Meeting for Sufferings: What it means to be a Quaker today - membership
Paul Parker spoke to his paper ‘What it means to be a Quaker today’
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) recording clerk Paul Parker spoke to his paper ‘What it means to be a Quaker today’, presented at Yearly Meeting 2014. He focused on Minute 40, which asked for two things.
The first of these was ‘further exploration by Area Meetings of the flexibility already allowed around membership processes’.
The second called for ‘a yet more flexible approach to membership for some people, including, particularly, young adult Friends, whose journeys may preclude them committing to a Local or Area Meeting’.
Paul began by saying that we tend to see member-ship from an individual perspective. He suggested that a two-sided way of seeing it – from the viewpoints of both the individual and of the Meeting – would be helpful.
In this two-way context – the individual and the Meeting – membership could be regarded as: ‘seeking to belong’ and ‘acceptance by the Meeting’; as ‘a public declaration of our commitment’ and ‘the Meeting’s acceptance that we can identify ourselves as Quakers’; as ‘submitting to the discipline of Friends and the Meeting’ and ‘committing to provide eldership’; ‘committing to serve’ and ‘recognition of doing so’; and ‘commitment to do as led’ and ‘providing help in discernment’.
Paul asked: how many facets of membership could be met by bodies other than Local and Area Meetings? He also reminded Friends that it is not long since BYM last looked at membership processes.
A Friend said that what struck him, in terms of considering a more flexible approach, was that members of Meeting for Sufferings were not the right people to ask. He said: ‘We should ask our attenders. What are the barriers? Why are they attenders?’
Another Friend said that she had looked at her own Local Meeting list, and had found that five attenders regularly spend time away, looking after parents or children. Others work abroad. ‘This is not so much to do with age, as the age we live in,’ she stressed.
The Friend added: ‘We are talking about people who wish to live their lives as Quakers. How can we best nurture them, but also make the best use of their gifts?’
A Friend said that non-members are perhaps unaware of the benefits of membership.
She added: ‘there are often times when the spiritual journey comes to a halt, and only that commitment and support gets people through’.
Another Friend asked: ‘Is the problem with us, rather than them?’ She explained that her own Local Meeting had ‘tried very hard to make attenders become members’.
A Friend mentioned three friends from well-known Quaker families. Very few members of her Meeting had met the first. The other two are very active within the Meeting, but remain attenders, ‘because they do not believe in joining things’.
Another Friend said that membership is ‘to the world outside not as big an issue as we make it’. He suggested that a general/national membership, administered at Friends House, might be helpful.
A Friend described how she had remained a member of her original Meeting whilst being ‘a peripatetic young adult Friend’.
‘I went to Meetings in whatever town I lived in. I never felt unsupported, and I was thirty-two or thirty-three before I left my home Meeting. I think we are getting too hung up on belonging to and serving one Meeting,’ she added.
A Friend spoke of the practical side of remaining part of a community while moving around.
‘I am part of an “Experiment with Light” group. A couple of years ago we set up an international Skype group’, she said. ‘It’s about the sharing and the love. Membership means community.’
A Friend asked whether BYM was reinventing the wheel, and mentioned the concept of ‘travelling ministry’.
Another Friend explained that lots of young people have remained members of his Meeting. A very active member of his Area Meeting keeps them up to date with news, including national events run for young Friends.
‘They need to belong to an Area Meeting, not to something anonymous in Friends House’, he concluded.
The clerk of Meeting for Sufferings noted that the word ‘community’ had come up a lot and asked how we could support Friends not physically able to come to Meeting. She queried whether Quaker Life might be asked to spend some time considering this. This was supported.
A Quaker Life member attending Sufferings agreed to this suggestion.
