A Friend opens the door during Meeting for Worship Photo: Trish Carn
Holding open the door
Alistair Fuller considers the idea of ‘outreach’ as Friends throughout Britain celebrate ‘Quaker Week’
The way we connect with the world, telling our stories and striving to live out our testimonies, is deeply and inextricably connected to our own spiritual lives and the life of our Quaker communities. When we feel rooted and nourished in our spiritual lives and have a real sense of belonging to a living, lively and nurturing community of faith, we find that this has a profound effect on our capacity to communicate our faith to those around us, with gentleness and generosity, both by what we say and what we do. For a Local Meeting the experience of ‘doing’ outreach is often galvanising, enlivening and enriching.
These things are all bound up with each other – a well-rooted spiritual life, an engaged and engaging Quaker community and a real sense of connection with the wider community. Each element nourishes and enables the other. So we find that outreach is not an add-on to the life of the Meeting, but an integral part of it, that it springs from the deep source of our individual and shared spiritual life and that, in turn, it inspires and invigorates that life.
During Quaker Week (this year from 1 to 9 October), we encourage Meetings to set aside time to share with those around them something of our experience of living the Quaker life: we create resources that we hope will be helpful to Meetings and we offer guidance, encouragement and support. Many Meetings throughout the country respond to this opportunity with imagination and enthusiasm. This year, there are Friends running Open House and Meet a Quaker events, holding concerts, arts events, talks and workshops, inviting people to bring and share suppers, leading school assemblies, doing Thought For The Day on local radio stations, setting up stalls in farmers’ markets and holding open-air Meeting for Worship in public spaces. One Meeting has organised a sixth form conference on nonviolence, another is giving away Fairtrade bananas and another is holding a Bring and Take event.
Some of these are large, busy Meetings, others much smaller, some urban, some rural. What unites them all and gives such energy and diversity to these events is a sense of having something of unique value to share with those around them, a story to tell, a life to share. We sometimes think of outreach as a label to put on a particular kind of activity, that we might (or might not) add on to the other work we do as Meetings. In fact, it is much more than that: outreach is something that grows out of, nourishes and is nourished by who we are as Friends, both individually and collectively.
Like so many Friends, I discovered Quakerism by meeting Quakers, when a friend simply allowed me the possibility of discovering for myself some of the riches and challenges of this life and this community of faith. Whatever you may be doing this Quaker Week I hope that we can all find the time to hold the door open wide enough – and for long enough – for a passer-by to look inside and see if this could be a spiritual space in which they might feel at home.
For more information about outreach please contact Alistair at alistairf@quaker.org.uk or on 020 7663 1016.
