Yearly Meeting 2024 - part nine

The Friend reports from Yearly Meeting 2024, Monday to Tuesday

Session seven was held to deal with some of the practical issues resulting from the Meeting’s approval of the proposals for a ‘continuing Yearly Meeting’.

First, one Friend offered some emotional ministry. ‘Liberation does not look like anything that we [already] know,’ she said. ‘As Quakers we are, apparently, invited to be open to transformation. I’m struggling to see in my experience of this Yearly Meeting where that is… I feel that antiracism, which is the piece that speaks with me, does not get a lot of space.’ 

Another Friend wanted this ministry mentioned in the resulting minute, but the clerk reminded them that ministry in open worship is not recorded.

Robert Card, clerk to MfS, then spoke to its report. MfS was responsible for ensuring that AMs were compliant with charity law, he said. It had also overseen minor changes to Quaker faith & practice around removing the word ‘overseer’ and adding flexible pronouns to the marriage process. But he wanted to concentrate ‘not so much on the duties laid upon us as… as on the things that we are called to do in response to the promptings of love and truth’: administration, teaching, healing, community, compassion, ‘making right’, and worship.

‘That should be our priority – that we meet together in love.’

Friends asked whether MfS could give some consideration to the issue of hybrid Meetings – the use of Zoom – and the value of face-to-face Meetings. Robert would look forward to that, he said. One asked about why MfS had decided not to nationally support the campaign for a law on ecocide, and he deferred to Jonathan Lingham, current clerk of Quaker Peace & Social Witness Central Committee, to explain that this could still be supported locally, through the other national organisations working for it.

Paul Parker, recording clerk, then went through some of the things that needed to happen to allow the move towards a continuing Yearly Meeting.

In 2026 there would be a Yearly Meeting in May, as usual, he said, and MfS would continue to meet during that time. The first continuing Yearly Meeting will be held ‘probably some time in the summer of 2026’. Thought needed to be given to a new agenda process for the rolling cycle of four Meetings a year. Clerking would obviously be an issue, as well as the ‘testing and seasoning’ of Area Meeting minutes (which are currently sent to MfS). Other questions would need answering, he said: ‘What can be done at the shorter sessions? How do we make sure that the right amount of time is given to different kinds of business?’ A new agenda committee would need to be created in 2025, to get a head start. ‘The decision we took yesterday is quite a significant change to our constitution,’ he went on ‘so we need to do some work on that… There will be implications for … lots of bodies.’ Then, at this YM, Friends had raised three important things to think about. One was about making sure that the resources are in place to enable the new Meeting to be held. Second concerned bursaries – ‘making sure that we are not excluding people from attending Yearly Meeting on the grounds of cost’. And the third was about the costs of ensuring representation from Area Meetings and other bodies. He thought trustees would task him with finding answers to these questions. 

MfS would fix dates up until 2028 but Paul said that ‘it is likely there will be a residential [Yearly] Meeting in 2027 because we are likely to need to look at the first draft of the new Book of Discipline’.

There was a lot here, and the clerks unsurprisingly took some time to put the minute together. When it came Friends had some questions about cycles of representation, communications with Friends not present, and the location of the Meetings. After some amendments to the detail, the minute was approved, and the clerk adjourned.

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