Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Interim Meeting: Getting a horse to drink

This past week­end I gave a talk at the Arch Street Meet­ing­house after the Inter­im Meet­ing ses­sions of Phi­ladle­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. Inter­im Meet­ing is the group that meets sort-of month­ly between year­ly meet­ing busi­ness sess­sions. In an ear­li­er blog post I called it “the estab­lish­ment” and I looked for­ward to shar­ing the new life of the blog­ging world and Con­ver­gent Friends with this group. I had been asked by the most excel­lent Stephen Dot­son to talk about “Find­ing Fel­low­ship Between Friends Thru The Inter­net.”

I was curi­ous to return to Inter­im Meet­ing, a group I served on about half a decade ago. As I sat in the meet­ing, I kept see­ing glimpses of issues that I planned to address after­wards in my talk: how to talk afresh about faith; how to pub­li­cize our activ­i­ty and com­mu­ni­cate both among our­selves and with the out­side world; how to engage new and younger mem­bers in our work.

Turns out I did­n’t get the chance. Only half a dozen or so mem­bers of Inter­im Meet­ing stuck around for my pre­sen­ta­tion. No announce­ment was made at the end of ses­sions. None of the senior staff were there and no one from the long table full of clerks, alter­nate clerks and alter­nate alter­nate clerks came. Eleven peo­ple were at the talk (includ­ing some who had­n’t been at Inter­im Meet­ing). The inti­ma­cy was nice but it was hard­ly the “take it to the estabish­ment” kind of event I had imagined.

The talk itself went well, despite or maybe because of its inti­ma­cy. I had asked Seth H (aka Chron­i­cler) along for spir­i­tu­al sup­port and he wrote a nice review on Quak­erQuak­er. Steve T, an old friend of mine from Cen­tral Philly days, took some pic­tures which I’ve includ­ed here. I videoed the event, though it will need some work to tight­en it down to some­thing any­one would want to watch online. The peo­ple who attend­ed want­ed to attend and asked great ques­tions. It was good work­ing with Stephen Dot­son again in the plan­ning. I would wish that more Philadel­phia Friends had more inter­est in these issues but as indi­vid­u­als, all we can do is lead a horse to water. In the end, the year­ly meet­ing is in God’s hands.


Below are obser­va­tions from Inter­im Meet­ing and how the Con­ver­gent Friends move­ment might address some of the issues raised. Let me stress that I offer these in love and in the hope that some hon­est talk might help. I’ve served on Inter­im Meet­ing and have giv­en a lot of time toward PYM over the last twen­ty years. This list was for­ward­ed by email to senior staff and I present them here for oth­ers who might be con­cerned about these dynamics.

 

GENERATIONAL FAIL:

There were about seventy-five peo­ple in the room for Inter­im Meet­ing ses­sions. I was prob­a­bly the third or fourth youngest. By U.S. cen­sus def­i­n­i­tions I’m in my eighth year of mid­dle age, so that’s real­ly sad. That’s two whole gen­er­a­tions that are large­ly miss­ing from PYM lead­er­ship. I know I should­n’t be sur­prised; it’s not a new phe­nom­e­non. But if you had told me twen­ty years ago that I’d be able to walk into Inter­im Meet­ing in 2010 and still be among the youngest, well… Well, frankly I would have uttered a choice epi­thet and kicked the Quak­er dust from my shoes (most of my friends did). I know many Friends bod­ies strug­gle with age diver­si­ty but this is par­tic­u­lar­ly extreme.

WHAT I WANTED TO TELL INTERIM MEETING: About 33% of Quak­erQuak­er’s audi­ence is GenX and 22% are Mil­lenials. If Inter­im Meet­ing were as diverse as Quak­erQuak­er there would have been 16 YAFs (18 – 35 year olds) and 25 Friends 35 and 49 years of age. I would have been about the 29th youngest in the room – mid­dle aged, just where I should be! Quak­erQuak­er has an age diver­si­ty that most East Coast Friends Meet­ings would die for. If you want to know the inter­ests and pas­sions of younger Friends, Quak­er blogs are an excel­lent place to learn. There are some very dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tion­al and style dif­fer­ences at play (my post sev­en years ago, a post from Mic­ah Bales this past week).


DECISION-MAKING

 

The first part of the ses­sions was run with what’s called a “Con­sent Agen­da,” a leg­isla­tive mea­sure where mul­ti­ple agen­da items are approved en masse. It rests on the ide­al­is­tic notion that all seventy-five atten­dees has come to ses­sions hav­ing read every­thing in the quarter-inch pack­et mailed to them (I’ll wait till you stop laugh­ing). Inter­im Meet­ing lumped thir­teen items togeth­er in this man­ner. I sus­pect most Friends left the meet­ing hav­ing for­got­ten what they had approved. Most edu­ca­tors would say you have to rein­force read­ing with live inter­ac­tion but we bypassed all of that in the name of efficiency.

WHAT I WANTED TO TELL INTERIM MEETING: Quak­er blogs are won­der­ful­ly rich sources of dis­cus­sion. Com­ments are often more inter­est­ing than the orig­i­nal posts. Many of us have writ­ten first drafts of pub­lished arti­cles on our blogs and then pol­ished them with feed­back received in the com­ments. This kind of com­mu­ni­ca­tion feed­back is pow­er­ful and does­n’t take away from live meeting-time. There’s a ton of pos­si­bil­i­ties for shar­ing infor­ma­tion in a mean­ing­ful way out­side of meetings.


MINUTES OF WITNESS

 

Two “min­utes” (a kind of Quak­er statement/press release) were brought to ses­sions. Both were vet­ted through a lengthy process where they were approved first by month­ly and then quar­ter­ly meet­ings before com­ing before Inter­im Meet­ing. A minute on Afghanistan was nine months old, a response to a troop lev­el announce­ment made last Decem­ber; one against Mar­cel­lus Shale drilling in Penn­syl­va­nia was undat­ed but it’s a top­ic that peaked in main­stream media five months ago. I would have more appre­ci­a­tion of this cum­ber­some process if the min­utes were more “sea­soned” (well-written, with care tak­en in the dis­cern­ment behind them) but there was lit­tle in either that explained how the issue con­nect­ed with Quak­er faith and why we were lift­ing it up now as con­cern. A senior staffer in a small group I was part of lament­ed how the min­utes did­n’t give him much guid­ance as to how he might explain our con­cern with the news media. So here we were, approv­ing two out-of-date, hard-to-communicate state­ments that many IM reps prob­a­bly nev­er read.

WHAT I WANTED TO TELL INTERIM MEETING: Blog­ging gives us prac­tice in talk­ing about spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Com­menters chal­lenge us when we take rhetor­i­cal short­cuts or make assump­tions or trade on stereo­types. Most Quak­er blog­gers would tell you they’re bet­ter writ­ers now than when they start­ed their blog. Spir­i­tu­al writ­ing is like a mus­cle which needs to be exer­cised. To be blunt­ly hon­est, two or three blog­gers could have got­ten onto Skype, opened a shared Google Doc and ham­mered out bet­ter state­ments in less than an hour. If we’re going to be approv­ing these kinds of thing we need to prac­tice and increase our spir­i­tu­al literacy.


THE ROLE OF COMMITTEES

 

The sec­ond part was Inter­im Meet­ing look­ing at itself. We broke into small groups and ask­ing three ques­tions: “What is the work of Inter­im Meet­ing,” “Are we sat­is­fied with how we do this now?” and “If we were to make changes, what would they be?.” I thought to myself that the rea­son I ever go to events like this is to see dear Friends and to see what sparks of life are hap­pen­ing in the year­ly meet­ing. As our small group went around, and as small groups shared after­wards, I real­ized that many of the peo­ple in the room seemed to agree: we were hun­gry for the all-to-brief moments where the Spir­it broke into the reg­i­ment­ed Quak­er process.

One star­tling tes­ti­mo­ni­al came from a mem­ber of the out­reach com­mit­tee. She explained that her com­mit­tee, like many in PYM, is an admin­is­tra­tive one that’s not sup­posed to do any out­reach itself – it’s all sup­posed to stay very “meta.” They recent­ly decid­ed to have a pic­nic with no busi­ness sched­uled and there found them­selves “going rogue” and talk­ing about out­reach. Her spir­it rose and voice quick­ened as she told us how they spent hours dream­ing up out­reach projects. Of course the out­reach com­mit­tee wants to do out­reach! And with state PYM is in, can we real­ly have a dozen peo­ple sequestered away talk­ing about talk­ing about out­reach. Should­n’t we declare “All hands on deck!” and start doing work? It would have been time well spent to let her share their ideas for the next thir­ty min­utes but of course we had to keep mov­ing. She fin­ished quick­ly and the excite­ment leaked back out of the room.


FOLLOW-UP THOUGHTS AND THE FUTURE OF THE YEARLY MEETING

 

Now I need to stress some things. I had some great one-on-one con­ver­sa­tions in the breaks. A lot of peo­ple were very nice to me and gave me hugs and asked about fam­i­ly. These are a com­mit­ted, hope­ful group of peo­ple. There was a lot of faith in that room! Peo­ple work hard and serve faith­ful­ly. But it feels like we’re trapped by the sys­tem we our­selves cre­at­ed. I want­ed to share the excite­ment and direct­ness of the Quak­er blog­ging world. I want­ed to share the robust­ness of com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­niques we’re using and the pow­er of dis­trib­uted pub­lish­ing. I want­ed to share the new spir­it of ecu­men­ti­cal­ism and cross-branch work that’s happening.

I’ve been vis­it­ing local Friends Meet­ings that have half the atten­dance they did ten years ago. Some have trou­ble break­ing into the double-digits for Sun­day morn­ing wor­ship and I’m often the youngest in the room, bring­ing the only small kids. I know there are a hand­ful of thriv­ing meet­ings, but I’m wor­ried that most are going to have close their doors in the next ten to twen­ty years.

I had hoped to show how new com­mu­ni­ca­tion struc­tures, the rise of Con­ver­gent Friends and the seek­ers of the Emerg­ing Church move­ment could sig­nal new pos­si­bil­i­ties for Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. Toward the end of Inter­im Meet­ing, some Friends bemoaned our lack of resources and clerk Thomas Swain remind­ed them that with God there is no lim­i­ta­tion and noth­ing is impos­si­ble. Some of the things I’m see­ing online are the impos­si­ble come to life. Look at Quak­erQuak­er: an unstaffed online mag­a­zine run­ning off of a $50/month bud­get and get­ting 10,000 vis­its a month. It’s not any­thing I’ve done, but this com­mu­ni­ty that God has brought togeth­er and the tech­no­log­i­cal infra­struc­ture that has allowed us to coor­di­nate so eas­i­ly. It’s far from the only neat project out there and there are a lot more on the draw­ing boad. Some year­ly meet­ings are engag­ing with these new pos­si­bilites. But mine appar­ent­ly can’t even stay around for a talk.

11 thoughts on “Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Interim Meeting: Getting a horse to drink

  1. Well, you know you’ve got my sympathy!!!

    Some­times it’s painful that God works slow­ly; but that’s the way to do it right.

    May it be like some­thing Sufi Sam Lewis wrote:

    “I feel like a gar­den­er who plant­ed a bunch of seeds and noth­ing came up; and again the next year he plant­ed a bunch more seeds and noth­ing came up, and again the next year more seeds with the same result; and so on and so on. And then this year, he plant­ed a bunch of seeds; not only did they all come up, but all the seeds from the pre­vi­ous year came up and all the seeds from the year before, and so on. So I’ve just been fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to har­vest all the plants until Allah came to me and said, ‘Don’t wor­ry. Har­vest what you can and leave the rest to Me.’ ”

  2. I haven’t got­ten involved yet with Bal­ti­more Year­ly Meet­ing, but I expect it looks pret­ty sim­i­lar. In my month­ly meet­ing I notice that there are a num­ber of women between 30 and 50 (most of them moms) grad­u­al­ly tak­ing on more and more lead­er­ship roles. Most of their hus­bands don’t attend and only 2 or 3 take any roles in meet­ing. Very few oth­er adults in this age group.

  3. I believe that sit­u­a­tion is reflect­ed in many meet­ings also​.In a meet­ing for wor­ship with atten­tion to busi­ness I attend­ed (or maybe its the oth­er way around) that was the case, but I’d say the meet­ing did­n’t have any­one under fifty.I guess I won­der why those who are the “estab­lish­ment” don’t show much inter­est? Hon­est­ly I have had more sense of com­mu­ni­ty with the online Quak­erQuak­er then I have anywhere.There have been things I ques­tioned that oth­er Quak­ers were forth­com­ing in explain­ing their lead​ing​.My beliefs have been tak­en seri­ous­ly, even if not shared or agreed with.I have not been con­de­scend­ed to.Anne Stansell

  4. Friend speaks my mind! Thanks so much for that pre­sen­ta­tion and for this follow-up! I’m going to share it with oth­ers in the office here, so that they’re more aware of the dis­cus­sion that is hap­pen­ing out­side the year­ly meet­ing structures.

    1. Hi Stephen: I had meant to send you an email as I post­ed this but it end­ed up being one of those 5‑minute good inten­tions that nev­er quite hap­pened!… The orig­i­nal ver­sion of this was about twice as long and fleshed out the “glimpses of issues that I planned to address after­wards in my talk.” Maybe I’ll send it along. 

  5. A friend once asked me if Quak­ers were still rel­e­vant. I said we have always been small in num­ber for the amaz­ing work that gets gen­er­at­ed by Friends. How­ev­er, I am begin­ning to won­der if our con­nec­tion to the Divine is fad­ing or if our insti­tu­tions are like oth­er orga­ni­za­tions and strug­gling to adapt to a very rapid­ly chang­ing environment.
    There are those, par­tic­u­lar­ly on nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tees, who are aware of this issue. Our YM’s and Friends orga­ni­za­tions need younger Friends on our com­mit­tees and boards. We are look­ing into as I write with­in BYM. It would be nice if this were an FGC work­shop next year and tak­en on the road to YM’s, QM, and MM.

    1. Fun­ny, but every now and then, I come across some writ­ing by an ear­ly Friend… or writ­ing by a con­tem­po­rary Friend about ear­ly Friends… and a num­ber of them point to very sim­i­lar questions:

      Is our faith’s con­nec­tion to the Divine as strong as it once was?

      Why are there so many Friends who think that “good ideas” [aka “notions”] are the same as Divine­ly inspired leadings?

      Why does it seem as if only a few indi­vid­ual Friends are doing so much of the work?

      In fact, when I feel down-and-out about the cur­rent state of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, I often start read­ing some of the ear­li­er Friends, and I take heart: while it may be true that the more things change, the more they stay the same, but this time, it’s MY turn to either be part of God’s mes­sage or not. 

      Quak­er blogs and the friend­ships that have emerged from them have helped me stay faith­ful and lov­ing, despite the flaws that exist with­in our modern-day faith community.

      Bless­ings,
      Liz Opp, The Good Raised Up

      1. @Liz — Thanks for the reminder… Stephen Crisp’s Jour­nal and Let­ters of admo­ni­tion always pull me back to the real­iza­tion that ear­ly Friends also had chal­lenges of discipline. 

  6. I had a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence com­ing to Philadel­phia YM at the age of 40 some­thing, after serv­ing as clerk of a Half-Yearly Meet­ing in Cana­da. I was over 50 when I was asked to serve on Inter­im (then rep­re­sen­ta­tive) meet­ing. (Is 50 the new “age of majority?”) 

    The younger (40 – 50 some­thing — now 60 – 70 some­thing) Friends with whom I began to serve aren’t around any more. Some are active in spir­i­tu­al endeav­ors out­side PYM — or felt dis­missed when they sug­gest­ed greater spir­i­tu­al ground­ing to the point where they left Friends. 

    A cou­ple of years ago, I felt I had a call­ing to the nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tee… I know quite a few younger Friends, and began to sug­gest names. The only Friend who even­tu­al­ly was invit­ed to serve on a stand­ing com­mit­tee was a well known Friend’s grand­son… For oth­ers, “do they have enough expe­ri­ence the the com­plex­i­ties of PYM?” Per­haps we might have a sim­pler struc­ture…? Oth­er Year­ly Meet­ings seem to do well enough with­out the num­bers of com­mit­tees and work­ing groups and staff. (I yearn for the days of Inter­moun­tain Friends Gath­er­ing, which I encoun­tered when I first came to Friends in my 20s.)

    I have stepped down from com­mit­tee ser­vice for a time. I can encour­age folks in oth­er ways to bet­ter effect, I hope… That, too is in God’s hands. I may come back on to nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tee after a year or so, but at the moment, it does not seem right­ly ordered. 

    And I real­ly like the Sufi image of the seeds all com­ing up at once. 

    1. @Christine: I did­n’t real­ize that this phe­nom­e­non was such a long­stand­ing Philadel­phia tra­di­tion. It is out­right ageism. And it’s short-sighted. 

      Nepo­tism is the rule rather than the excep­tion when it comes to ask­ing younger Friends t serv­er. Almost every­one under 40 who I saw involved in FGC com­mit­tees was the child of a well-known Friend. That’s an incred­i­bly nar­row pool and does­n’t pro­vide much diver­si­ty of expe­ri­ence (espe­cial­ly impor­tant when we con­sid­er out­reach). When­ev­er some young­ster came on the scene, Julie would sar­cas­ti­cal­ly ask “who’s kid is it?” While this sounds like cyn­i­cism, the fact that I could give her an answer her nine times out of ten made it just reality. 

      In my twenty-four years of involve­ment with Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing, I have been con­tact­ed by Nom­i­na­tions once – about five years ago. No one could ade­quate­ly explain what the com­mit­tee actu­al­ly did. It’s kind of sad that so many involved Friends are just put the work into these lay­ers of bureau­cra­cy. PYM is tiny by the stan­dards of reli­gious insti­tu­tions. Sure­ly we can be engaged in more direct work.

      1. @Martin — Well, thee has only four years’ more expe­ri­ence here than I do. Per­haps the rea­sons are not so appar­ent to those of us from “away”… either geo­graph­i­cal­ly or spiritually. 

        I came to Inter­moun­tain Friends Gath­er­ing at a very good time… The meet­ing I attend­ed was pop­u­lat­ed by folks from the east (or Britain), and the meet­ing that had met in my under­grad advi­sor’s liv­ing room out­grew that, then out­grew (with­in about 2 – 5 years) the mod­est build­ing north of town — now expanded. 

        Old­er (40 – 50 year old) Friends not only took peo­ple to lunch, they invit­ed them home for lunch — after which we spent after­noons alter­nate­ly ask­ing ques­tions, going for hikes, or tak­ing care of the kids — some­times all three at once. That pat­tern was con­tin­ued in Cana­di­an Year­ly Meeting. 

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