Scouts at Exeter Meeting. Photo: Hilary Cox.
Scouting for outreach
Friends from Exeter Meeting write about a recent outreach initiative
We recently received a request from a local cub scout group to visit Exeter Meeting House so that their members may earn their world faiths activity badges. It was a wonderful opportunity to engage with the wider community. What a positive message we are able to put forward! By following the principles of George Fox’s dictum to ‘walk cheerfully over the world… seeking that of God in everyone’, this provides a good, positive starting point for saying that this means we believe that everyone has a direct path to the Spirit. So, we are all ministers and congregation (at the same time) and is the reason why we have no paid minister to speak to ‘that of God’ on our behalf.
Reading the booklet Quaker Meeting and me together gave a helpful introduction and understanding of why we meet in silence, before we took the cub scouts into the Meeting room. A doorkeeper was appointed, who shook hands with all the cub scouts as they entered.
We held a Meeting for Worship, lasting for two minutes, so that the cub scouts had an understanding of the procedure. There was some giggling and shuffling, as this was a new experience. While one child did say he felt quite comfortable and liked it, others did say they found the silence difficult, as they were not used to it.
To address part two of the badge, the cub scouts were introduced to the testimonies and informed that we try to incorporate them into our everyday lives. Four of us explained how we put our faith into practice. We then explained the Peace Testimony further, talked about work undertaken by Quaker Peace & Social Witness and discussed the poster showing the two conflicting mules to address conflict and cooperation. When we showed a sketch of George Fox an extract from his journal was read out. To convey one element of the practical work that Quakers have undertaken in living their faith, the children were shown an enlargement of the reverse of a £5 note and we discussed Elizabeth Fry’s work. The children were also taken into the garden to explore different aspects of colour in the environment around us.
We did explain that, as every day was regarded as being sacred, Quakers did not celebrate particular festivals. In accordance with our testimony of simplicity, Meeting houses are plain, which also means that worship is free from unnecessary distractions. We explained how Business Meeting reaches decisions, after which we played a game so that the children could understand the testimonies rather better. Offering a brief scenario and asking which testimony it related to, gave good involvement and many thought-provoking responses.
For cub scouts, who were aged from eight- to ten-and-a-half years old, explanations needed to be relatively simple, but the responses were interesting and demonstrated good engagement. Silence in a noisy and busy world is difficult, and the past had little meaning, though one child did know who Elizabeth Fry was, and all recognised the picture from the £5 note. Explaining the Quaker Business Method and saying how the Meeting had responded to a homeless person, who had been found sleeping in the Meeting house garden, led to an animated debate about how to address this difficult issue.
The game explaining the testimonies created lively interest and discussion, the testimony to equality being the main focus. As the cub scout group was so large, we held the event over two evenings. Both evenings were stimulating and interesting for us, as well as for the children, and it wasn’t only them who went home with the sound of the song ‘Make new friends…’ raucously ringing inside their heads! It was gratifying to receive feedback from Rama, the cub leader, that we had ‘pitched it perfectly to the age group’.
