At Annual Sessions this year, the clerk shared the news that General Secretary Christie Duncan-Tessmer will be leaving her position in July 2025. A search committee is forming, a plan is in place, and there is a year for transition. Read on for Christie’s resignation letter below this note from Melissa Rycroft, Presiding Clerk.
In her decade as General Secretary, Christie Duncan-Tessmer exemplified servant leadership. Christie focused on PYM as a “We.” She understood how to take the gifts, skills, talents and dreams of the whole body and helped US become our best selves. She sees herself as a person who helped us do these things; she didn’t do these things on her own. From generously cooking for everyone to taking meticulous notes, she did an exceptional job modeling the type of leader that can work with and for everyone—monthly meetings, quarterly meetings, and staff alike—towards a common goal, utilizing everyone’s strengths.
Qualities that she has brought to the role and gifts she has shared with us:
Visionary—Christie can see ways to help the yearly meeting function, skillfully figuring out how the parts of the yearly meeting can operate differently, but work towards the same goals. For example, her efforts on the Strategic Directions and Implementation Plan were key to helping the yearly meeting understand and accomplish our objectives. The Powerpoints and presentations she’s built to explain and expand our work have proven to be incredibly useful tools, both for those familiar with our shared work and those who are encountering it for the first time.
Strategic—Christie is an exceptional listener, many times capturing the essence of a message more clearly than it was originally expressed. In so many meetings she’s listened attentively, taken copious notes, and returned with a plan that summarizes and encapsulates the fundamental aspects of the previous conversation. She hears our dreams and turns them into possibilities. In one clerks group meeting, we brainstormed for almost three hours. Over our next few gatherings, she presented a cohesive, comprehensive plan that incorporated the best of our ideas.
Generous—Christie is generous with her time, attention, and hospitality. On many occasions she’s focused not just on how to gather people together, but also on how to make sure they are cared for. From the very first council retreat at Burlington Meetinghouse, Christie cared for us by preparing food, instigating a rousing game of Exploding Kittens, and offering opportunities for us to socialize. Her generosity made it possible for me to be a presiding clerk from Upper Susquehanna Quarter – without her willingness to host me in her home, I don’t know how I could have served the yearly meeting from 175 miles away. During a Phillies game, her family gave up the TV room so my partner and could sleep, even though it was the playoffs. I didn’t realize until later that her family watched on a laptop together, instead of the big screen tv.
Faithful—While it could be easy to become task-focused in our yearly meeting work, Christie continually draws us back to Spirit and reminds us to reflect ourselves as a faith community, even when we are immersed in administrative business. She has crafted many of the charges for our committees and sprints, making sure to ground us in our faith community and shared spiritual life.
It has been a privileged to witness Christie’s thoughtful, reflective, and spiritually grounded approach to leading Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
Melissa Rycroft
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
Clerk
She/Her/Hers
On the ancestral lands of the Susquehannock
June 14, 2024
Dear Melissa,
I’m writing to follow up on the conversation we’ve had about the end of my service as general secretary and to formally tend my resignation from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. My targeted final date will be July 31, 2025.
It is a privilege to go to work every day expecting to worship, knowing that everything we do as a community is to live into God’s call to us, and being accompanied by Friends who are authentic and have amazing gifts to share. At a recent first meeting of a sprint, the participants were asked to share how their faith shows up in in their walk in the world. Friends shared stories of connection, healing, wholeness, truth, artistic expression, and family legacy – and that was a normal day at work at PYM.
In the last ten years we have midwifed a shared vision of where we are called to go together. We have developed structures that help us get things done such as threads that focus us on the core ministries of our meetings and sprints that make space for people who have enormous gifts to participate for a short period of time. We have an understanding of the yearly meeting as the community of all the Friends and meetings in our geographic region, along with their ministries. We have created and evolved a governance form that is able to care for the needs of the community while encouraging the ministry of Friends. We have struggled – and continue to struggle – as we seek ways to be a place of belonging for all Friends on this path and as we figure out how to be faithful servants together and to trust one another and God. It has been a very rich decade, filled with gifts, emotions and challenges.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to have worked with you, the clerks group, our councils and community members. I’ve appreciated every Sunday that I’ve worshiped with meetings across our geography. I’ve loved collaborating with the staff to create programs, support and community. Just as we’ve been able to do the work we’ve done because the previous general secretary and Friends created a strong platform to serve from, the solid ground we’ve constructed will support the next general secretary in accompanying our religious community in its next steps.
The coming year gives us plenty of time to prepare and transition. At the end of sessions next year I look forward to, as my predecessor said, a promotion to being a member of the community again.
In faith,
Christie
