seeking support for their own leadings / campus efforts should contact the New York Yearly Meeting Working Group on Campus Outreach through either Helen Garay Toppins at the Yearly Meeting office or John Menzel, jpmenzel [at] rci.rutgers.edu or 908-239-7850. The working group is under the oversight of the NYYM Advancement Committee.
Creative Advancement
In the last few years I have felt a strong leading to let the world know that Quakers exist. I came to Friends as a young adult from a different faith tradition, and when I attended my first meeting, I felt like I was coming home. I have a sense there are many other people who are longing for a life in the Spirit but have no idea where to find it. My mind and heart are filled with ideas that might bring people a bit closer to the experience of the Divine they hunger for.
My outreach efforts range from designing T-shirts with the Quaker Finder Web address to organizing a worship event at a historic meetinghouse in a living history museum to submitting articles about meeting events to the local paper. My latest experiment is inviting community members to a Friendly gathering in a town where we hope to begin a worship group. The event will run for three hours and will include an hour of play, stories and songs for families with young children, a potluck dinner, and an hour for open discussion. At least 15 minutes of unprogrammed worship will be included as the Spirit leads. Our “Advancement Table” materials will be set out along with a guest book. This event is scheduled to take place just about the time this issue of Spark goes to print. If you are interested in learning more about it, feel free to contact Suzanne Blackburn at 585-468-5274 or kandsblackburn [at] gmail.com.
Seeking Light
When I visited Rahway and Plainfield Monthly Meeting a few months ago, one Friend asked me “What can we do to be better connected to the Yearly Meeting?” The answer I gave at the time felt incomplete, and I wrote them a follow-up note, which some Friends urged me to share more broadly. Portions of that note follow.
“What I hear implicit in your question is ‘How can we be more connected to the work or activities going on at a Yearly Meeting level?’ and I would invite you to reconsider the framework that that question arises out of. This monthly meeting is ‘the Yearly Meeting.’ Shrewsbury & Plainfield Half-Yearly Meeting is also ‘the Yearly Meeting.’
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“The Yearly Meeting is not some group of people off somewhere else doing a specific work. It is all of us. I can recommend ways for you to get better connected to Friends outside this monthly meeting, but first I would caution you to do so only as you are led. It may be that to be faithful, you are led to work to deepen the life of this monthly meeting. Or you may be called to work on outreach on a local level. Or, you may feel a pull to strengthen ties with the other meetings closest to you, or to offer support to smaller, struggling meetings nearby. This is as much a way of ‘connecting to the Yearly Meeting’ as would be serving on a Yearly Meeting committee. I do believe that it brings life and Spirit to a local meeting to be involved in the wider body of Friends, and I heartily encourage it. It is equally important to tend to the needs of one’s immediate community. So proceed only as you are led.
“In order to gain a sense of whether you might be led to serve outside this monthly meeting, you will need to spend a little time familiarizing yourself with what is going on. Read Spark and InfoShare. Check out the Yearly Meeting Web site. Talk with the members of this meeting who are active at Half-Yearly and Yearly Meeting levels. I think that the best way to get a sense of the work going on is to attend one of the three sessions each year, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Fall Sessions will be near Albany this year. I expect that several members of this meeting will be going, and I know for certain that Friends from the Half-Yearly Meeting will be going, if car-pooling makes it more feasible. You can sit in on any committee meeting that draws you, and get a taste of their work. Participating in the meetings for worship and meetings for worship with attention to business are real eye-openers for some Friends. And most Friends feel greatly enriched to meet and get to know Friends from other areas.”
What we are about is nurturing the life of the Spirit among us. That is the work of us all, and it may call some of us to work in our own meeting, others to work at a regional or yearly meeting level, and some to work internationally. What is important is that we are intent on being faithful, and that we heed the pulls and nudges that may lead us to the work we are each being called to do. If we do that, the work that happens throughout this Yearly Meeting will be a part of this larger work, ours being but a small thread of a tapestry too large to comprehend. May we be faithful to our portion.
Around Our Yearly Meeting
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| Photo by Rick Jackofsky |
From around the Yearly Meeting Friends can take heart in reports of new worship groups and vibrant, new youth groups in various stages of development.
The Bedford Stuyvesant Worship Group will meet at Redemption Center on Sunday November 16 at 2 P.M. Worship will be followed by a fellowship potluck. Please bring something to share. Vincent Buscemi will be our Worship Group leader. The Bedford Stuyvesant Worship Group will also meet on Sunday, December 21.
The worship group’s Care Committee is also trying to provide a Thanksgiving dinner for Redemption residents. If you or your meeting can provide something for the dinner please let one of us know. Members of the Care Committee are Vince Buscemi, vincebuscemi [at] yahoo.com; Mark Graham, mgraham [at] theredemptioncenter.net; Jason McGill, jasonmcgill [at] mindspring.com; and Helen Garay Toppins, office [at] nyym.org.
The Redemption Center is at 1186 Herkimer Street, Brooklyn NY 11233. Map and driving directions available at Map Quest. Subway and bus information available at MTA NYC Transit, 718-330-1234.
The Dansville Worship Group is now under the care of Alfred Monthly Meeting. The Dansville Group will meet for unprogrammed worship on the fourth Sunday of each month from 10 to 11 am at Growing Places, 14 Battle St., Dansville, NY 14437. The next two dates are November 23 and December 28.
Midweek worship will also be held at Growing Places on the first and third Tuesdays of each month beginning on November 18. We will meet at 2 P.M. to start and adjust the time if necessary. When the group gathers, they can also decide if this will be unprogrammed worship or more of a worship-sharing time and determine how long the meeting time will be.
For further information contact Suzanne Blackburn, kandsblackburn [at] gmail.com.
Long Island Quarter is seeking to support its youth program with a staff person (some funding exists for this) and would like to collaborate with other downstate quarters and regions in order to create a critical mass of youth. Contact Herb Lape at 631-427-7542.
Manhasset Monthly Meeting is moving closer to undertaking extensive renovation work on their historic meetinghouse. Currently working with Chatham-Summit Meeting’s Mark Hewitt, an architect and expert in historical building restorations, the Meeting had spent many hours in worship and discernment to be clear on if and how to proceed. “Although we have a small number of worshipers on First Day,” says Manhasset MM member Danny Maietta, “the Spirit is strong among us. We feel that our meetinghouse is a very important part of our worship and represents our values both to us and outwardly to the community.” Restoration is expected to proceed in stages as funding permits. Contact: Danny Maietta, 516-570-6886.
The Christ-centered Nine Partners/Lyall Memorial Federated Church Worship Group continues to meet at 8:30 A.M. on Sundays in the summers, at the historic Nine Partners meetinghouse in Millbrook,, NY. Nine Partners Monthly Meeting is one of three denominations comprising the Lyall Memorial Federated Church. Contact Joyce Heaton, 845-677-8167, for more information.
Nine Partners Quarterly Meeting’s Youth Group, consisting of teens ages 13 and up, is now in its second year, and feeling increasingly sure-footed and strong. It meets once a month in between quarterly meetings and rotates location among the participating meetings. One nonparent coordinates the activities, which are planned by the teens and supported by the parents. Programs consist primarily of outdoor activities. New Paltz Meeting teen Risa Pomeroy, age 16, says “having fun” is most important to her; her 13-year-old brother, Noah, thinks the people and activities are “super” like the canoeing trip down Black Creek and hiking up Storm Mountain. Parent Tom Houghton of Cornwall Meeting advises adults (and teens) of current or potential youth groups not to get overly ambitious. “Just do it,” he says. “The effort alone has great value.” Contact: Anne Pomeroy, 845-384-6090.
Northeastern Regional Meeting’s Youth Group is now in its second year and enjoying considerable success, according to Saratoga Monthly Meeting parents and the Group’s facilitators Sharon Mattsson and Tim Cerqua. Efforts to respond to their son’s wishes to have his friends come to Quaker meeting have blossomed into biweekly youth group meetings of 6 to 12 teens. What guides the teens’ activities is their selection of three overarching Quaker testimonies: peace, equality, and environmental stewardship. They have raised money for Quaker efforts in Monteverde, Costa Rica, and completed a four-day service project at the Heifer International Camp in Massachusetts, where they learned more about wealth distribution and sustainable development. Now they are looking for local service projects. Sharon shares two key lessons from their experience: (1) Don’t be too directive; let the teens choose their testimonies and activities; and (2) gain the support and enthusiasm of the Meeting. The latter has made all the difference for the adults involved, whose expenditure of time and effort has been considerable. Sharon says her son, now age 15, loves the Meeting. This would seem to say it all. Contact: Sharon Mattsson or Tim Cerqua at cafaro [at] verizon.net.
Orchard Park Monthly Meeting’s innovative Youth Program has been enjoying considerable success, among both its teens and adult members of the Meeting, so much so that there are plans to begin a preteen group modeled after the teen program. A detailed report outlining the program and its five key elements is available by contacting Kathy Slattery at 716-988-5157. This year the teens are working with the broad theme of “Experiments with Light,” using black-and-white photography to explore and illuminate important aspects of Quakerism. “We are always amazed at the capacity of our teens for insight, depth, and articulation,” says Kathy. But more important than the art itself, she says, is the hope that “we are conveying Quakerism as a vibrant way of life…and learning the possibility a creative medium such as photography holds as a spiritual discipline.”
Orchard Park Monthly Meeting continues fundraising to build a full-fledged primary school, from early childhood education through grade 8, at the Crossroads Springs Care Center in Hamisi, Kenya, for children orphaned by the AIDS pandemic. Currently 210 children are enrolled, and help is urgently needed. Orchard Park Monthly Meeting member “Billy,” age 6, is a shining Light in this regard. To solicit funds, he has made and distributed coffee cans with pictures of himself and one of the Crossroads children. So far he has raised $1,000 and is aiming to repeat that. “Every child needs a school,” says Billy, “especially if he doesn’t have a mommy and daddy to teach him to love.” Billy is adopted from Guatemala. For the complete story, see the July ’08 Friends Journal or contact Alison Hyde, 716-652-0166.
Poplar Ridge Monthly Meeting is one year into its enormously successful and satisfying Children’s Nutrition Program in El Salvador. After raising $8,000, they were able to feed 50 malnourished children and pregnant moms in three of El Salvador’s most impoverished communities for six months and have seed money left over to initiate another arm of the program—building community gardens to encourage independence and sustainability. A fuller report and invitation to attend an authentic El Salvadoran dinner/fundraiser in 2009 will be found in December InfoShare or by contacting Ruth Ann Bradley, 315-497-2254.
Redemption Center, a largely Quaker-supported, not-for-profit transitional housing facility in Brooklyn, is now in its second year of operation. Opened in July 2007 with the purpose of providing 6–12 months of temporary housing for people newly released from prison, the facility now has 27 beds (up from the original 17) and has leased an adjacent building as the women’s residence. Founder and Executive Director Mark Graham (himself an ex-offender whose life was touched by Quakers while serving 22 years in prison) estimates that a third of Redemption Center residents had experience with Quaker worship groups while incarcerated. He believes that having a Quaker-supported transitional facility, in conjunction with the new Redemption Center Worship Group started this past summer (see above), will help residents stay in touch with Quaker principles as they work to put their lives back together. Mostly supported by Quakers up to this point, the Center is beginning to reach out for to other potential funding sources. Gifts, financial or in-kind, are gratefully accepted! Friends who want to help Redemption Center may contact Mark Graham at 718-922-1627 or mgraham [at] theredemptioncenter.net.
St. Lawrence Valley Monthly Meeting (Canadian YM) has responded to requests from incarcerated Friends and formed the Gouverneur Worship Group. Several members have completed volunteer screening and received approval to meet in weekly worship with prisoners. St. Lawrence Valley has initiated the possibility of being affiliated with NYYM.
Notices
NEW MEMBERS
Beth Bugdaycay – Morningside Meeting
Erica Donahue – New Brunswick
Naceo Giles – Brooklyn
Christopher Kimberly – Albany
Alma Quirk Mohlke – Ithaca
Elsa Quirk Mohlke – Ithaca
Anne Pomeroy – New Paltz
Paul Rehm – Albany
John Rogalski – New Brunswick
Sarah Stangl – Albany
Mary Ellen Stanley – New Brunswick
Christianne White – Ithaca
Alexa Yesukevich – Ithaca
BIRTHS/ADOPTIONS
Hannah Linden Smith, to Jessica Todd Smith, member of Chatham-Summit, on October 24, 2008.
Adelaide Thornton Utz and Anderson Maud Utz, on May 6, 2008, to Scott Douglas Utz, member of Chatham-Summit, and Elizabeth Hagan Davis.
TRANSFERS
Esther Darlington, to Ithaca from Media Monthly Meeting (PYM)
Rebekah Tanner, to Ithaca from Quaker Street
DEATHS
Richard George-Murray, member of Catskill, on September 18, 2008.
Merrill Ann Skaggs, member of Chatham-Summit, on November 3, 2008.
MARRIAGES/COVENANT RELATIONSHIPS
Gabrielle Bailey, member of Chatham-Summit, to Jonathan Savory, on September 27, 2008, under the care of Chatham-Summit Meeting.
Mollie McLellan Tornow, member of Central Finger Lakes, to David Coffee, on June 28, 2008, under the care of Central Finger Lakes Meeting.