State of the Meeting Reports

Buckingham Monthly Meeting
Annual Report to Bucks Quarterly Meeting
May 20, 2018
Held at Camp Onas – Ottsville, PA

The last year has been an exciting and spiritually nurturing one at Buckingham Monthly Meeting.  We recorded 62 adult members and 23 minor members (including 2 new members), for a total of 85. There was one death.

Most notably, our Meetings for Worship and First Day School have been enriched by new attenders—multiple young families with children.  We try to be welcoming toward new attenders, and our post-meeting gathering—our snacks have now expanded to be nearly a brunch each week—also helps to facilitate meaningful connections.  Our attenders, some of whom have become members, have shown exceptional willingness to participate in all aspects of the life of the meeting, as well as finding new ways to get the rest of the membership to be active.

Meetings for Worship have been peaceful and gathered, perhaps more quiet than in the past, with consideration of appropriate messages by Friends in attendance clearly evident.  We held meeting for worship outdoors in the graveyard on several Sundays during the summer under a large shady tree.  Members have been providing rides for older Friends who are no longer able to drive to meeting themselves.  A few power outages also found us worshipping in Buckingham Friends School, which we thank for its hospitality.

Numerous programs outside of worship have also brought our faith community closer together.  Our monthly informal “Quaker Conversation” adult programs have continued, and our Social Concerns committee has facilitated other engaging events, including a performance by the META Theater group and a guest speaker from the Peace Center.  We frequently seem to have so much going on that it is difficult to schedule committee meetings to get our work done.  Unfortunately we were not able to sustain our Games Night this year, but are looking forward to find other ways to gather and socialize.

This year we laid down our formal newsletter (or at least it went on a well-deserved vacation), but communicate more regularly through two different Google email groups, one for general Meeting business or announcements and one for social concerns and activism.  We also maintain our web site at www.buckinghamfriendsmeeting.org and Facebook page, which attract inquiries from the wider community.  Internally we completed an evaluation of our property manager, and continue to be led in business and spirit by our co-clerks, Pam Caprio and Bethann Morgan.

Last year’s Peace Fair, which we host under the care of Quarterly Meeting, was again very successful, with a record number of exhibitors.  The Peace Fair committee is now a standing committee of Bucks Quarterly Meeting, and asks that every meeting try to contribute a member, or at least provide a point of contact within their meeting.  Last year there were more volunteers at the Fair from the Quarter than ever on the day of the Fair.  The 2018 Peace Fair is on Saturday, September 22.

Our First Day School is a hive of activity every week with new children, whose parents are attending regularly.  Committee members have been rotating teaching duties so as to not put too much responsibility on one individual, but we are actively considering hiring a paid teacher to expand our program while letting parents stay in meeting to worship.  Our efforts to reach out and stay connected to our college-age Young Adult Friends have resulted in several applying for full adult membership.

This year our meetinghouse will be 250 years old!  Caring for our National Historic Landmark property is always a challenge, particularly financially.  We applied for and received one grant from PYM’s Quaker Buildings & Programs Granting Group to repair our roof, but were unsucessful in securing another to help strip our shutters of centuries of built-up paint.  Our all-volunteer effort to renew the wooden cap on our graveyard wall continued, and now over half of the wall is completed.  The many storms we had last winter wreaked havoc on trees all around our property, some of which fell in the graveyard and damaged the wall.  We discovered that it is possible to make insurance claims that will cover some of the removal and repair costs, and that doing so does not raise our premiums.

Our relationship with Buckingham Friends School has continued to be strong.  It is very helpful that the clerk of the school board, Michael Godshall, is a member of our meeting, but we (and other meetings) have not yet filled our quotas for membership on it.  While the school continues to be challenged by enrollment and budget considerations, they have hired a new permanent head for next year, Paul Lindenmaier, who will help take them in a new direction (and who is a Quaker).

Bristol Friends Meeting Annual Report
Presented at Quarterly Meeting – May 20, 2018
Camp Onas, Ottsville PA

Bristol Friends Meeting membership continues to be low.  We have had a few meeting with six or eight folks attending, but that is the exception.  Many meetings have had just three people.  We are happy to see a new Quaker couple has moved into the borough, and look forward to them joining us in worship.  We continue to gather once a month, usually on the second Sunday, for worship followed by our business meeting.

It was approved by the Quarter that Bristol Friends become a preparative meeting under the aegis of Fallsington Meeting.  This move reflects the reality of our current situation and provides needed financial oversight for endowments and accounts in Bristol Friends’ care.  The members of Bristol Friends thank the Quarter and Fallsington Friends for their loving concern and generous help.

Jim Fine continues as our treasurer, currently performing his duties from far away Iraq.  Although halfway across the world, his quick responses and active involvement in our affairs makes it feel as if he is still here in Bristol.  We wish him safe travels and look forward to his July return.

Bristol Friends collected many bags of warm clothing, including coats and jackets. These were passed along to families who had fled to our area from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

We worked locally promoting peace and non-violence in cooperation with the Peace Center.  They presented an anti-bullying program in the Bristol schools.

Paul Shaffer attended the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting gathering of clerks at Hockessin Meeting in Delaware.  The clerks spent time working on examples of microaggressions and institutional racism.

Going forward, Bristol Friends Meeting will continue working with the clerk’s committee on small meetings to explore ways to increase our outreach effectiveness. And finally, this October, Bristol Friends will have an extra special event held during Historic Bristol Day…

Historic Bristol Day dig!  Researchers from Bucks County Community College and Bristol Cultural and Historical Foundation are conducting ongoing excavations in Bristol borough.  It is just possible that our yard is untouched over the past three hundred years.  The public would be invited to participate in the archeological dig.  Who knows what we could find?

Respectfully submitted,
Paul Shaffer, clerk

Fallsington Friends Meeting Annual Report
To Bucks Quarterly Meeting
May 20, 2018
Held at Camp Onas, Ottsville PA

This past year Fallsington Friends Meeting continued to grow as a close, loving community. Grounded in worship, we support each other in our individual and Meeting-wide ministries and are an active presence in our local community. We have paid renewed attention to our nominating process, strengthened committees and worked to avoid burnout.  Nurturing spiritual gifts and sharing leadership roles have been central to this process.

This past year we completed moving all our investments to Friends Fiduciary, reaching a long-held goal of screening and greening our money.  As a result of this work, more financial resources are available to support charitable causes and address long delayed maintenance of our buildings and grounds.

Our membership continues to grow.  We welcomed three new members, and are blessed by the presence of new attenders.  Our inreach and outreach are supported by public events and our adult classes, including an on-going study of PYM’s new Faith and Practice and “Meeting for Healing,” a powerful practice of holding in the Light and laying on of hands.  We enjoy singing at the close of worship (we put the “sing” in Fallsington!) and sharing lunch each Sunday.

We have wrestled with ways to reduce disturbance to worship by late coming.  We affirm that worship begins at 11 am, and ask Friends arriving after to wait to enter until the children leave at 11:15 for First Day School.  This practice of waiting has caused distress to some Friends, but has led to deep discernment about caring for each other and our commitment to our worship life as a community.

In January a concern to provide winter clothes for people moving to our community from the hurricane destruction in Puerto Rico lead to an unforeseen outpouring of local community support.  Our Meetinghouse became the collecting point of 80 bags of clothes!  Sweaters, hats, socks and more covered the benches as volunteers sorted and prepared for donation.  Clothes were also available to people coming to Bucks Food For Friends, a monthly shared meal for those in need held at the Meetinghouse.

Other concerns of our Meeting and individual members have been:

• Climate change
• Mindfulness Meditation
• Earth Quaker Action Team
• Middle East peace
• Bucks Peace Center
• Refugee aid
• Mercer St. Friends Center
• Heifer International in Bangledesh

After careful discernment, and the support of Bucks Quarterly Meeting, we agreed to take Bristol Friends Meeting under our care as a Preparative Meeting.  We are supporting Bristol Friends in caring for their finances and Fallsington Friends have attended Bristol Meeting’s worship.

As we look to the coming year, we feel a strong concern to attract more families and grow our First Day School.  We hope to make deeper connections with the Hispanic Community, working with them on issues of racial profiling and deportation.  We also want to be allies with those in Trenton, NJ who are working on issues of racial injustice, mass incarceration and poverty.

We are both soothed and challenged by our worship and community life.  We find comfort in our close Meeting friendships.  We seek to deal lovingly with diversity and conflict, and to grow from it.  We encourage each other to seek the Spirit and go deeper in faith, as were challenged in our recent intergenerational Easter program to “roll away the stone!”

Jonathan R. Snipes

Clerk