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As Friends seek to live faithfully as individuals and as meeting communities, they return often to seek direct communion with the Divine. They find guidance through reading the Bible and other sources of wisdom. And they clarify and focus their concerns and test their “leadings” by responding to “queries”—open-ended questions based on Friends practices and testimonies. These processes give the meeting and individuals a sense of clearness and confidence that they are moving forward in harmony with the Divine.

At times an individual Friend may seek a more structured clearness process within the meeting. These occasions might include application for membership, marriage under the care of the meeting, decisions on an important life course, and to test a leading. For Friends, a leading is a persistent thought or idea, believed to be a call from the Spirit that compels one to action. In each of these situations, the meeting and the individual can draw on well-established practices that enable Friends to understand the call and to act on the promptings of love and truth in their hearts.

The meeting community itself uses defined processes to reach clearness in decisions and to guide the actions of the meeting. “Spirit-led” decision making is central to the life and health of the meeting.

The desire of Friends as individuals and as meeting communities is to live with greater awareness of and faithfulness to the Light Within. Friends strive to integrate their inward life and outward activity. In the sections that follow, we return often to discernment and clearness as practices that lead us to greater harmony with the Light Within.

Dear Friends, keep all your meetings in the authority, wisdom and power of Truth and the unity of the blessed Spirit. Let your conduct and conversation be such as become the Gospel of Christ. Exercise yourselves to have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward all people. Be steadfast and faithful in your allegiance and service to your Lord, and the God of peace be with you.

— Elders of Balby, 1656

This section provides a selection of references to books, pamphlets and online documents which may be helpful to meetings and their officers as they set about the tasks involved in conducting the business of the meeting.

Managing Quaker Business Processes

• Mathilda Navias, Quaker Process for Friends on the Benches. Quaker Publishing Corporation, 2012. This is a comprehensive account of the most basic practices and procedures involved in the conduct of Quaker business. Available separately, as a pdf, is Sample Forms, Letters, Minutes and Reports to accompany Quaker Process for Friends on the Benches. This includes: sample letters for an application for membership, a transfer of membership, and a request to be married under the care of a monthly meeting; and forms to be used to simplify end-of-life planning.
• Barry Morley, Beyond Consensus: Salvaging the Sense of the Meeting, Pendle Hill Pamphlet # 307.
• Principles of Good Practice for Boards and Every Trustee of Quaker Organizations, 2005. This publication is adapted from Principles of Good Practice for Friends School Boards & Every Friends School Trustee, written by Arthur Larrabee in consultation with the Board of Directors of the Friends Council on Education.
• Rosalie Bond, Treasurer’s Guide Manual. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 2008. This is available as a pdf from pym.org.
• Elizabeth Muench, Friendly Audits: Guidance for those asked to review Quaker accounts and for those who keep them. QuakerPress of FGC, 1990. This is available as an eBook from quakerbooks.org. An online bookstore with books and pamphlets on such topics as: meeting for business, meeting roles (clerk, recording clerk, elders, and archivists), meeting finances, meetinghouses, and properties.

 Nurturing the Spiritual Needs and Gifts of Members and Attenders

• Pastoral Care Newsletters. Between 1993 and 2012, the Pastoral Care Working Group of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting published some 76 editions of the Pastoral Care Newsletter. These are available as pdfs from pym.org. In addition, a collection of articles from the first 10 years of the Pastoral Care Newsletter has been published under the title Grounded in God: Care and Nurture in Friends Meetings, edited by Patricia McBee and published by QuakerPress, 2002. This is available as an eBook from quakerbooks.org.
• Quaker Aging Resources at quakeragingresources.org is a collaborative project of Philadelphia and New York yearly meetings
• Spiritual Care Committee. A pamphlet prepared by the School of the Spirit Ministry.
• Friends General Conference has many resources to help meetings with outreach and welcoming: https://www.fgcquaker.org/resources/transforming-quaker-welcoming-advice-greeting-newcomers

Answering Questions about Quaker Faith, Practice, and Witness

There are numerous websites that can be used to find answers to a wide range of questions that meetings or their members and attenders may have about all things Quaker. Many answers can be found at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting website, pym.org, or the Friends General Conference website, fgcquaker.org. Other online sources for information about Quakers include:

• quakerinfo.org (Quaker Information Center)
• quakerinfo.com
• quaker.org
• quakerquaker.org

There is a list of current Quaker blogs available at Planet Quaker: planet.quaker.org.

Online glossaries may be found at:

• quakerinfo.org/resources/glossary

In addition, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting library (located at 1515 Cherry Street in Philadelphia) is an important resource for books and other materials relating to Quakers, particularly in the Philadelphia area.

Preservation of Records

Historical records of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and many of its constituent monthly meetings have been deposited with Friends Historical Library and housed at either the Haverford Quaker Collection or at Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. These two institutions work together to maintain the records for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and other Friends groups and individuals. A third partner, Bryn Mawr College, maintains a guide to the three libraries, including these archives:

https://guides.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/quakermeetings/pym

Friends meetings are encouraged to deposit monthly meeting minutes and reports with Friends Historical Library; these records remain the property of the originating meeting or its sucessor(s) and are carefully stored and available for research. Questions about the process of depositing meeting records should be directed to the Curator or Archivist at Friends Historical Libary.

In 1989, the Records Committee of Baltimore Yearly Meeting first published a Handbook on Records: their Creation, Maintenance, and Preservation in the Meeting.

Historically, clearness committees have been used by meetings primarily as part of the membership and marriage procedures. In recent years, Friends have requested the support of a clearness committee in order to discern how best to deal with an important personal decision, whether to make a change in the circumstances of their lives, whether to test a leading or for some other reason. A Friend may approach the pastoral care or worship and ministry committee of the meeting and request that a clearness committee be formed. The request may include the suggestion of one or more potential members of that committee.

It is especially important for the members of the clearness committee to accept fully that their role in the session with the Friend is not to offer advice, nor to tell stories about their own possibly similar experiences, but to ask questions that enable the Friend to discern whether there is sufficient clarity regarding the issue or leading to move forward and take action.

In preparation for the initial meeting of the clearness committee, the Friend is advised to write a brief account of the issue or leading to be considered, including relevant background information and any possible steps that might be taken to address that issue or leading. The members of the clearness committee would then read and reflect on this short paper in advance of the meeting.

The first meeting of the clearness committee usually includes the following elements:

• Worship at the beginning, at the end and perhaps at appropriate moments during the meeting.
• Deep listening by the committee members to an initial statement by the Friend regarding the leading to be tested or the issue or potential decision to be clarified.
• Carefully formulated, open-ended, probing questions from the committee members, not to give advice or counsel but to help the Friend understand more clearly the nature of the concern, issue or leading and the possible implications of making one decision or another—for that Friend and for family members, the faith community and perhaps the wider community.
• An opportunity for the Friend to respond to these questions, and for the Friend and the members of the clearness committee to consider together whether there are now additional questions that need to be explored further.
• Consideration of next steps, such as additional meetings of the individual with the clearness committee, or further exploration by the individual and members of the committee of particular aspects of the issue or leading that remain unclear or are not yet ready for a decision.

The information provided by the Friend prior to meeting with the clearness committee, and the information shared by that individual in the session with the committee, is confidential; and both the Friend and the members of the clearness committee are expected to respect the need to maintain confidentiality. Still, it is also expected that a report, absent details, will be given to the care and counsel or worship and ministry committee which formed the clearness committee.

If the Friend has tested the leading with the assistance of the clearness committee and together they are in unity to seek the support of the meeting for that leading, the matter is reported to the pastoral care or worship and ministry committee and then to the meeting for business. If the meeting decides to support the leading, the clerk of the meeting will draft a minute of support. Such a minute acknowledges the role of the meeting in approving the implementation of the leading and the ministry it entails and may also recommend the formation of a committee to provide guidance, support and accountability for the Friend and the ministry.

These guidelines utilize material found in The Spiritual Care Committee, a pamphlet prepared by the School of the Spirit Ministry. The pamphlet identifies the person for whom care is provided as “the Friend,” and that designation is used below. The pamphlet is available online at schoolofthespirit.org/programs/the-spiritual-care-committee.

There are three types of care committees currently used by Friends: clearness committees, pastoral care assistance committees and spiritual care committees. Clearness committees assist those seeking to apply for membership or to be married under the care of the monthly meeting, or those members or attenders seeking clarity about a personal or social concern. Pastoral care assistance committees help those members and attenders who have physical, emotional, financial or spiritual needs. Spiritual care committees (or spiritual nurturers) support those with spiritual gifts or who are pursuing a leading or engaged in the work of ministry.

The members of care committees are usually selected by the pastoral care or worship and ministry committee of the meeting, though the individual being supported may request that certain persons be included. The process of selecting members for a care committee will include consideration of those who can bring a diversity of skills, gifts, experience and personality type to complement the leading, ministry or need of the Friend for whom the committee is being formed. Those selected would be expected to:

• Mirror to the Friend the ways God is acting/shining/serving through them.
• Demonstrate a willingness to accompany the Friend lovingly into difficult spiritual places.
• Be able to challenge the Friend to live more deeply and fully the life of the Spirit, while also accepting the Friend without judgment in the present moment.
• Demonstrate clear willingness to devote the time necessary to prepare for the work of the care committee and to attend the sessions of the committee with the Friend.

It is important to remember that the work of care committees benefits the faith community from which they are formed as well as the individuals who are being nurtured and supported.

1. Are official membership records maintained? Is a member of the meeting assigned this responsibility? Are the membership statistics presented to the monthly and yearly meetings annually?
2. Are informal records of members and attenders maintained in order to communicate with and build the meeting community?
3. Does the meeting (and any institutions under its care) keep clear and accurate financial records? Are these and other meeting records (deed, corporate by-laws, operating records, etc.) kept in a secure location?
4. If the meeting is incorporated, are its records maintained and its corporate procedures conducted in accordance with good practice and legal requirements?
5. Are minutes of the business of the monthly meeting and of significant meeting committees accurately and neatly kept on acid-free paper and taken in a timely manner to the Friends Historical Library at Haverford or Swarthmore College?
6. Has the meeting established document retention guidelines to reduce the storage of unnecessary routine items such as vendor invoices?

1. Does the meeting have a long-term financial plan that includes:
   • Increasing endowment through bequests and planned giving?
   • Increasing current support through fundraising and growth of membership?
   • Utilizing multi-year budgeting?
   • Developing multi-year schedules for the repair, maintenance and renovation of meeting buildings and grounds?
2. Does the meeting approve a budget each year?
3. During the year does the meeting approve discretionary expenditures that deviate from the approved budget?
4. Does the treasurer report to the meeting each year on the prior year’s income and expenses and the meeting’s balance sheet? Does the treasurer also report periodically to the meeting on its financial situation?
5. Does the meeting have proper checks and balances in place in the disbursement of its funds?
6. Are the meeting’s accounts regularly reviewed by a committee appointed for this purpose, its trustees or, if appropriate, an independent outside auditor?
7. Do the meeting’s treasurer and finance committee observe generally accepted accounting practices and standards in handling the meeting’s finances?
8. Does the meeting seek the financial support of all its members? Does it make clear the expectation that each member will contribute as able?
9. Are routine operating funds financed by living members and attenders?
10. Does the meeting have a process for extending financial support to members experiencing hard circumstances or suffering as a result of witness to Friends testimonies?
11. Does the meeting’s budget include resources to support and give witness to Friends testimonies in the local community and the world?
12. Does the meeting’s budget provide financial support for the quarterly and yearly meetings?
13. Are the meeting’s patterns of spending and consumption socially and environmentally responsible?