The joyous burden of love

Paul Parker, recording clerk of Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM), and Deborah Rowlands, clerk of BYM, shared a concern to visit among Yearly Meetings in the United States of America. They reflect on their ‘ministry of intervisitation’.

A concern arose… that I might feel and understand their life and the Spirit they live in, if happy I might receive instruction from them, or they be in any degree helped forward by my following the leadings of Truth amongst them.

John Woolman 1720-72

During our journey to America this summer we felt enormously upheld by the travelling minute from Meeting for Sufferings, knowing that Friends in Britain were upholding us through prayer. Responses to our Facebook posts also demonstrated the interest and support for the visit from British Friends. Several people suggested queries, which we were able to share with those amongst whom we visited. This increased the sense of dynamic engagement.

Everywhere we went we were warmly welcomed and Friends shared generously their hospitality and their Spiritual riches. In worship and conversation we, too, shared from our experience of living and working in Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM). In all our conversations we found ourselves going to the heart of the Quaker way. What does it mean to be a Quaker today and how do we live out our faith in the world?

Sharing experiences

We chose to spend quality time with just two liberal Yearly Meetings at their annual sessions in order to build connections and relationships between our Yearly Meeting and some of our Quaker cousins. We wanted to share our experience of Quakerism in the UK and to learn from theirs, including our ways of worship, our modes of governance, our work in the world, and our outreach to seekers. Both these Yearly Meetings had previously been split into separate ‘Hicksite’ and ‘Orthodox’ Yearly Meetings and had come together within the last seventy years. Neither had traditions of pastors or programmed worship.

We also spent time with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), Friends General Conference (FGC), Friends World Committee for Consultation (Section of the Americas), visited Pendle Hill and met with Friends from Quaker Voluntary Service (QVS), Friends United Meeting (FUM) and Friends from other Yearly Meetings who were fellow visitors at the annual sessions.

The highlight, indeed one of the many, for me (Paul) was visiting the FCNL on Capitol Hill, where I met some of the members of their eighteen-strong Advocacy Corps. This ethnically and geographically diverse group of young adults receives two weeks’ intensive training in lobbying at FCNL, and are then engaged for a year as lobbyists on a small stipend, making a minimum of thirty lobbying contacts per month on a current issue. This year it is immigration policy.

Those I met were not all Quakers, but saw a spiritual dimension to the work and an opportunity to use their skills and time to make the world a more just place. In return, they described how they themselves had been changed and deepened by the experience.

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

Our first visit was to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. There are about 9,600 members in the Yearly Meeting, in about 100 Meetings, and about 500 of all ages were present at annual sessions. Within the last few years the Yearly Meeting had, due to financial constraints, undergone a radical change in structure and organisation, reducing drastically the staff complement and the number of standing committees.

Instead, within the Yearly Meeting, Friends are encouraged to set up ‘Collaboratives’ and ‘Sprints’, working for a short term across more than one Meeting to tackle an issue for which they had a passion: examples included eco-justice, the Middle East, public education, supporting individual calls to ministry and spiritual formation.

After time in Washington, we arrived for Baltimore Yearly Meeting. ‘The other BYM’ consists of about 7,000 Friends in fifty local groupings, and about 300 Friends were gathered for annual sessions. This Yearly Meeting, too, was experiencing a time of change, with suggestions for new structures being seasoned at the Yearly Meeting and a new general secretary.

Recurring themes

Some of the recurring themes across both Yearly Meetings, which also resonated within the organisations we visited, were:

• Young adult Friends. The contribution of young adult Friends, which can be fostered through opportunities for advocacy, service on committees and as staff. We were especially excited by the young adult advocacy corps and fellows at FCNL and the fellowship programme of QVS, a new organisation which creates intentional communities of young adults, mainly but not exclusively Quakers, who live together, engage in spiritual formation together, and work as interns in a range of nonprofit social change organisations.
 
• Working on racism. Both Yearly Meetings had prominent programmes to work on racism, both within and beyond their Yearly Meetings, but had different approaches and were at different stages. In Baltimore the community included a strong camp programme that had received grant funding to increase diversity both within the campers and the staff. In turn, this had led to increased engagement within the Monthly Meetings and in the staff body. In Philadelphia, the Undoing Racism Group had been very successful in increasing the visibility and awareness of race issues in the Yearly Meeting, but was struggling to find the right place to work from within the new structures.
 
• Faith and practice. Both Yearly Meetings had spent the last ten or so years working on revising their books of faith and practice. Neither had yet been accepted by the Yearly Meeting in session. We sensed that this was partly due to the background of significant structural changes. We were able to spend time with some of those carrying out faithful service within their Yearly Meetings to distil the experience within written form.
 
• Authority and leadership. We were able to explore various models of clerkship that included splitting the role into presiding and recording clerks, and the use of alternate and reading clerks; staff/committee relationships; and the relationships between the Yearly Meeting as a body and the constituent Meetings.
 
• Governance. ‘God can speak through small groups as well as large.’ In the organisations we visited, including the Yearly Meetings, there was a sense that large councils which had carried responsibility for the past 100-plus years were beginning to feel a little cumbersome. Might the model which we have been working with for the last ten years in Britain of smaller trustee bodies prove helpful?
 
• The strong sense of history amongst American Friends. Many Meeting houses from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are still in use. In Pennsylvania, in particular, there is a strong Quaker presence and the Quaker contribution to the region’s history is well recognised.
 
• The Yearly Meeting as community. There was a palpable strength and energy in both Yearly Meetings we visited, and a desire for more nimble dynamic Spirit-led organisations

Ideas

Some things we are taking away. Might some of these ideas work in Britain Yearly Meeting?

• Providing more opportunities for young adults which foster service, spiritual growth and community.
 
• Continuing to experiment with different clerking patterns, at Yearly Meeting and elsewhere.
 
• Providing dynamic opportunities for Friends to unite on concerns or specific activity which do not rely on a self-perpetuating committee structure.
 
• Opening up nominations for service more widely, and be better at naming Friends’ gifts.
 
• Spreading the use of clearness committees and ‘care’ or support committees to help Friends test and carry forward individual leadings and personal service.
 
• Using queries as a powerful tool to deepen our understanding of all sorts of aspects of our life together.
 
• Building a culture of intervisitation, both amongst and between Yearly Meetings as a way to strengthen bonds.
 
• Drawing on music, singing together and readings as ways to deepen silence, build unity and punctuate speech during sessions.
 
• As Britain Yearly Meeting, at our Yearly Meeting Gathering next year, focuses on movement building, sharing the experiences of the wider Quaker movement.

We have learnt and shared much and look forward to opportunities to link the Friends we have met with those doing similar work in our own Yearly Meeting. However, the overwhelming gift we are bringing back is that of making strong and enduring relationships with the Friends who opened their homes and their hearts to us. We have been richly blessed with the joyous burden of love.

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Comments

Really great.  But not a lot on deepening our spirituality.

By Richard on 1st September 2016 - 17:39

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Thanks for sharing such stimulating experiences. I would welcome more openness to other forms of worship and the use of queries. In some semi-programmed meetings in the US a ‘speaker’ shares an experience of Quaker activism/witness/worship ending with a query or two arising from their theme and engaging Friends in quiet reflection on how faith can be lived - i.e. not just parked or forgotten afterwards.
The query might be (or be derived from) a well known existing one, or newly coined.

By Simon C on 6th October 2016 - 18:37

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Do any Meetings in Britain regularly use music, singing or poetry in the context of Meeting for Worship? It would be interesting to hear of their experiences.

By Ian Parker on 18th January 2017 - 17:21

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