From Adria Gulizia’s series on dying meetings:
Finally, we might see dying meetings disinvest from their First Day School programs, as the needs of parents and children are tacitly acknowledged to be in competition with those of settled older adults. Those with power and longevity in the community ensure that their needs keep getting met, while increasingly neglecting those they are called to serve — children, those new to our faith, people in prison, people with disabilities and people who are struggling financially.
Friends instead spend their dwindling resources on internal priorities and the expenses associated with keeping a meetinghouse well-warmed, well-lit and well cared-for — even if there’s nobody in it.
When doing outreach, you have to focus less about the people in the meetinghouse and more on the people who would be joining if they knew we existed and were welcomed in. So too, I think, for our priorities in a shrinking meeting. It’s easy to turn inward and just keep the status-quo rolling. I see meetings in well-populated areas that are shrinking and not doing what they need to do to be more visible in their local community.
In the Shadow of Babylon
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