Meeting for Sufferings: December 2024 afternoon session
Britain Yearly Meeting budget; continuing Yearly Meeting Agenda Committee; the appointment of non-members to certain Area Meeting roles; Quaker World Relations Committee; Quaker Council for European Affairs
Budget
‘Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) shall once again set a deficit budget in 2025,’ Paul Whitehouse, Yearly Meeting (YM) treasurer, told Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) on 7 December, although it will be the last year they can afford to do so. ‘In 2026 we shall have to balance the budget, which will require reducing costs or increasing income.’
Hard work by fundraising staff meant that BYM is using restricted funds more efficiently, he added, lessening the expected impact. A Risk Management Fund, set up in 2023, has also helped. ‘Our second biggest source of income is donations from Friends, both individually and from Meetings,’ said Paul. For 2025, this was budgeted to be just under £100,000, as well as £1 million from the Quiet Company (QC). Funds will go to supporting Meetings, maintaining current levels of local development workers, and possibly growing regional youth development work. Staff have had a 4.01 per cent pay increase but the new increases to Employers’ National Insurance Contributions will cost £140K, and will be counted in the forecast at the end of the first quarter of 2025 (as they were announced too late for this budget). ‘Difficult choices will have to be made,’ added Paul, in terms of renewing roles when vacancies arise.
Nearly £800,000 has been set aside to refurbish Drayton House, currently let to University College London, in order to charge higher rents. ‘Significant sums’ pledged to Swarthmoor Hall for re-rendering were met with approval from one Friend, who said he was worried that the centre’s ‘spiritual life’ was ‘suffering’ and that QC was putting profit-making over serving this need. Paul Whitehouse, who sits on the QC board, reassured him that QC’s chief executive is ‘quite clear about the need for a Quaker spiritual presence’ there.
Continuing Yearly Meeting Agenda Committee
In the final morning session, Friends approved draft terms of reference for an Agenda Committee to serve the ‘continuing YM’ in 2025. This was in light of the recent decision to lay down MfS and move to a continuing YM instead.
Paul Parker, BYM’s recording clerk, said that it was ‘most urgently needed’ for the new agenda committee to start work ahead of 2026. YM will be approving the final terms of reference in 2025, but for now Friends were being asked if the current draft is good enough so that Central Nominations Committee (CNC) was able to start work on finding people to serve.‘We’re not asking you today for all the dots and commas,’ Paul said, although welcoming Friends to send suggestions. ‘The question this morning is whether they are good enough to do the work of Noms.’
Friends responded with one querying the number of clerks required, and others emphasising the difficulties that lay ahead in the transition. ‘26 is the year when that will be in need of management and care,’ said one Quaker, stressing ‘a need for complete clarity… We also need to be super kind to anyone whose name is [being nominated].’
A Friend from CNC said: ‘We are all aware of the workload and what we are asking Friends to do.’ He urged the Quakers to ask Local and Area Meetings to ‘prayerfully uphold’ them, as ‘they take this work forward and deliver on the change’.
Robert Card, clerk of MfS, reiterated the central question, which was: ‘Is this good enough to be a working document to get us through this process of transition?’, to which there were murmurs of agreement.
The final minute noted: ‘We recognise that flexibility and charity will be required of all of us in working through the transition to the new ways of working.’
Appointment of non-members to certain Area Meeting roles
After lunch, Siobhán Haire, deputy recording clerk, had to remind Friends to maintain discipline when one or two called out without raising hands. Siobhán had been attending to the business of re-appointing Robert Card, as MfS clerk, and Elizabeth Allen, as MfS assistant clerk, when one Friend questioned whether they wanted to carry on as they had been serving for some time. Siobhán said the re-appointment was their choice, but they were currently ‘locked in a room’ – ‘we’ll be letting them out soon’, to which many Friends laughed.
Business then moved to a report from Church Government Advisory Group (CGAG) on appointing non-members to certain Area Meeting (AM) roles. This followed a decision in December that central role holders need not be members of BYM (excluding BYM trustees). But MfS was unable to reach unity on the same principle being extended to AM and LM roles, and asked CGAG to consider what changes to Quaker faith & practice this would involve.
Martin Burnell, from CGAG, outlined the changes, including a simplified and longer version in one paragraph. ‘In both cases the decisions to appoint an attender should be a conscious one and should be formally minuted,’ he said. ‘The longer version… sets out some considerations that the Meeting might want to take into account.’
The question of BYM trustee appointment is more complicated, he said, as there is an explicit requirement that trustees be members (although not required in law).
Robert Card, clerk to MfS, reminded Friends that amending Quaker faith & practice ‘is a YM issue, not a MfS issue’.
One Friend said that ‘something people need to check on their charitable status is: is membership tied to indemnity?’ Otherwise a non-member trustee, who wasn’t indemnified, would be ‘an easy choice for a vulture lawyer to go for’.
One Friend said they preferred the longer version which showed Quakers ‘have some deep and complex understanding of our spirituality and practices’. Another endorsed the recommendations in general, noting how his AM and LM have struggled to get enough trustees, while there are attenders qualified in ‘work and understanding’ to take on the roles. ‘We are a diminishing Society; we have to respond to what we have,’ another Quaker said. Being an attender didn’t make them less spiritual, ‘otherwise we risk being elitist’, he said.
Early Friends didn’t have membership, said another Friend, to which Michael Booth from CGAG later responded, saying membership regulations were introduced in 1737. ‘What concerns me is, we are acting out of fear that we can’t find Friends to serve’ without asking the fundamental question of ‘why?’, asked another.
Michael Booth also reminded the room that ‘MfS agreed last year that CNC could appoint attenders to roles, so the question is: are you happy for AMs and other bodies to have that freedom?’
Robert Card said he was hearing that Friends were ‘minded to allow attenders to take up roles in AMs’, but they were more ‘hesitant’ about trustee roles without legal advice, and needed ‘more work… on what membership actually means’.
After some amendments, and reflections on membership versus attendance, the minute said MfS accepted the recommendations for AMs, including [attenders] serving as a trustee and treasurer’, but legal advice should be taken ‘so that suitable template constitutional documents could be provided’.
Quaker World Relations Committee
Before the next item, Robert Card said that, as Friends were already trickling away, and, given the bad weather, there was ‘a guillotine on this session’.
Ruth Homer, co-clerk to Quaker World Relations Committee (QWRC), spoke to its report, saying she was ‘delighted that Quaker Peace & Social Witness is providing sessions in-person in the summer for QWRC’. The reports from foreign YMs make ‘fascinating reading’, she added, describing the joy of Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC)’s World Plenary. All QWRC reps had attended online, with two attending in person, and their focus for 2025 was spreading the message of Ubuntu. An invitation had been sent to three adult Friends from the plenary to be guests at YM 2025, and she was looking for suggestions and host offers.
In ministry, one Quaker echoed Ruth’s appreciation of the YM reports, saying they made ‘jollier reading than lots of other papers’. The final minute reflected a Friend’s request that we heed ‘the spiritual call’ from the plenary ‘and engage further with its three themes: Ubuntu, care for creation, and healing historic Injustices’.
Quaker Council for European Affairs
For the final item, Tracey Martin, director of Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA), spoke to a report about the organisation’s work. She was glad to be invited, she said, particularly as she thought it was the first time QCEA had reported to MfS since before Covid and Brexit. ‘Broadly, at the moment, we’re working on migration and peace, climate justice and peace, and what we call “dialogues for transformation”, bringing people together in quiet diplomacy… that’s what is needed in these times.’
‘We’ve seen an increase in power of populist and anti-immigration politics… [and] EU defence spending,’ she said, while ‘climate change doesn’t recognise borders’, with the EU ‘a big player in COP and other climate events’.
Post-Brexit, QCEA is still relevant to the UK, she said, as it is ‘still geographically a member of Europe, a member of the Council of Europe’ and ‘the geopolitical situation in Europe affects the UK deeply’.
BYM also appoints a representative and alternate to the QCEA General Assembly. BYM is also ‘by far the biggest YM in Europe and the solidarity between YMs is important,’ she added.
‘We deeply appreciate BYM support,’ she went on, financially and otherwise. ‘The funding situation is… becoming ever more challenging’
With a focus on relationship building, after the June 2024 elections for the new EU Parliament and new Commissioners, QCEA had recently asked Quakers to make small textile squares to welcome new MEPs. These ‘were received really well’.
Friends welcomed the report with one asking about a peace and migration handbook to be published early in 2025. Tracey later explained that the book was ‘mostly for policymakers but hopefully useful for a wide range of people’. To a query about Quaker House in Brussels, Tracey said the executive committee is discerning how it can be cost-effective, but also ‘that it is used in the way it is intended’.
One Friend wondered if ‘you almost have to start your work again, when you get a new European Parliament?’ Tracey said this was true, particularly as over half of MEPs are new. The situation since Brexit was ‘more difficult’ as ‘not so many know who Quakers are’, which was one of the reasons QCEA sent the squares.
The final minute noted that from 20-22 June 2025, QCEA and Quaker Peace & Social Witness will hold a joint conference in Brussels, on ‘Faith in Action in an age of Permacrisis’.
Before Friends disappeared into the storm, and possible train cancellations, one Quaker raised the plight of Bristol Friend Gaie Delap (see News), with clerks recommending writing to her MP, Carla Denyer.
See www.quaker.org.uk/mfspapers for the minutes.
