Vibrancy in Meetings: Beyond the pilot
Friends heard about the planned end of the Vibrancy in Meetings pilot programme
The pilot programme of the Vibrancy in Meetings project will come to an end in December 2019, Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) heard on 6 October.
In June 2019 the main evaluation report will be delivered. Before that, from April, there will be testing and development of future options by staff from both Woodbrooke and the Vibrancy project – and testing with Sufferings on 6 April. A decision about the future of the project will be made by Woodbrooke and trustees in June 2019.
Rachel Matthews, the programme coordinator, said that four workers had already completed two years.
The work involves encouraging and helping Friends and their Meetings to be ‘their best selves – generous, loving and Spirit-led’.
The programme’s stages of development had been ‘iterative,’ she said, adding: ‘I had to look it up.’ One hundred Meetings have been visited, covering topics based on what is needed locally – for instance, enabling eldership training. She continued: ‘It’s like a wellspring – the well of the Spirit. Everything is bedded into worship.’
The work means ‘re-strengthening the everyday. We remind, explain, give courage, bring hope. We enable the new.’
A key word is ‘fun’. Rachel Matthews suggested that Quakers ‘are too busy sometimes being worthy to have fun’.
One Friend said that Vibrancy had ‘a lot to offer going forward’, while another talked about the ‘joyful experiences’ she had shared with her Vibrancy worker and said she was ‘absolutely mindblown about all she is doing. I hope the work can carry on at this intensity.’
Another Friend said: ‘Maybe the way we have done things traditionally is no longer the best way we can do them.’
Thanks to his Meeting’s Vibrancy worker: ‘We have found things we didn’t know we needed.’
