In July 2021 PYM approved minutes of action to be taken on anti-racism and climate change. How has your meeting been called to address these issues?
Germantown Monthly Meeting is actively working to take more and more social justice actions and to continue learning to become a more anti-racist institution. The Meeting has an active Racism and Social Justice Committee that has a solid presence in the Meeting. It has focused this year on the following:
- The committee’s corporate giving supports and contributes funds to Crossroads Women’s Center, Germantown Crisis ministry, The Kelly School (our local public school) and other community groups/organizations.
- The committee has several people actively involved in community work – working with POWER, Crossroads Women’s Center, John B Kelly School and Center for Returning Citizens.
- The Racism and Social Justice Committee has hosted an anti-racist reading and discussion group that meets monthly with a robust group of Members.
- The Anti-racism group is not just a literary group; it has made some requests of committees and has led at least one Sunday pre-Meeting for Worship session examining how members of the Meeting are actively involved in Social Justice work. It is also reaching out to other Meetings who are taking active anti-racist actions to try to incorporate and/or utilize some of their experiences with our Meeting. They also reached out to each committee of our Meeting and asked them to examine their work in regards to racism and social justice. The role of the committee has evolved to where they take individual actions, raise the visibility of those actions and are looking for ways to help the Meeting take more actions. The Meeting additionally supports our member Barbara Wybar who started and runs a school in Bududa, Uganda. We support our member Jondhi Harrell’s community work through the Center for Returning Citizens which runs a food pantry and provides clothing. Jondhi’s non-profit is also going to help individuals get COVID tests.
Our queries and testimonies call us to protect and help restore God’s creation and to address environmental injustice. We believe that individual, corporate, and public policy changes are needed to address environmental destruction and the looming climate catastrophe. The Meeting’s Environmental Concerns Committee has recently been reactivated. The Committee is continuing to work with our Property Committee to identify ways the Meeting and the School that operates under our care can improve their energy efficiency and reduce their carbon footprint. Also members of the Meeting are, and have been, active with the PYM EcoJustice Collaborative and with other Quaker and non-Quaker organizations to support sustainability and advocate for policy changes to ensure a livable environment for future generations. It is our intention to live into the statement adopted by the Yearly Meeting at 2021 Sessions to make addressing climate change a yearly meeting wide ministry.
What other concerns and initiatives has your meeting been led to address this past year? What other concerns has your meeting had?
We have kept our First Day School active through all stages of the pandemic, including fully virtual and that has offered continued support for young families and children. We had a wonderfully inventive hybrid Christmas pageant that involved young members far and wide!
How has your meeting evolved as a spiritual community given the ongoing opportunities and challenges of the pandemic?
The pandemic has allowed us to reconnect with distant members who are not able to join our Meeting for Worship weekly. We have had several months of hybrid meeting.
Hybrid Meeting can be a challenge because our meeting room is so large and many in- person members have expressed they feel more like observers than participants. We are starting to experiment with an additional meeting before our 10:30 meeting once a month. This Meeting is fully in person to address the concerns that being in the Meetinghouse during hybrid meeting did not feel as connected and spiritual. Throughout the pandemic, we have offered a midweek Zoom Meeting for Worship on Wednesday evenings.
What practices and strategies are employed by your meeting to help members and attenders of all ages prepare for worship – whether in meeting for worship or in meeting for business?
Acting out of deep Spiritual concern, the meeting has employed several strategies to help members and attenders prepare for worship. Our weekly newsletter has a section at the beginning called Food for Thought that is meant to prompt spiritual reflection. The Worship and Ministry committee drafted a pamphlet on When to Speak in Meeting for Worship. It was presented to Meeting for Business twice, as well as to Quarterly Meeting. We will be mailing it to members. Additionally, a member of our Worship and Ministry committee reads one set of queries once a month at the beginning of Meeting for Business and the beginning of Meeting for Worship. Adult class has always been a rich way to prepare for Meeting for Worship but it has been halted during this past pandemic year. We still feel we have work to do in this arena particularly as we start to welcome more people back to the Meetinghouse.
What is most needed to strengthen the communal witness of the meeting to the local community and beyond?
It is a continual challenge to encourage local community members to be aware of our Meeting for Worship and to come and worship with us. We see the communal witness need of the meeting from two views. One is a need to expand our religious practice education. To do this, we are using our Facebook page and our weekly newsletter, The BEE. We feel that we could strengthen this more by expanding our religious links and content on our website as well as better integration between what we post on Facebook and the Worship and Ministry committee. Additional ways of reaching out to the community could be to hold workshops for the community on Quakerism and our practice of worship. We could publicize childcare and First Day School to help attract younger families to become members. We have also been discussing how we could offer our Zoom Meeting for Worship to attenders in the local community and beyond. In the past we have invited Germantown Friends School families to join us for Meeting for Worship but have had to postpone that practice this year. We hope it can continue. A second need is our need to better meet our local community. We see our local community as first and foremost the community of Germantown. We have many resources we can use that are ready for our meeting. Key to that is utilizing and expanding on the resources and work that Germantown Friends School does as well as the work that our existing members do. In particular, we see the need to expand our reach and support of the Kelly and Wister schools through communal reading, math support, and mentorship. We also see the need to support our members who run or support local food banks. This can be in the form of volunteering to hand out food, helping with promotion, organization, or other means. Finally, through our partnership with GFS, we feel we can better support their monthly food drive that benefits local food banks as well as engage in the monthly Community Cleanup sponsored by the Penn-Knox Neighborhood Association and the city of Philadelphia. We also could host a community fridge given that the one on Greene Street is so popular and well used. This would also bring more awareness to the community.
Is there anything else we would like to add? We would like to work on more fully connecting with and supporting the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
