Notes from Monthly Meeting for Business 7/27/05

A Quaker Ministry Workshop will be held in October at our Meeting. It will be run by Jan Wood, who is a professional consultant to Quaker meetings.  Meeting approved payment of $300 towards the Workshop.  It has been suggested that the Meeting create a Hospitality Committee to serve at various functions of the Meeting, especially funerals.  First Day School will begin the Fall Session on September 25.  It has been suggested that this be also Group Photo Op for the Meeting.  An overnight visit to Durham Meeting for First Day School Children is being planned.  Peter wants to concentrate on Quaker Education for all of us this winter.  Peace & Social Concerns has received a thank you letter from Annie D for money to purchase looms for the Fairloom Project.  There will be a Fairloom booth at a cultural bazaar at Tiverton Four Corners on August 6th and 7th.   Meeting approved annual donation of $200 to Inter-Church Council.  A Roll Call Meeting is scheduled for February of 2006.  All members should plan to attend.   Yearly Meeting begins August 6th.  This session will discuss changing Yearly Meeting sessions for the better.  Peter will be leading a workshop on vocal ministry.   The Cemetery Committee policy of allowing non-members to be buried in exceptional cases is causing problems; how do we define exceptional. The Committee would appreciate our input in this matter.

 

We Hold in the Light…

Virginia M at home.

Gordon P at home.

Chet W in Charlton awaiting surgery.

Sharon W illness.

Cheryl G and Family on the death of her Mother.

 

To all who knew Kitty Stern, a former member of North Dartmouth Meeting and now of New Bedford Meeting, and lives in Pennsylvania, Tom Stern, her husband, notified New Bedford Friends that Kitty has passed away.

Some Characteristics of Vital Friends Meetings

What can you say about your Meeting - is it an "experimental station of the spiritual life?" Is it a laboratory of Christian living? Is it an oasis in the spiritual desert of our times? Is it a training ground for committed and concerned Friends? Is it a sample of what the Religious Society of Friends, at its best, preaches and practices? In short, is it a vital Friends Meeting?

Possible Marks of a Vital Friends Meeting
A place of Spiritual Power and Impact
What happens to your members and attenders as a result of their participation in your Meeting and in the other activities of your group? Are their lives modified, changed, radically altered? Are their values reexamined? Are their expectations stretched? Is their faith strengthened? Are their family and/or job relationships improved? Do they care more, love more?...are several of your members and attenders more disturbed now than they were a few months ago about conditions in your community, our nation or in the wider world - and are they finding ways in which they can do something about their concerns, individually and/or collectively? Have they discovered or rediscovered the horizontal as well as the vertical relationships in religion - specifically Quakerism?

Leonard S. Kenworthy
Quakerism: A Study Guide on the Religious Society of Friends

 

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