Spiritual State of Abington Friends Meeting
April 2024
How is Spirit moving in your worship, and how have you nurtured deep, Spirit-led vocal ministry?
How have you fostered an environment in which members and attenders of all ages and abilities know they are loved, cared for, trusted, and respected?
The younger children have really adopted the new children’s corner in the meetinghouse, and they seem to be able to be quiet and be in worship with us, which is very lovely.
Abington’s Worship & Ministry Committee noted a year and a half ago that the quality of worship was being eroded by some Friends offering too-frequent messages that were responses and reframings of other Friends’ vocal ministry, or were jokes or quips about others’ ministry, bringing the worship out of the grounding of the Spirit. Worship & Ministry decided to try a two-month experiment of every other week near the beginning of worship having the appointed Friend on the facing bench read an excerpt from the Meeting’s statement on worship (formulated a few years earlier), in the manner of reading Advices. These were the four readings:
1. For more than 350 years, Friends have gathered in silent, shared worship to listen for the Spirit of God in our midst. We strive to suspend our own wishes, opinions, and agendas, opening ourselves to the continuing revelation of the Spirit. We wait for what may arise from our prayerful silence. An initial quiet period enables us to settle in, shifting our thoughts from our everyday lives to the world of the Spirit.
2. Friends gather in silent, shared worship to listen for the Spirit of God in our midst. Out of this gathered stillness, some may be led to speak. Since we believe that every person has “that of God” within them, anyone may offer a spoken message, a prayer, or even a song. If you feel that a message is not for you, try to hear the spirit behind the message. Listen with your heart.
3. Out of our gathered stillness in worship, some may be led to speak. If the Spirit urges us to speak, we find guidance in first asking ourselves these questions:
a. Has there been enough silent time for all previous messages to be deeply reflected upon?
b. Is my message brief, simple, and respectful of all?
c. Will it be spiritual and illuminating to others, or does it primarily give voice to my own needs?
d. Is my message a genuinely spiritual one, and not simply political or personal?
e. Have I received an overwhelmingly strong internal prompt that compels me to speak?
f. Will my message improve upon the silence?
We may then choose to speak or let the message mature before sharing it. A Joys & Concerns period at the end of worship is reserved for messages that are more personal, political, or social than spiritual.
4. Friends gather in silent, shared worship to listen for the Spirit of God in our midst. Out of this gathered stillness, some may be led to speak. Some deeply felt meetings may be totally silent. At the end, we shake hands and return to the world, renewed in spirit, seeking to “walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.”
There was an immediate improvement in the quality of the vocal ministry. The committee decided that if we again noticed the vocal ministry becoming ungrounded, unsettled, fragmented, or superficial to repeat the readings; but this has not been needed. A year and a half later, our worship is generally in a more gathered, more spiritually listening place. There’s now generally longer silence at the beginning, and messages are coming from a deeper place.
It’s really important to have SPIRITUAL messages in MfW—that’s also what reaches most visitors and new attenders.
There are some people who want to hear some messages at a MfW. But we can’t force it, we have to trust the Spirit.
We heard lots of perspectives on our state of worship, and the main point was that we want to let the Spirit move among us and be our decisionmaker, and it can be different every time. We try not to presume people’s needs, and let the Spirit move among us.
How have you sought to be neighbors and in relationship with other communities, and how have you been changed by these connections? How have you been called to address issues of social justice, inclusivity, and difference, both within your meeting and in the wider world?
After years of work, our Accessibility, Safety and Inclusion Committee has received approval to have ADA compliant entrances and a bathroom, as well as some ADA improvements to our kitchen. The work should begin shortly. We see this as a way to make the banner we display, “All are Welcome”, move closer to the values of integrity and equality we hold.
We hold periodic Coffeehouse Concerts and we announce them to the wider community. For example, our next one on April 27th consists of singer songwriters. The proceeds are benefitting our Accessibility, Safety and Inclusion project.
We have continued sharing our property with Ujima Friends Peace Center’s Freedom Summer program. We had one artist from our Meeting work with the young scholars this past summer and more members are planning on sharing their talents this coming summer. Our Worship & Ministry and School Committees and AFS had an outreach table at the Bucks-Mont Pride Festival at Abington Arts Center.
While we no longer hold our weekly vigil against racism, we still concern ourselves with being on an antiracism path. All Meetings for Worship to Attend to Worship begin with a Land Acknowledgement. Our Reparations Committee continues its work and dispersed our reparation to FarmerJawn and has been individually discerning programs/organizations for this year’s payment. We held our first annual Benjamin Lay Lecture with Penn State Abington and Cheltenham Historical Society. The lecture on Reparations was given by Lucy Duncan and Rob Peagler and was well attended. Planning for the next Lay Lecture in the Fall of 2024 has begun ad once again we will reach out to the community. Workshops on antiracism are being planned as well.
Topic Areas that Arose in Last Year’s Spiritual State of the Meeting Reports
Outreach and Inclusion
When our Inreach/Outreach Committee was laid down a few years ago, its duties were placed within our Worship & Ministry Committee. It became apparent that it was too much responsibility for Worship & Ministry. In the meantime we formed a new committee to cover financial stewardship of our meeting, but it became clear to the committee enlisted with envisioning it, that its first order of business must be engaging the members and attenders and only after engagement will financial stewardship begin. The newly developed Engagement and Stewardship Committee as well as our Worship & Ministry Committee both concern themselves in part with greeting newcomers and guiding them into the life of the meeting. Both committees offer much more to our meeting as well and E&S hopes that the Inreach/Outreach Committee will be back among us.
Adult Education Resources
Our Adult Education Committee meets each summer to discern a query to act as a topic for the classes for the year. This year’s query is “How does living the Testimonies strengthen our connection to the Light within?” As they discern each Adult Class proposed, the query is used as a guide.
Families and Children
Our former Children’s Religious Education Committee changed its name to Family Programming Committee to reflect a core change. Its new focus is on involving the whole family and creating more intergenerational opportunities so we can continue to grow as a family meeting.
Youth
We had a Youth Committee in the past and it was in hiatus for a few years but is once again alive and well. The most recent activity they sponsored was “Family Game Night,” which drew over 50 participants. Fun games, yummy pizza, and lots of laughter.
Peace & Social Justice Witness
The Peace & Social Justice Committee: continues to support the Meeting’s involvement with Germantown Avenue Crisis Ministry and committee members pick up donated food and distribute it at GACM each week, hosted Indian investigative journalist Niranjan Takale who spoke about threats to democracy in India to the Meeting, and held a postcard writing activity during coffee fellowship about gun control laws.
Individual PSJ members: attended “A Silent Procession for Peace: A Public Ritual” sponsored by American Friends of Combatants for Peace in Chestnut Hill; sponsored a committee member in the National Alliance for Mentally Ill walk; met with Sarah Jones outreach coordinator for our area from CeaseFirePA, discussing CeaseFire’s work and levels of involvement ad will bring Sarah in to speak to the Meeting; and lastly we reached out by email to the other meetings in our Quarter to see if they had PSJ committees, asking what kind of work they were doing with the idea of future collaboration and created a contact list that we sent back to the other meetings.
Quarters
Following the lead of our Peace & Social Justice Committee mentioned above, after listening to our Quarter Representative at a recent Meeting for Worship to Attend to Business share their longing for more attendance and involvement at the Quarter level, the Clerk held out for all to hear that longing and there was agreement that we want to be more involved. We hope the recent hiring of a Quarter Communications Coordinator will help with our goal of more involvement.
________________________________________
On Climate Change
As a Meeting, our work on climate change concerns began when our Peace and Social Justice Committee established a sub-committee on sustainability to directly address our community’s use of resources. We began with a survey of the Meeting to determine the importance of this issue in general. Next, the sub-committee contacted those Meeting committees where they saw an opportunity for sustainable growth and health to emerge. Our Hospitality, Property, and Accessibility, Safety, and Inclusion Committees were seen as the primary focus groups. Each of these committees made significant changes in the work they do to include sustainable practices. Some examples are: Elimination (as much as possible) of plastic wrapped products from food being brought In for events; a compost bucket in our kitchen that is monitored by the sustainability sub-committee; an eye toward incorporating where possible, sustainable materials for the Meeting’s upcoming ADA accessible bathroom and kitchen project; repurposing a portion of our property to plant a ‘tiny forest’ of native trees that will encourage wildlife to thrive; and using part of our graveyard to plant a scatter garden, composed of native plants. The sustainability sub-committee was laid down in October, 2023, under the peace & social justice committee, and incorporated into the property committee.
Regarding the Climate Change Sprint Report:
• Activism: As a Meeting, AMM has not been involved in any climate related activism. We do have members who are active in several climate change and sustainability related organizations however.
• Education: Our Family Programing committee incorporates climate related topics in many of their activities, including planting and maintaining a mobile herb garden behind our kitchen, and learning about honey bee hives. We have held two adult classes addressing sustainability, and (as mentioned above) surveyed our membership about their understanding and interest in sustainability as a community. Last October AMM held a potluck luncheon, organized by the sustainability sub-committee, with a focus on how our Meeting works to be sustainable. (NOTE – we applied this to all aspects of the community, including mindfulness of our environment, and also how we are preserving our Meeting property for future generations).
• Reducing our Carbon Footprint: This issue has not been addressed yet but will most likely be considered in the next few years as we prepare to replace the roof of the Meetinghouse.
