List of some of Janet Lamborn’s (clerk of Reading Meeting) thoughts:
- Only 40 members, including 2 new ones, only about ½ are active;
- Most Sundays we are lucky to be crowded with as many as 20 attenders and members at Worship, a few times we have had 25 people, last Sundy we had 9 Quakers in person, and 8 adults & 2 children on the screen with zoom;
- Committed to having hybrid worship every Sunday;
- We live in 3 states and some people are often homebound;
- After months of discussion, we decided that we will close 6th Street Meetinghouse and worship at Maidencreek Meetinghouse from Father’s Day to Labor Day weekend;
- The question was: which is more important: having a presence in downtown Reading or keeping our community together in one physical location alongside the zoomers;
- If at 2 locations, we would need zoom equipment at both locations;
- We are struggling with being a small Meeting instead of a large one, such as being large enough to support 2 worships at the same at 2 different locations, as we have for decades traditionally, and still have a good sense of community;
- We are blessed with a family with 2 young children and their young cousins come that to the Meetinghouse on several Sundays, but this joy comes with the problem of having enough Sunday school teachers;
- The memorial for Nan Morrisey is on what would have been her 93rd birthday, June 3;
- The memorial for Rick Githens is June 10th;
- Keep in mind that 2 of our so called “younger” members are now qualified to order from the senior menu at local restaurants;
- During the past several months, we have considered several Queries that examine what it is meant by “the sense of the Meeting” and Unity vs Consensus;
- We have been in engaged in some community building activities such as “Friendly knitters’ and the book club and especially “Exploring our Beliefs;”
- We have explored Arthur Larrabee’s 9 core beliefs and the SPICES;
- Hopefully community building will continue with these activities and others;
- We enjoy having opening exercises at the beginning of worship, but for some Sundays, we are not able to find volunteers that found something to share;
- At Maidencreek, the future of the care taker’s cottage, formerly a school house, is in jeopardy, is spending $40,000 improve and/or repair it a good investment?;
- Our treasurer, Ann Bodnyk, has retired from this position after at least 10 years of service, we very much appreciate her hard work, innovation, and dedication;
- Traditionally, our Treasurer has taken on several odd jobs as part of Treasurer’s job. We are currently dividing these jobs up among other people;
- One of the odd jobs is answering the Meeting phone, phone calls to RMM will no longer be forward to the treasurer, but to another member.
- We have outsourced/contracted the bookkeeping portion of the job to an accountant,
- Upon approval of May’s Meeting for worship with attention to business, we will establish a Contact person that will be the liaison between the bookkeeper, RMM and other organizations, this person will deposit checks, pay the bookkeeper, and a few other tasks, for this new position, the volunteer must be a RMM member, and the official title will be Treasurer. (Although this person plans to remain recording clerk for QM, he will sooner or later step down as RMM’s recording clerk, [Becky Ross has volunteered,] John Hayden I believe you already have Jim’s contact information.)
