Thought for the Week: Quaker service stations?
David Boulton considers what our Meeting houses are for
What are our Meeting houses for? To meet in, yes, as our very own places for worship, Quaker business, coffee and biscuits, all that committee stuff. But is that all? Are we missing a trick? Could we make much more of them than we do? That was the challenge put to us at a recent Woodbrooke course on managing and marketing our Meeting houses.
Marketing? Not a very Quakerly concept, surely? Shades of ‘hidden persuaders’ spinning half truths in brash slogans. Marketing has a bad name: it needs ‘marketing’. Better speak of promotion. After all, we Quakers rebranded proselytising (bad) as outreach (good). We could do a similar make-over with marketing by marketing it as promotion.
This was just one of many ideas put to us by Nigel Moseley who, as Woodbrooke’s marketing sales manager, has done a spectacular job of promoting the Birmingham Quaker study centre, not only as a resource for Friends but as a state-of-the-art conference centre for other organisations. Can we do, and should we be doing, a better job of promoting our Meeting houses as ‘service stations’ for the wider community?
We should ask ourselves what the passer-by sees when she walks past a Quaker Meeting house. A bright, modern sign will suggest a bright, modern community inside, with bright, modern amenities. A dowdy sign will suggest something less attractive. As John Marsh, one of the course facilitators, put it bluntly, ‘There is good evidence from Quaker Quest that too many people become excited by Quakerism, only to be put off when they find their local Meeting house dire’.
John urged us to think imaginatively about how we can make our special properties – what some would call our spiritual homes – attractive, welcoming places, and how best we can put them to new uses. City and town centre Meeting houses might look for more energetic ways of attracting a wider range of lettings, not only to help finances but also to promote outreach. Rural ones in out-of-the-way locations may not be able to go down that road but Friends, wherever they are based, could start by asking themselves what is their ‘unique selling point’ (to lapse into marketing jargon). What can we offer, if only a genuinely warm welcome to a happy community that knows how to look after its home?
The Woodbrooke course, led by Judi Brill, Strawberry Roth and their team, covered much of the nitty-gritty of Meeting house management, including wardenship and employer-employee relations. But the focus was the challenge to find ways of turning our properties into service stations for the wider community: places that attract people who may not have a clue what Quakerism is about, but who find the Meeting house an attractive location for their social activities. Who said ‘if only stones could talk’? But they can, and they do! So, what does your Meeting house say about who Quakers are and what they stand for?
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