Meeting for Sufferings: Quaker Stewardship Committee
The clerk of Quaker Stewardship Committee spoke to representatives at Meeting for Sufferings
Quaker Stewardship Committee (QSC), which helps and guides Meetings in the stewardship of their finance and property, has no formal relationship with Meeting for Sufferings. But its clerk welcomed the opportunity to communicate with the body in a year in which: Meetings were being encouraged to simplify their ways of working; significant changes to the way that Area and Local Meetings are supported were being planned; Friends were revising the church government sections of Quaker faith & practice; and Meetings were grappling with the increased burden of external regulation being imposed on charities, including churches.
‘We are all one church even though we have a hierarchical structure,’ she said. QSC existed to check that AMs were holding themselves to account. ‘We exist for your discomfort’, she added.
BYM is carrying out a review of QSC, due for report in 2021. MfS was asked to consider how Meetings could be helped to keep sight of the spiritual basis of their stewardship, along with how to manage the strategic direction of AMs.
A Friend from north west England was concerned about the use of the word ‘hierarchical’ for the Society’s structures. ‘I say we are a bottom-up organisation,’ she said. There was a feeling that more power should be held locally, she added. Another representative took a similar theme. Trustees have been appointed to advise within the law but the AMs should set the direction, he believed. ‘I worry that trustees are seen as the executive.’
Responding, QSC’s clerk said that ‘the bottom is the top – we are both bottom up and top down. We are the top. Once Yearly Meeting makes a decision, we all have to follow. All we are saying here is that we hope you like the words we have used to describe what you have already decided.’
The Meeting also looked at how to manage the diversity of arrangements at AM level. ‘One consideration is that our structures are so obtuse,’ said one representative. ‘We have to think about… why people aren’t coming forward to serve.’
The review group would welcome comments from anyone who has had contact with the work of the committee: ‘Have you anything… you would like to tell us?’
