The Spiritual State of Wrightstown Monthly Meeting
March 2024
Using the queries suggested by the Ministry and Care Committee of PYM’s Quaker Life Council, Wrightstown Monthly Meeting has prepared the following report on the spiritual state of our Meeting in 2023-2024.
Perhaps our most significant achievement in the past year relates to reducing our carbon footprint. We have signed a contract to provide three of our buildings with electricity from a soon-to-be-installed rooftop solar energy system, and another to convert the Nursery School and Social Hall to geothermal energy. Both projects will be accomplished this spring. In several ways this work has been guided by the Spirit: for example, we’ve had a Spiritual Exploration Group meeting centered around the topic, guided by queries borrowed from Bristol (UK) Quaker Meeting.
In response to PYM’s specific queries, we offer the following:
1. How is Spirit moving in your worship, and how have you nurtured deep, Spirit-led vocal ministry?
• We have a solid core of attendees at each Meeting for Worship (around 20 – 25 people each week).
• Vocal ministry from members of previous generations is referenced with some regularity. As one member put it, Spirit-led worship is embedded “in the benches.”
• Vocal ministry is somewhat on the decline and mainly comes from a core group of elders. Newer attendees can find silence difficult and the concept of vocal ministry intimidating.
• During post-Meeting introductions, we have developed a robust tradition of sharing “afterthoughts” sparked by vocal ministry.
• We have rejuvenated our Spiritual Exploration Group (SEG), which meets monthly for 75 minutes before Meeting for Worship. It now has a hybrid (Zoom) option. These discussions provide opportunities for reflection in the Meetings for Worship that follow.
• For the past few months, at the rise of Meeting we have been singing together “As We Leave This Friendly Place.”
2. 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?
• Our Care and Counsel committee has done an excellent job of reaching out to keep current members and attenders connected.
• At holiday times, Care and Counsel members visit and send cards to members who haven’t been able to attend Meeting.
• We have enhanced our technology to improve the audio and visual experience linking our remote and in-person participants.
• Under the leadership of Care and Counsel, we have returned to holding different kinds of in-person events such as monthly “Meet and Eats” and occasional picnics.
• Our Carol Sing in December draws intergenerational attendance.
• Though we have no First Day School, several dedicated members do activities with any children and young people who show up on a given week.
• We’ve recreated our annual “progressive” dinner (which does not involve travel).
3. How have you sought to be neighbors and in relationship with other communities, and how have you been changed by these connections?
• We are planning a large, public celebration on May 4, 2024, to mark the Meeting’s 300th Anniversary. This has involved significant outreach to neighboring businesses and organizations as well as to local government. We hope to inspire and entertain those who attend while conveying our history and encouraging neighbors to worship with us.
• We continue to participate in providing the Penn’s Park Food Pantry with food, contributions, and helping hands.
• We have a vibrant Nursery School which interacts in the greater community in profound ways. We have sought to strengthen our bond with the Nursery School families by attending their events and inviting them to ours. We supported their work in starting a vegetable garden on the property, tended by Nursery School families during the summer.
• We have continued to provide part of our grounds to PDC Athletics for baseball tournaments and to the Middletown Grange for parking at its annual August event. In return, they have offered support for our 300th anniversary celebration.
• Post-pandemic, Alcoholics Anonymous and the Bucks County Folksong Society have returned to holding their meetings on our campus.
• In the summer of 2024, one of our Meeting members will launch Season of Friends, a six-week program for young children with autism. It will be housed in the Nursery School building.
4. How have you been called to address issues of social justice, inclusivity, and difference, both within your meeting and in the wider world?
• We are reducing our carbon footprint by making energy efficient improvements to three of our buildings, as described above.
• To mitigate the effects of climate change, we have actively been pursuing ways in which we can be greener stewards of our property by collecting our leaves to create compost, leaving some leaf litter to promote insect growth, converting some to wildflower meadow for pollinators, and explored mowing greener and/or less.
• In light of local acts of hatred and violence sparked by the Hamas-Israel war, early in 2024 we approved a Minute of Solidarity and Compassion for Communities in Crisis, specifically denouncing violence and standing in solidarity with marginalized groups. The statement is on WMM and BQM’s websites and was recently printed in the Bucks County Herald newspaper.
We continue to face a number of challenges:
• Although we have people with the required clearances providing childcare at Meeting for Worship, few children and young families have been attending Meeting. We still have no formal First Day School program because we continue to be unsuccessful in finding leadership to revive it.
• Our strategies for drawing Nursery School families into our worship and Meeting activities have had limited success.
• We would like to do better at providing literature and following up with new attenders at Meeting.
• We would like to increase participation in our work with the Penns Park Food Pantry.
• Some people would like the Meeting to be more active in advocating for social justice. Our Peace and Social Concerns committee has not been active.
• We would like to have more socialization after Meetings for Worship.
• We continue to struggle mightily to identify new, and younger, members and attenders willing to take on leadership roles. We have created a leadership “Clerks Team” (including presiding clerk, co-clerk/rising clerk, recording clerk, and assistant recording clerk). This model has great potential; we see that the duties can be naturally divided according to the gifts and leadings of the individual team members and that the job of clerk can become less burdensome. Nevertheless, finding the next generation of Clerks Team members and committee clerks is a major challenge.
Respectfully submitted,
Wrightstown Monthly Meeting Clerks Team
Irv Thompson, Jeff Cogshall, Alice Maxfield and Nancy Culleton
