Tag Archives ⇒ www.FGCquaker.org/gathering

Some pseudo-convergent outreach events at Gathering

June 30, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Those Quak­er Ranters read­ers who are com­ing to the “FGC Gathering”:www.FGCquaker.org/gathering but haven’t lost inter­net access yet might be inter­est­ed in some of the events the Advance­ment & Out­reach com­mit­tee is spon­sor­ing over the week. There will be a fly­er in the reg­is­tra­tion pack­ets (all these events will take place in Admin 203). For those not com­ing, I sus­pect I’ll have some sort of Gath­er­ing round-up post at some point after it’s all done. I’m also co-hosting a Mon­day night inter­est group with LizOpp and Robin: “On Fire! Renew­ing Quak­erism through a Con­ver­gence of Friends.” For details, see “Liz’s post”:http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2006/06/interest-group-at-gathering.html or “Robin’s post”:http://robinmsf.blogspot.com/2006/06/convergent-travels.html.

bq.. The FGC Advance­ment and Out­reach com­mit­tee is spon­sor­ing after­noon events dur­ing four days of Gath­er­ing. Come share your out­reach ideas, learn about FGC and sup­port the growth of Quakerism!
*All Friends Wel­come, 1:30 – 3:00*
Mon­day: “What Do Quak­ers Believe?” Come talk about the range of Quak­er beliefs, from Robert Bar­clay to the present day, and explore what binds us togeth­er as Friends. Con­vened by Deb­o­rah Haines.
Wednes­day: A spe­cial wel­come to Friends from Pacif­ic, North Pacif­ic and Inter­moun­tain Year­ly Meet­ings. Come talk about the spir­it, con­cerns, and Quak­er ways of these three inde­pen­dent year­ly meetings.
Thurs­day: Vis­i­tors from Free­dom Friends Church will join us to talk about the wit­ness of this unique inde­pen­dent evan­gel­i­cal Friends Church.
*Out­reach Hours, 3:15 – 4:15*
Sun­day: Vis­i­bil­i­ty. Inter­est­ed in pub­li­ciz­ing your meet­ing and get­ting the Quak­er mes­sage out into your com­mu­ni­ty? Friends are invit­ed to come share their sto­ries and ques­tions and pick up a free copy of our “Inreach-Outreach Pack­et for Small Meet­ings.” Jane Berg­er will host.
Mon­day: Iso­lat­ed Friends & New Wor­ship Groups. Learn about FGC’s new ser­vice for Friends and seek­ers who live far from any meet­ing or wor­ship group. Are you inter­est­ed in help­ing to nur­ture new wor­ship groups? Come find out what resources are avail­able from the FGC Advance­ment Com­mit­tee, and share your sto­ries and ideas.
Wednes­day: Friends inter­est­ed in affil­i­a­tion. FGC is an asso­ci­a­tion of 14 year­ly meet­ings and region­al groups and 9 direct­ly affil­i­at­ed month­ly meet­ings. A&O clerk Deb­o­rah Haines will talk about the work of FGC and the ben­e­fits of affiliation.
Thurs­day: Spir­i­tu­al Hos­pi­tal­i­ty. It’s easy to feel iso­lat­ed even with­in a local meet­ing. A&O coor­di­na­tor Mar­tin Kel­ley will talk about some strate­gies to over­come the iso­la­tions of age, the­ol­o­gy, race, lifestyle, etc. What can meet­ings do to help these Friends not feel isolated?

Sharing our Quaker event photos

June 1, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Over on the pho­to shar­ing ser­vice Flickr, I’m notic­ing a bunch of pho­tos from this week’s Britain Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sion. One con­trib­u­tor has tagged (labelled) all her pho­tos with “britainyearlymeeting06” which means they’re all avail­able on one page. Cool, but what would be even cool­er is if every Flickr user at the event used the same tag. We’d then have a near­ly real-time group pho­to essay of the year­ly meet­ing sessions.

So this year I’m going to tag all my per­son­al pho­tos from next mon­th’s Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence Gath­er­ing of Friends as “FGCgathering06″. I invite any oth­er Flickr-using atten­ders to do the same. While I do work at FGC, please note this is not any sort of offi­cial FGC deci­sion, it’s just my own idea to share pho­tos and to see how we can use these online net­works to share and pro­mote Quak­erism. In a few weeks you’ll start see­ing entries via flickr and tech­no­rati. I’ll prob­a­bly start with a few pic­tures of the book­store truck being loaded for its cross-country trek. Update: one embed­ded below.
Blog posts:
If your blog­ging sys­tem does­n’t sup­port the use of tags, then sim­ply add this line in the bot­tom of each of your Gathering-related posts:

Update: here’s one:

On the Web: Transmitting Quakerism and Being There for God

March 16, 2005
· Martin Kelley

Liz Oppen­heimer has post­ed an extra­or­di­nary account of how “Friends trans­mit­ted Quak­erism to her over time”:http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2005/03/Quakerism-from-generation-to.html. I find myself at a loss of words to sum it up – you have to read it for your­self and I strong­ly rec­om­mend you do. Here’s just the mer­est snippet:
bq. It took me years to under­stand that there was much, much more to Quak­erism than just meet­ing for wor­ship… I had yet to under­stand the con­cepts of cor­po­rate dis­cern­ment or Gospel Order or wait­ing on the Spir­it for guid­ance. None of my peers or spir­i­tu­al friends at the time were talk­ing with me about this stuff; and I have no rec­ol­lec­tion of any­one mak­ing the Quak­er decision-making process more explic­it at the time.
Liz will be offer­ing a work­shop at this year’s “FGC Gathering”:www.FGCQuaker.org/gathering. The descrip­tion sound­ed great but if this post is any­thing like the shar­ing that will go on in that work­shop, then you’ll want to be there.
In a sim­i­lar vein, the Con­trar­i­an Quak­er explains “I’m not here to be seen by men. I’m here to wor­ship God”:http://Quakerman.blogspot.com/2005/03/i‑go-along.html; “New peo­ple, as they walk in, are met with smiles and intro­duc­tions but by their sec­ond or third vis­it they end up stand­ing in the midst of a gab­bing throng com­plete­ly ignored after meet­ing for wor­ship… I sim­ply decid­ed that I was here to wor­ship God.”