Yearly Meeting 2024: Preparation - part sixteen
The Friend’s reports from Yearly Meeting preparation sessions and special interest meetings continues
In Peace Works Zimbabwe (PWZ), Don Rowe, clerk to the group, elaborated to a select nine Friends on the work he introduced at the previous QAIG gathering. After the closure of the Hlekweni Friends Rural Training Centre, PWZ paid for Friends in Bulawayo to be trained in Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) techniques. From qualification in 2015, the training has spread to young people, NGO staff, vulnerable children and their guardians, teachers, prison officers, and more.
Peace clubs in schools have begun to flourish, with students testifying to the increase of ‘love, peace and harmony’ in their schools. One head teacher had said that he no longer needed his ‘black rod’ of discipline, and inspectors say that there has been a ‘huge difference’ made to associated schools. A new manual has been produced to aid secondary schools in peacebuilding.
Sipho Nsimbi spoke of the ‘very committed peacebuilders’ she worked with, and their exceptional academic standing. Training was often oversubscribed, she said, and the response from local communities was ‘very encouraging’. All this took place in a culture where violence was never very far away.
UK Friends felt encouraged in their own work. It ‘makes me feel energised’, said one. It was an example of ‘fantastic heavy lifting by such a small number of Friends’.
Forty-two Friends gathered to hear Meeting for Sufferings and BYM Trustees, in which the clerks of the two groups gave a report on their work over the past year. A formal report is included in YM Documents in Advance, said Robert Card, clerk to MfS, and he would also be offering a spoken report in session six of YM proper. Most of the work would be familiar to Friends, he said, but offered MfS’s oversight of the Book of Discipline Revision Committee as one example. MfS has dealt with some questions from the committee on marriage, approving the use of gender-neutral pronouns, and asking AMs to consider whether it was necessary for a couple to be married to use terms like ‘divine assistance’ in their vows. MfS was also responsible for AMs’ compliance with charity regulations, and had been reflecting on subjects like membership, or whether Friends should sign up corporately to the campaign to make ecocide a crime.
Marisa Johnson, clerk to BYM trustees, was speaking to the wider community of Friends for the first time as clerk, she said. There were ‘Big L plates all round’. BYM trustees were the most diverse group with whom she had ever worshipped, she went on, and there was a regular turnover. She also thanked BYM staff for their support, especially given the vast numbers of papers trustees had to get through.
Trustees are responsible for the resources of BYM, said Marisa, and for implementing the work programme that Friends agreed collectively at YM. There was too much of this work going on to cover in one Meeting, she said, directing people to the ‘Our Faith Our Work’ report for more.
She wanted Friends to understand that, while trustees might have ‘privileged access to what’s going on’, each of them was embedded in their Local and Area Meeting. It was something she would elaborate on in the session on our central committees (see page 17). When one Friend asked why trustees took responsibility for reputational risk (a hot topic since trustees requested that Jeremy Corbyn not appear as part of YM), Marisa said she saw no contradiction between the things required by charity law and Quaker governance. She was ‘agnostic’ on what was the best structure to achieve that. She wasn’t a trustee because she was ‘a believer either way… I’m a trustee because this is what YM decided twenty years ago.’ Friends who wanted a different system had a process for instigating change. There was a difference between accountability and ‘constant sniping’.
One Friend asked what the number one risk trustees had identified was. It was more of a top seven, but reduction in membership was probably the priority.
Other Friends were looking forward to potential changes to MfS/YM, which would perhaps allow more access to all Friends. Paul Parker, recording clerk, recognised the impulse: ‘We need to be open to experimenting with things to see if we can release the flow a bit more.’
Learning from each other: churches and decision making was a fascinating special interest meeting held by the Quaker Committee for Christian and Interfaith Relations (QCCIR). It gave thirteen Friends the opportunity to hear from two ecumenical visitors.
Janet Scott, of QCCIR, introduced the session and welcomed the evening’s speakers: Lindsey Brown, from the United Reform Church (URC); and Greg Ryan, from the Roman Catholic Church.
Janet explained two terms that would be the focus of the evening: ‘receptive ecumenism’, which is churches learning from each other; and ‘synodality’, which is about including people in making decisions.
Lindsey Brown, the national ecumenical officer of the URC, described the URC as being ecumenical by nature, as it is the result of several churches coming together. ‘There has to be a great deal of listening, a lot of grace, a lot of relationship building.’
She spoke about the importance of being open and listening: ‘We’re all impacted and we’re changed and we’re enriched by the people around us… the different Christian families are influenced by one another and impacted and grow, and each is made richer and stronger.’
But she also spoke of the need for humility in this process. She emphasised, ‘it’s not about diluting who we are… it’s not about abandoning particular ecclesiastical identities… it’s often about hospitality, it’s about listening to one another and exchanging gifts’.
Lindsey went on to explain how the URC makes decisions, through its structure, but also how it goes about consensus decision making. She told Friends that voting takes place with coloured cards: orange for those feeling warm towards a proposal, blue for those who are feeling cooler about it. There is then the opportunity for everyone with a blue card to speak, more discussion, and another vote is taken. When there is an overwhelming majority of orange cards, the remaining blue card holders are ‘asked if they’re content to go with the general feeling of the room’.
Greg Ryan, who is assistant professor at the Durham Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University, opened with synodality, which has been a focus for the Catholic Church for several years: ‘A synodal church is a church which listens… a mutual listening in which everyone has something to learn.’
Greg described the Catholic Church as trying to make decisions by consensus, with documents being revised until an overwhelming majority agree, and spoke of the pope’s influence on the process.
He also told Friends that these synods now begin in silence, with participants speaking when moved, and responding to one another’s offerings: ‘It is not universally liked… but it has been absolutely transformational. It’s the one thing that people have said more and more that they have never experienced anything like this.’
The pope has distinguished between debate and discernment, and has said: ‘If the spirit isn’t present, it’s not a synod – it’s just a meeting, it’s just a debate.’
Friends split into breakout groups to reflect on three questions. First, Lindsey asked: ‘Listening to how we each do “synodality” is one example of receptive ecumenism – what else from each others’ traditions might helpfully transform us?’
Greg asked: ‘What opportunities and challenges can you see for a possible “reciprocal relationship between a more synodal Catholic Church and the credibility of its ecumenical commitment”?’
And Janet asked: ‘What can Quakers learn from other churches?’
Writing by: Lis Burch, a trustee of the Friend; Rebecca Hardy, journalist at the Friend; Imi Hills, a freelancer from West Weald Meeting; Joseph Jones, editor of the Friend; Alastair Reid, a trustee of the Friend; and Elinor Smallman, production manager at the Friend.
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