Changes to Meeting for Sufferings
The Friend reports on the decisions about the future of Meeting for Sufferings
The decision to change the composition and size of Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) was one of the more significant ones made at Yearly Meeting Gathering. The session, on Tuesday afternoon, included the Review of Meeting for Sufferings and Britain Yearly Meeting Trustees, which revealed the deliberations of a group of people who had been tasked with assessing how well Quaker ‘mechanisms’ pursued the ‘loving purposes of God.’
The group had been looking at the workings of MfS and of the Yearly Meeting Trustees since 2009. They had received, during this period, comments and responses from many individuals and Meetings.
The documents in advance suggested a major concern: ‘Time and again it was brought to our attention that, in one way or another, our central organisation has become over-governed. There are too many layers of authority.’
The primary role of Meetings for Sufferings was confirmed as seeking, in worship, the ‘vision which shapes our work’ and of being a body, between Yearly Meetings, that draws its authority from Area Meetings and gives validity and direction to trustees for the operational work.
In order to make MfS a better body for ‘discernment’ it was recommended that it be reduced in size and, therefore, that area meetings each nominate one member, and additionally nominate an alternate.
It was also recommended that General Meeting for Scotland, Meeting of Friends in Wales and Young Friends’ General Meeting also nominate on this basis, and there were recommendations relating to standing committees and that the service of some clerks to MfS be limited. Another recommendation was that MfS be ‘formally empowered to invite other Friends, committee members or staff members to participate in specific sessions’.
The Review Group did not address the name of Meeting for Sufferings and asked Friends not to ‘launch into that exercise at this stage’.
Contributions from the floor, initially, raised the subject of the ‘separation between policy making and policy implementation’ which, a Friend said, he found ‘slightly troubling.’ Citing a memory of decisions made at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1968, at the time of the Vietnam war, which were not eventually implemented, he urged Friends not to ‘give away our divinely inspired prompting’.
Another Friend had ‘no quarrel with reducing the size’ but believed that there was a more fundamental issue to address: ‘What is the function of MfS? What is it there for?’ He argued that there was far too much emphasis on centrally managed work at MfS and said that agendas were dominated by this. He felt that there was a great gulf between Friends at the centre and in the rest of Britain. This ‘dualism’ was unhelpful. There was tremendous work being done at a local level and Friends should be ‘sharing the experience of all this work’.
Friends contributed on the various pros and cons of having an ‘alternate’ with general unity on the recommendation. The vital importance of continuity and clear communication was stressed and there was a definite sense, in many contributions, of the need to achieve the best ‘discernment’ possible and of the need for MfS to be more of a ‘worshipping community’.
MfS would, a Friend believed, be ‘much leaner and more effective’ if it was reduced in size and more able to fulfil its role as a ‘discerning body’. The changes, a Friend hoped, would also ‘reconnect Area Meetings with the life of Britain Yearly Meeting’.
The recommendations were agreed to. The size of Meeting for Sufferings would be reduced from just under two hundred to just under one hundred members. The review group was thanked for its work and it has been laid down.
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