Yearly Meeting 2024 - part two
The Friend reports from Yearly Meeting 2024, Friday to Sunday
Ahead of Session Two, on Saturday morning, Friends arrived to a witness in the Friends House garden by members of the Quaker Support for Climate Action group. They wanted to send a message to Friends. Some felt that the climate was not high enough on the national agenda, and that Quakers ought to do more as a national movement. It certainly gave some participants pause for thought as they entered a session focused internally, on changing Quaker structures of governance.
In opening worship, one Friend reflected on how she had changed since her last Yearly Meeting, six years previous. Through all the change she had remained a Quaker and ‘that is such a gift – to change, and be held.’
The clerk then returned to her method of community building. She asked members of Young Friends General Meeting to identify themselves, followed by those involved in education, those ‘feeling like a new Quaker’, and then, to laughter, those online who were sitting with a cat or a dog. She was missing her own, she said.
Yearly Meeting is not a conference, she went on. More people making the same point did not give it added weight, and waiting to give ministry was not like being in a queue. Ministry would be called in the manner of Friends, as clerks felt led.
The Meeting then heard from Ann Kerr and Carolyn Sansom, of the Group to Review Yearly Meeting, Yearly Meeting Gatherings and Meeting for Sufferings (GRYYM). They spoke to the group’s main proposal, that Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) be replaced with a ‘continuing Yearly Meeting’, which all Friends could attend.
‘Speak as words are given to you, no less and no more… Remember that words spoken in faith are not spoken in vain.’
Matt Rosen, Yearly Meeting elder
Members of GRYYM brought different perspectives to the group, said the pair. They had listened to each other, and considered the results of the consultations with Friends. They had ‘wrestled with different viewpoints’. The proposals were set to address the ‘tension’ between MfS, Yearly Meeting itself, and Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) trustees. The group had been instructed, members felt, not just to ‘tinker at the edges’, and so had undertaken questionnaires with Friends, interviews with staff and volunteers, and consultations with Yearly Meetings in the US.
The aim was to be ‘simpler’, demanding less work, to be more inclusive, and to encourage better communication within the Society. Issues like agenda time, clarity over authority and a continued role for MfS were all addressed. They acknowledged that some Friends would feel a ‘sense of loss’ and recognised that while some Friends embraced change, others found it difficult. But they had found unity within GRYYM. The proposals were therefore now with YM itself.
Pausing for a break, Adwoa asked that the worshipful space be maintained in the room. On return Friends were reminded that they could ask specific questions in exploration sessions that afternoon. This session was about upholding the proposals in the Light, sitting with them, sharing feelings and ‘seasoning the business’.
On the whole, ministering Friends welcomed the proposals. They were ‘timely and well-considered’, said one. Another noted that MfS had changed radically over the past 400 years. Through it all, she said, the test of a church is how it disagrees with itself. She hoped this process of ‘disagreeing, resolving, formal consideration’ would continue.
Another spoke of the joy of being able to invite new Friends to attend. She was excited about being able to say ‘Come with me’.
One Friend, welcoming the change, did express some sadness at the loss of the name ‘Sufferings’. He hoped Friends would continue to record the names who suffered for their faith. Others offered broad approval, if certain issues could be addressed: the potential costs of more travel, or the value of residential Meetings, or what looked like extra work for the new body’s clerk, or the inclusion of Quaker Recognised Bodies to make sure that activists were well represented. One even stood to say that, where he had once been very disturbed by the proposals, to the point of writing to the Charity Commission, he had now become convinced of their value.
There were some more cautious voices. One had ‘anxiety’ about the number of times Friends would be expected to gather, noting that she would never have been able to attend that many times as a younger person. As an MfS representative she knew how much work was involved in being a full participant over a full year.
Some questions could be addressed quickly, said Ann and Carolyn. The group had wrestled with how much detail to give Friends in the proposals, but had discussed most of these things. All the functions of MfS – such as recording the Court and Prison Register – would be maintained. If the proposals were agreed in principle, these could be adapted over time – they would in any case be kept under review, and wouldn’t be implemented until after YM 2026.
Responding, yet more Friends expressed support. One was ‘very, very on-board’. At this point it looked like unity would be soon reached. With extra time set aside for the consideration, however, as well as tomorrow’s exploration sessions, the clerk offered a holding minute. It meant that more was to come.
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