Yearly Meeting 2023: Final session

‘Today is all about listening.’

‘Today is all about listening,’ Adwoa Burnley, Yearly Meeting (YM) clerk (pictured), told Friends gathered for the extra YM session on 1 July. ‘Listening to God, listening to each other, listening and being heard.’

After some draft minutes were cleared, the day started off on quite an intense note as the arround-150 Friends in the room (with nearly 300 online) reacted to the news that the Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) trustees could not present the audited annual accounts for 2022.

‘Our interim head of finance and resources and her team have worked hard but they were dealt a very difficult hand with the changes in systems which we brought in last year.’ This did not mean that there was anything to worry about, Caroline Nursey, clerk to BYM trustees, said. ‘Auditors have to be sure, when they sign off the accounts, that the organisation can continue for the next twelve months without difficulty. I can assure you this is the case and not only for twelve months.’

There had been ‘a perfect storm’, said Paul Lighthouse, BYM treasurer, with problems occurring simultaneously. ‘We shall be much more careful in future about how we make significant system changes, and we are [making] arrangements to ensure that, in future years, we can bring in additional resource as soon as it is needed.’ Trustees will present the final accounts when they are complete, he added: legally, the team has until the end of October to submit the accounts.

Several Friends reacted ‘with concern’, with one saying it was ‘quite disturbing’ that the three issues of significant system change, high staff turnover, and ‘not bringing in an experienced accountant in time’ had come together at once. ‘I’m sure we are going to learn from these lessons’, she said, but it could put people off donating to Quakers. Another Friend said, in his role at work: ‘Every time anyone says “resources”, we ask: do you mean “people”?’

‘I’m torn between really wanting to reassure trustees, because I know how hard they work’ and echoing these concerns, said another Quaker. ‘I have become very concerned over the last two years that trustees are sometimes unclear what discernment by members means, in the way they receive ministry from Meetings… I hope that we will be returning to a situation where major decisions are made in good faith, or sent out for discernment and reflection.’

Why was there such high staff turnover, queried another Friend: ‘Is there anything we are doing which drove people away?’

Caroline said: ‘You are right, Friends… we have mucked up. We should have seen it coming earlier…it’s not that people were not looking at it; it is that we didn’t quite pull together all the recognition of risks at the right moments.’ The audit committee will be asked to help trustees recognise all the ways in which lessons can be learned, she said, adding that ‘most charities don’t lodge their accounts until the eight-month point after the end of their financial year’ so it shouldn’t concern donors.

On the subject of staff turnover, charity employment can be tricky, she said, partly as salaries tend to be lower. The employment committee and management meeting are looking into this general area. To the charge of being detached from Local Meetings, Caroline stressed that trustees are spread around the country and listen locally, as well as being part of Meeting for Sufferings (MfS). They are also finding new mechanisms to listen to Friends not in these structures. BYM trustees’ minutes are available online, within papers prepared for MfS.

There were more tough questions, with one Friend asking about major risks, to which Paul Lighthouse replied: ‘an aging and declining membership’. Another Quaker was ‘astounded’ that ‘Friends can’t even have an overview of the general finances of the YM’.

Paul responded by saying that providing an overview was ‘very difficult’ as the auditors couldn’t put their name to anything unfinished. The reputational risk of bringing unaudited figures to the YM (which would then be available publicly) was far higher than admitting the situation to the Meeting.

A minute was then offered, with Friends suggesting some amendments. One said that the notion that Friends were reassured was ‘slightly an assumption’. Meanwhile, another Quaker said that concern about management culture needed to be noted. The final minute was amended to reflect this, saying that: ‘We ask trustees to arrange an online Meeting so the accounts can be presented.’

After a tricky start to the morning, which resulted in a shorter shuffle break, the session moved to consider the Tabular Statement, the annual collation of membership statistics from across BYM.

Paul Parker, recording clerk of BYM, told Friends that there were 18,695 people in Quaker Meetings by the end of 2022, comprising: 11,491 in membership (11,828 in 2021 – a decrease of 337); 6,049 attenders (6,479 in 2021); and 942 children (1,006 in 2021). The median size of Meetings was seventeen members. ‘Looking over the last century, you can see the membership numbers went up over the first half,’ he said, before peaking in 1960. Attenders kept on rising until the early 1990s, before starting to fall. ‘It’s tempting to extend the line into the future… but there’s a more interesting story. What’s happened in other churches is not very different. If anything, our line is falling more slowly than others. Some churches went off a real cliff in the last century, while Lutherans and Pentecostal churches have been rising quite recently, so the patterns are not inevitable and there are things we can learn from elsewhere.’

While there are lots of Meetings shrinking, there are ninety-two growing Meetings. How are they doing so well? Are they easier to find? Are they particularly good at welcoming people of all ages and stages? Great at supporting attendees? Creative and adaptable? Openly inclusive, affirming and anti-racist? Are they active in the world, drawing people in on issues of peace and climate?

Friends were asked to put their hands up if they had welcomed newcomers this year, to which the room and screens filled with raised hands. ‘If each of us brought one new person it would be enough to reverse the decline,’ said Paul.

How Meetings welcome children, and the impact of the pandemic, were also highlighted, while Paul pointed out the limits of the data, which doesn’t cover new online Meetings, Quaker schools, young adult groups, or Quaker Recognised Bodies. ‘There are many ways of being a Quaker,’ he said.

The ministry that followed was rich and reflective. One Friend thought there should be more Children’s Meetings. As a single parent for many years, attendance would have been impossible without them. Another Friend mentioned how effective Quaker Quest was at bringing in new people, while a Friend asked for the outreach budget to be raised. ‘The job of outreach is to intrigue people,’ he said, to which Paul said, with the strategic risk identified as the aging and declining membership, ‘a key conversation is how the money aligns with making sure we are doing the things we need to address that risk’.

Friends asked for the draft minute to take a less ‘fatalistic’ tone and include ‘a call to action’. ‘I was really excited to see all the hands go up,’ said one London Friend. ‘If we’re getting new Friends, we’re doing something right.’ The minute doesn’t ‘go far enough’, said one Friend, suggesting that it should mention the risk of shrinking membership due to age. The final minute noted that trustees were aware of this risk, intend to take action, and will report back to YM.

In the next session, Ann Kerr reported on the work of the group appointed by Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) to review its role and purpose. This review was to be carried out alongside that of YM.

Ann Kerr summarised how the review group’s questions had developed, especially during YM discernment in 2023, and in the months since, with interviews and workshops taking place. ‘What we would like from Friends now is guidance on the principles against which we should assess any recommendations we may make, and the principles that we think we have heard.’

The principles are that changes need to: ‘place spirit-led discernment at the heart of all decision-making across BYM’; ‘ensure our structures are capable of translating our discernment into action’; ‘release energy within our Quaker community’; ‘clarify the lines of accountability’; ‘explain clearly the roles and responsibilities of different bodies’; and ‘meet the requirements of charity law and good governance practice’. They should also ‘promote greater diversity and wider participation in our decision-making’; and ‘improve communication between Friends in different parts of our structures’.

‘It’s a good list,’ said one Friend, but suggested that ‘Quaker Gospel Order’ should be added to ‘charity law and good governance practice’ as requirements the changes should meet. Another Friend, from the south east, commended the focus on ‘structures being able to transfer our discernment into action’, while a Friend from the north of England proposed that ‘informed’ be added to ‘spirit-led’. Retaining ‘group knowledge’ is important, she said, particularly on issues that are discussed over a length of time, when representatives may change. Citing the need for ‘awakeness and agility’ in the structures, ‘understanding that we are living in a time of rapid and unpredictable change’, a Friend from the south west asked that this could be reflected in the criteria. These were represented in a draft minute, after which a London Friend asked for the word ‘processes’ to be added to ‘structures’. Meanwhile another Quaker said she worried about communication with people ‘not involved in central work’. The final minute was changed, noting the need ‘to improve communication between all Friends’.

Next week: the afternoon sessions. Minutes will be available at www.quaker.org.uk/ym/documents.

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Comments

As I read Rebecca’s second report from Yearly Meeting and Meeting for Sufferings, which accurately portrays the quite significant differences of opinion that came through, I was reminded of a growing concern I had during that day. This was that, despite some gloriously beautiful ministry that I felt privileged not just to hear but experience, there were many instances of what I would term ‘interventions’. This is because I could not discern within them, in either the impression or the words, the Leading of the Spirit.
Usually I find this easy to discern. The Franciscan Richard Rohr counsels us in a very Quaker-like way, to “listen for a deeper voice than your own which you will know because it will never shame or frighten you even when it is challenging you. […] Grace cannot operate under coercion, duress, shame or guilt. Please trust me on this. If your [harkening] leads you to experience any or several of the fruits of the Spirit, as they are listed in Galatians 5: 22-23, […] I think you can trust this interpretation is from the Spirit. […] If you sense any negative or punitive emotions like morose delight, feelings of superiority, self-satisfaction, arrogant dualistic certitude, need for victory or any spirit of dismissal or exclusion, you must trust this is not the Jesus hermeneutic at work, but your own ego still steering the ship.” (‘What Do We Do With The Bible?’, 2018: 53-54, original emphasis).
Many of the interventions at Yearly Meeting and Meeting for Sufferings seemed to me to stem more from this latter list. Particularly in the ‘debate’ (let us call it) regarding the monarch, and the responses to the invitation to give a so-called loyal address. Our faith stands in the Prophetic tradition. All successful prophets criticise constructively from a place of love: They stand on ‘the edge of the inside’. The official Quaker response seemed to me to do this remarkably well. Were all that was said about it examples of spiritual ministries, or personal interventions? More even than this, excluding ourselves from proceedings and dismissing the other, however much these actions thereby feel like a triumphant return to the certitude of the Quaker view on institutions and power structures as they once were and once operated, is not Prophetic. I’m not sure it is of the Spirit either.
The Spirit always deals in the reality of the now, not the of the past. The temptations Jesus experienced in the desert, and overcame, concerned the economic, religious and political misuse of power (Matthew 4: 3-10). Today’s monarch has severely limited power to affect anyone directly. What he does have is tremendous influence. God has a track record of using monarchs to bring about change. Think of David, or Solomon. Power and influence can be used wisely.
Individuals on earthly thrones can do great things, when they are guided by the Spirit. The present incumbent to the British throne is a deeply spiritual man. His conviction that the ecological crisis is evidence of a deeper spiritual crisis within the fragmented secular world, stems from his deep understanding of the ancient manuscripts collected together in the Philokalia which, after the Bible itself, is the Eastern Orthodox tradition’s most sacred book. Charles has already shown that he can use his influence to positively change things. We may even call his climate change work prophetic, for he was if not persecuted then at least widely ridiculed for it in the early days. He was certainly critiquing positively from ‘the edge of the inside’, pointing out hidden realities that existed then. They have even ‘come true’ in the more secular understanding of the word prophesy. In Yearly Meeting and Meeting for Sufferings, we recognise climate change as the central challenge for Quaker action. Might it not be that he also is being guided by the Spirit? Or at the very least might it be that he is being used by the Christ, He who can turn everything to the Good – with our faltering help?
If this is so, if powerful institutions and the influence of those incumbent within them can be used by God, would the Spirit be speaking to us Quakers *against* that? I seriously doubt it. I am more inclined to the view that for some reason, as Richard Rohr notes, rather than the Jesus hermeneutic it was our own egos that may have been at work. How can this have happened? In short, if what is being heard is patently not of the Spirit, what do we do with it? How do we even minute it? Even more interestingly, how do we recognise the silent majority?
Rebecca wrote last week about how Yearly Meeting had requested that committee, management and trustee decisions should be determined by Quaker Gospel Order. The plea to restore Quaker Gospel Order to the heart of our decision-making processes seems to resonate with Truth!

By markrdibben@gmail.com on 14th July 2023 - 12:38

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