We are glad to report that Germantown Monthly Meeting is full of energy and enthusiasm, growing, engaged with our surrounding community and the world, and creatively working to address the many challenges of meeting life as we approach the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century.
With the COVID-19 pandemic receding as a primary concern, Germantown Meeting is thrilled to be hosting in-person meetings for worship and for business. We still expect Friends to wear masks in Meeting for Worship, except when delivering a message. Most of our committee meetings, and both our Meetings for Worship and for Business still are hybrid (on Zoom and in person), but in-person attendance at Meeting for Worship has grown significantly. We regularly have 40 to 50 (and occasionally more!) members and attenders present for our meetings for worship, not too far from our pre-pandemic attendance. While many long-time members are coming back, very gratifyingly the growth of in-person attendance includes younger individuals and, very importantly, families with children. Some of these new attendees have joined the Meeting. Membership is pending for others. Still others are showing interest but have not yet applied for membership.
With the growth in attendance, especially of younger families, Germantown Meeting has revived its in-person first day school for elementary age children, and childcare for the youngest children. During the pandemic our teachers hosted a once-a-month Zoom first day school class. Some of our children also participated in PYM’s once-a-month Zoom first day school. But it is so exciting now to witness the bubbly enthusiasm of the kids as they leave Meeting for Worship, looking forward to greeting their friends during the first day school class. We also must acknowledge our extreme debt to the adults who prepare for, communicate with the parents about what is happening in, and teach our first day school.
After the long pandemic-induced hiatus, we have resumed indoor after-meeting social hour with refreshments. Also, pre-pandemic Germantown Meeting had a very strong adult class program, with regular speakers, book readings and occasional films on both spiritual and social justice topics. These adult classes were suspended completely during the pandemic. We have just begun reviving this program and are experimenting with different formats and schedules. In February, the Meeting hosted a weekday evening Zoom presentation on the war in Ukraine by a Russia expert. This was very well attended, including a couple of individuals from the Germantown Friends School community. In March, we are hosting an in-person Sunday morning poetry reading, featuring several Meeting members who also are poets. Going forward our hope is to expand these adult programs, picking topics related to Friends’ testimonies.
In terms of the Meeting’s engagement with the surrounding community and the world, it is worth citing some examples to illustrate the work that Friends are pursuing, to minister in our own small way to the needs of the world.
Germantown Friends School, which shares its campus with our meetinghouse, is the largest single ministry of Germantown Meeting. Although the School and the Meeting are now separate corporate entities, we seek to maintain a mutual care relationship between the Meeting and the School and its 1100 students, their families and the several hundred teachers, administrators and support staff. We are now considering among ourselves and in conversations with School faculty and administrators how best to realize that care relationship. In addition, recognizing that some families in the School do not have a church affiliation or a basis for spiritual grounding, Germantown Meeting’s Outreach committee hosted an “open house” one Sunday in Fall of 2022. Another such event is planned for the Spring. We are also encouraging sharing of School and Meeting events with members of both communities, such as the adult class mentioned above.
Germantown Meeting has also sought out and responded to requests for involvement from Germantown and broader Philadelphia area organizations. Support of the John B. Kelly School, a public elementary school in Germantown, has been an ongoing effort of our Meeting. Our former clerk, Penny Colgan-Davis, led an effort to revive, restock and staff with volunteers the school library. Last spring the Meeting contributed some of its money and solicited additional funds from members to support in a substantial way the development of a school playground. Another organization receiving Meeting support is The Center for Returning Citizens (TCRC) led by our member Jondhi Harrell. TCRC operates a free food distribution program in many poor neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Recently Germantown Meeting has contributed funds to support this work and is hosting a once-a-month Sunday food distribution event.
Germantown Meeting has recognized the adverse impacts of racism and economic injustice on our immediate community and on the larger society in which we exist. We have minuted our opposition to police violence, mass incarceration and our support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Internally our Racial and Social Justice Committee brings programs to the Meeting on these topics. Our member Pamela Williams participated in the inaugural cohort of the nearly year-long Quakers Uprooting Racism program, a virtual collaboration highlighted by a retreat hosted at Pendle Hill, concluding in June 2022. This project involved the collaboration of FGC, AFSC, FCNL, and the Friends Council on Education, as well as Pendle Hill. The program addressed how Friends could tackle racism both in our meetings and in the broader society. Pam found this program to be of great interest and benefit and will be bringing her insight from it to our Meeting. We have a long-running Anti-Racism discussion and reading group. Currently members of that group are reading and discussing The 1619 Project, which describes the long history and repercussions up to the present of enslavement of Africans in North America. We would love to have more members of the Meeting engaged on this important subject. We have yet to address within our Meeting the difficult issue of reparations.
Climate change and related environmental degradation are areas of particular concern and engagement for many meeting members. Germantown Meeting adopted a minute which was subsequently endorsed by Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting suggesting that the term “impending climate catastrophe” be used when considering the collection of phenomena related to global warming, and the troubles expected to follow from it. A member of our meeting participated in the Climate Change Sprint two years ago and members were strong supporters of the Yearly Meeting’s adoption of the Sprint Report. Our Property Committee pays close attention to investments that can reduce energy use and our collective “carbon footprint.” High efficiency air-source heat pumps have been installed for heating and cooling our office and kitchen areas. However, the main meetinghouse heating system is still a gas-fired hydronic system. We are evaluating how provisions of the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) could be leveraged to benefit both our meetinghouse and the sustainability of Germantown Friends School. Some of our members are politically active, pushing for policy change at the Federal, Commonwealth and local levels to further reduce our society’s reliance on fossil fuels.
Finally, it is important to note that many Germantown Meeting members are living into Friends’ testimonies through the volunteer and advocacy work they do with many different peace, environmental, social justice and racial justice organizations. These include, but certainly are not limited to, anti-war and anti-nuclear advocacy with the Brandywine Peace Community, work on several of POWER Interfaith’s campaigns (Germantown Meeting is one of POWER’s congregational sponsors), participation in PYM’s EcoJustice Collaborative, participation on the General Committee and the Policy Committee of the Friends’ Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), and volunteering for Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light (PA-IPL). Particularly noteworthy is our member Barbara Wybar’s vision and continual work at the Bududa Learning Center in Bududa, Uganda. The Center’s programs include a program for orphans, a secondary vocational school, and a women’s micro finance group. Several Meeting members joined her during the year to provide additional support. Most recently, our members Masaru (Ed) Nakawatase, Teresa Maebori and Kathy Paulmier shared their personal experiences in the program “Quakers and Japan” at the University of Pennsylvania, which reflected upon the long-standing relationship between Philadelphia Quakers and Japan and emphasized the continuing contributions from both sides of the Pacific.
The pandemic and its aftermath have presented challenges to Germantown Meeting. Our adoption of technology to support worship and sustenance of the Meeting community during the COVID shutdown was a blessing. Zoom provided an opportunity for contact and communication during a period of profound human isolation. Not every week, but fairly frequently, many of our members came away from Zoom worship with the sense of a truly gathered meeting. Not everyone could or chose to participate in Zoom-based meetings for worship. Some adults and children who were on Zoom all week for work or school needed a break on the weekend. But as is discussed below, Zoom also enabled remote members, some who had been disconnected from the Meeting for years, to participate again. With the reopening of our meetinghouse over the last year, the challenge has been how to integrate this technology with the traditional in-person Meeting for Worship. As indicated in the section of this report below, it is a challenge that is not fully resolved.
In the past year our Meeting has made a good faith effort to find ways to create and strengthen the reality of a Beloved Community by fostering an environment in which members and attenders of all ages know they are loved, cared for, trusted and respected. Our Care and Visiting Committee makes a concerted effort to reach out to all Members to let people know they can find support in times of need. For those in the Meeting who are suffering from ill health or other challenges the committee as a whole provides meals and transportation as needed. This is also the committee that clears new applicants for membership and welcomes them into the Society of Friends.
One Friend in particular went to great (and generous) lengths to purchase and apply technology to enable people who are distant, disabled or worried about COVID-19 to participate in Meeting for Worship (and Meeting for Business) as equals with those who attend in person. Friends who live remotely (in Indiana, Illinois, Florida, Vermont, Maine, etc.) have expressed their deep appreciation for such remote access. One Friend who lives in Canada helped teach First Day School, and is now engaging in other committee work, remotely. One member who lived in Florida participated actively in both First Day and midweek worship meetings until shortly before she died and had been particularly passionate in expressing appreciation for her ability to feel reconnected to our meeting. Other members are sufficiently disabled, ill, or elderly to find hybrid meetings helpful. Finally, Friends who have never been able to attend Meeting for Worship when on vacation have appreciated their ability to stay connected in this way.
Unfortunately, but perhaps not unexpectedly, some Meeting members have objected to the video screen, cameras and microphones in the meetinghouse that are needed to support hybrid meeting. Hearing that concern, our Worship & Ministry committee proposed an experiment: once a month, hold a non-hybrid, no electronics meeting in the meetinghouse and have a separate Zoom-only meeting for remote members and others not able to attend in person. Some like this arrangement and some do not; a few participants in the Zoom-only worship feel isolated from the in-person group. Our Worship & Ministry Committee and, indeed, the Meeting as a whole are seeking a way to resolve these issues to the satisfaction of as many as possible.
Even with growing attendance, a welcome influx of younger families, and spirited engagement with the world around us, Germantown Meeting still faces a number of challenges. Overall, our membership is aging. Some are moving to retirement communities, dealing with health issues, or caring for grandchildren, reducing the time and energy they have for meeting business. During the last 18 months a significant number of our long-time members have died: Rachel “Bay” Wilson, Sally Kennedy, Emily Woodward, Walton Burwell, Christopher Nicholson, Nancy Rhoads, Donna Anderton, Edwin Segal, Joanne Ford, Jean Sharpless and most recently Patricia Ambler. Their warm Quaker presence, their wisdom and their active support of the Meeting will be greatly missed. We very sadly acknowledge our loss. It is also with heavy hearts that we mourn the loss of one of our young members, Zachariah Julye, taken from his family and us long before his time due to senseless gun violence this past summer. Members and attenders have supported the family at the memorial service and through the hearings leading to a possible trial of the accused individual.
Filling the shoes of those no longer with us, both spiritually and organizationally, will not be easy. Our Standing Nominating Committee faces the ongoing challenge of filling committee roles, especially the role of committee clerks. However, our new, younger members are stepping up and proving to be interested and active participants.
In conclusion, we have great confidence that these challenges can be overcome, that the spirit and energy in the Friends of Germantown Monthly Meeting can heal the (minor!) divisions within our community, and that we can address the needs around us. The Society of Friends has always been a small community but unafraid to take stances and action on big, important issues including opposition to war and economic and social injustice. Our neighborhood, our city and our world face many problems. Germantown Friends are in the thick of it, so to speak. Progress and hope depend on us working individually, as a Meeting community, and in alliance or coalition with others to address the needs we see around us. With faith and guidance of the Spirit, we are up for the task!
Report accepted and approved by Germantown Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends at its April 9, 2023 Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business
