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? What other concerns and initiatives has your meeting been led to address this past year?
Moorestown Friends Meeting (MFM) experienced a strong call to address anti-racism in spring 2020. Led by two young adult Friends, we approved an anti-racism working group, and elevated that to a standing committee at the end of 2020. The Anti-Racism Committee (XRC) has sponsored bi-monthly Let’s Talk About Race sessions that have ranged from informal ‘rap sessions’ about personal experiences, with four participants, to guest talks from a range of speakers that have attracted as many as 40 participants. We have publicized Let’s Talk on PYM’s events calendar, in our weekly email bulletin, and through a custom emailing list and have drawn participation from far outside our monthly meeting. The workload has been borne by a small number of F/friends, and building greater active involvement in organizing events may require attention from the committee and wider meeting.
Our Religious Education and Spiritual Nurture Committees have provided a course of four Adult Religious Education sessions drawing from FCNL’s ‘Dismantling the Racism-Militarism Paradigm’ work and publication. These classes meet on Sunday mornings, following meeting for worship, and draw participation from people who may not be involved with XRC’s Let’s Talk events on Thursday evenings. Friends have suggested that more direct action, including prioritizing identifying and using vendors and service providers from communities of color, is appropriate. People with time and energy would be needed to commit to that effort.
As to climate justice, stewardship of one of our two meetinghouses currently requires a considerable master planning effort with the potential for significant renovations. As part of that, our working group is considering installing solar panels. Our Mount Laurel Meetinghouse caretakers endeavor to use native plants in their landscaping and minimize harmful effects of the care of a generous lawn and wooded area. MFM’s Witness in the World Support Committee (WitWSC) provides a monthly Call to Action in our bulletin email, which has occasionally invited F/friends to engage with environmental issues. Otherwise, Moorestown Meeting has not yet taken up climate justice as a body, though individual members and attenders are engaged.
A small group of Moorestown F/friends, as noted above, have undertaken a considerable effort in developing a master plan for care of our 220-year old Moorestown Meetinghouse. They have generously engaged in extensive research, planning, and other work on this multi-year project. The planning working group was laid down in 2020, and an implementation working group raised up. Through announcements and conversation following MFW, WitWSC monthly Calls to Action, Adult Religious Education, and general announcements in our weekly bulletin, Moorestown F/friends have shared witness and practical ideas on various concerns including Afghan refugee support, women’s rights, economic justice and peacebuilding.
How has your meeting evolved as a spiritual community given the ongoing opportunities and challenges of the pandemic?
Our Spiritual Nurture Committee (SNC) polled members and attenders regarding these questions, and most of those responding felt that MFM F/friends have become spiritually closer to each other. Several also agreed that the meeting has become more spirit-focused. We acknowledge, however, that those who are feeling more distant are unlikely to respond to polls. One F/friend expressed the dichotomy this way: “I think we’ve lost some engagement with people who don’t like the COVID policies, but the group that remains, and has extended via online worship, is stronger, closer.” We have discussed means of bringing more people into our community, and especially our worship, in ways that are effective for them, and need to follow up on these discussions with action.
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? – Faith and Practice p. 214
MFM offers worship sessions on Sunday mornings – currently in person at our Mount Laurel Meetinghouse, and in-person at our Moorestown Meetinghouse with virtual participants joining via Zoom – and on Wednesday evenings with virtual worship sharing. Throughout 2020, we consistently communicated twice weekly, with a brief worship reminder early in the week, and a longer ‘bulletin’ on Fridays that includes a weekly meditation/quote or queries and a reflection or query for the Wednesday worship sharing. Those meditations are also available on our website.
In 2020, our Religious Education and Spiritual Nurture Committees used William Taber’s ‘Four Doors to Meeting for Worship’ as the basis of a series of classes. F/friends who engaged with this work found it enriched worship preparation.
Our committee meetings, Let’s Talk sessions and Adult Religious Education classes all engage F/friends in worshipful attention to our witness and business. Our Religious Education Committee has sponsored two intergenerational, Saturday evening Game Nights via Zoom that some F/friends have found spiritually connective. Our First Day classes and activities for children support our youngest F/friends development of a worship practice.
Our Spiritual Nurture Committee recognizes the value of continuing to consider means by which we might engage further in this effort. What is most needed to strengthen the communal witness of the meeting to the local community and beyond? – Faith and Practice p. 214
With a prompted response in our poll, F/friends chose ‘an end to restrictions on gathering in person,’ ‘a greater degree of commitment to the importance of communal witness,’ and ‘innovative ideas to enable us to engage without gathering in person’ in almost equal numbers. We review these replies with two important contexts: 1. Our meetinghouses were temporarily closed due to the pandemic resurgence at the time of the survey; and 2. Our respondents are necessarily people comfortable with online tools and digital communications. Our Anti-Racism Committee has been, perhaps, our most successful vehicle for outreach beyond our meetinghouses in the last two years. MFM may wish to consider extending the brief of its Community Building Committee to include developing innovative ways of strengthening the meeting community with digital or distanced events, and to include outreach beyond the meeting with non-Quakers. Is there a query (or queries) that your meeting would like to respond to that has not been included here? Please share it (or them) and your response.
Our members express faith in a wide variety of ways, and hold beliefs along a wide spectrum. Could our meeting do a better job of understanding and connecting with each other, exploring and understanding our differences, and celebrating our unity despite differences? Our Spiritual Nurture Committee would like to explore how we do so. A major query with which MFM has engaged in the past, but has set aside in recent years, is how we can support the long-term health of our community? Like most religious groups in 2022, our membership is heavily weighted toward people over 50, and we have very little involvement from people in their 20s and 30s. Additionally, while we have just over members and about another 100 attenders, our Sunday worship typically attracts fewer than 50 worshippers across two meetinghouses and Zoom. There is a core group of about 60 people who attend worship once a month or more.
This limited engagement with worship also expresses itself in engagement with volunteer leadership. We have over a dozen committees and working groups that would be well served by 80 to 90 F/friends. Currently, 54 members and attenders serve on committees and groups. Nine individuals serve on three or more committees (including one who clerks three committees), and filling our slate of officers poses challenges. Our meeting would be strengthened by having more people willing and able to engage in the work of the meeting. This may be addressed by sharing responsibilities differently than we do at present, so that clerking and other forms of participation are more possible for F/friends with busy schedules.
