Dear Friends,
Submit your state of the meeting report here!
Greetings from Quaker Life Council of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. How does the Truth prosper with your meetings? If you are ready to let your spirit shine out, we are ready to receive your spiritual self-assessments! Many thanks to those who have already submitted their report for this year! Anything we receive before May, we will be sure to include in our summary report for our yearly meeting community.
To submit a report, click on the above link or forward your report to zdutton@pym.org via email. You can also mail hard copies of your report to:
Quaker Life Council
c/o Zachary T Dutton
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
1515 Cherry St
Philadelphia, PA 19102
Last year, we began the transformed practice across our monthly meetings of performing spiritual self-assessments and sharing them with the Yearly Meeting at annual sessions. Quaker Life Council compiled a summary of these reports that was shared during the summer, and PYM staff has now posted all of these state of the meeting reports on the PYM website for all meetings to see. (Available at https://www.pym.org/category/state-of-the-meeting-report/, December 15, 2018). Read them! Rejoice in our full PYM Quaker community. You may find help for an issue that your meeting is facing in the way another meeting has handled a situation. You may find inspiration. You may find a different way that your meeting would like to do the Spiritual self-assessment this year after reading these.
Above all, we hope that you again focus on the Spirit in the process of assessing the Spirit. We encourage you to have the process be rich and energizing, rather than depleting. I have included the Faith and Practice guidelines which outlines a process you may choose to undertake. However, do not hesitate to be creative in your process and in your reports. If your meeting needs more worship, do your assessment in worship. If you need to know your hard numbers or want to write an intellectually based historical report, go for it. If your meeting sews in the Spirit, do your spiritual assessment in a quilt. Write songs or stories together if you would like, or play games and share back the rules of how to play that makes your community shine. We can receive videos, pictures, written reports, whatever you would like to share that captures your meeting’s Spirit. Make it a good and rewarding experience for your meeting, because this is done for you and for the Spirit of our whole PYM.
We, the Friends in Quaker Life Council extend our love to you and your meetings. We want our Spirits to shine together. Thank you for holding us in the light as we do our work, we are doing the same for you. Please know that we are here to help nurture your Spiritual growth. Call on us if you think we might be able to help. We are so glad that your meeting is a part of PYM and we are thankful to be serving you.
Here is the Faith and Practice Section on Conducting Spiritual Self-Assessments:
When early Friends met one another, they would ask “How does the Truth prosper with thee?” rather than asking “How are you?” They wanted to know about each other’s spiritual condition and relationship with the Divine.
Undertaking a prayerful assessment of the Friends meeting’s spiritual condition and needs and issuing a state-of-the-meeting report on a regular basis can provide a deep and meaningful opportunity that draws the community together. The meeting’s self-examination process may involve several steps. The meeting could begin with queries that address its spiritual strengths and weaknesses and also efforts to foster growth in the spiritual life of each member and of the meeting as a whole. The meeting may use the queries suggested below; it may use selections from the general queries above; it may decide to use queries from some other source; or it may formulate its own queries. The meeting may charge one of its standing committees, such as worship and ministry, or an ad-hoc group to prepare a response to the chosen queries or to oversee a process of gathering information more widely in the meeting from which to prepare a response. In the latter case, the committee may hold discussions with committee clerks, the meeting’s young Friends, or new attenders, for example; or it could conduct worship sharing by small groups within the meeting or by the meeting as a whole. The committee will prepare a draft report in a format that is most helpful to the meeting. The report is then submitted to the meeting for discussion and approval.
After approval by the monthly meeting, the meeting may agree to share its spiritual self-assessment with other meetings.
Suggested Queries for a Spiritual Self-assessment of the Meeting:
· What practices and strategies are employed by our meeting to help members and attenders of all ages prepare for worship—whether in meeting for worship or in meeting for business?
· What are the challenges to and opportunities for enhancing the worship of our meeting, and what are we doing to address these?
· What opportunities are provided to address topics important to deepening both personal spiritual journeys of members and the spiritual life of the meeting?
· What is most needed to strengthen the communal witness of the meeting to the local community and beyond?
· To what priorities does God call our meeting? How do our annual budget, our meeting’s standing committees and other aspects of the meeting’s life reflect those priorities?
Love,
Quaker Life Council (QLC)
Kate Bregman, Central Philadelphia Meeting (Philadelphia QM)
Amy Taylor Brooks, QLC Clerk, Birmingham Meeting (Concord QM)
Julia Carrigan, Mickelton Meeting (Salem QM)
Melanie Douty-Snipes, Fallsington Meeting (Bucks QM)
Gray Goodman, QLC Recording Clerk, Providence Meeting (Chester QM)
Bryn Hammarstrom, Wellsboro Meeting (Upper Susquehanna QM)
Ayesha Imani, Germantown Meeting (Philadelphia QM)
Cathleen Marion, Downingtown Meeting (Caln QM)
George Rubin, Medford Meeting (Haddonfield QM)
Anthony Stover, Germantown Meeting (Philadelphia QM)
