Williamsburg Friends Meeting (WFM): Spiritual State of the Meeting Report, CY2003

Friends of Williamsburg Monthly Meeting have labored together in self-examination to report the spiritual state of our Meeting for the past year. We have found both strengths and weaknesses in our activities together and strive to report accurately on both.

Our most important fundamental activity, that of providing spiritual support and refreshment to all members and attendees, proceeds regularly twice weekly on each first day and each fourth day, though the midweek Meeting is typically less well attended than the first day service. Our members struggle with issues of time and commitment restraints that appear to be more and more a part of our national culture, though we recognize that the tension between material and spiritual activities has been an eternal human dilemma, and we strive to resolve these issues in favor of our spiritual development, with mixed success. Overall, we feel that we successfully provide our members the balanced opportunity to worship in both powerful silence, but with the benefit also of appropriate and meaningful vocal ministry. We all agree that the presence of prayerfulness in silence is the foundation of our worship together. We feel fortunate that our Meeting does not at this time suffer from inappropriate vocal ministry.

Our Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business is typically well attended, has good participation and thanks to some very committed, experienced and talented leadership, proceeds in good order. However, members note that follow-up is often faulty, due primarily to issues of understaffing noted below.

Our Spiritual Formation Group for the year has been small in number (5 members), but a powerful source of spiritual guidance and development for those participating. It is hoped that the Meeting as a whole has also benefited from these members’ increased spiritual awareness and commitment.

Members have made a conscientious effort in the past year to extend a welcome to newcomers, while at the same time taking care not to convey any kind of pressure, being mindful that some who come to Quaker Meeting for the first time may have had negative experiences in the past with pressure to join other religious organizations. A particular practice that is helpful is to ask everyone to identify themselves after the first day Meeting for worship if anyone is in attendance who is unknown to members. Fortunately our Meeting is small enough to make this feasible. Another way that our Meeting reaches out to potential new members is through its website, designed and maintained through the dedicated solitary efforts of a single member. Several new members have come to the Meeting due primarily to information posted on the website, which includes Meeting times and locations, second hour program content, statements of Witness, links to other Friends sites, and driving directions to the WFM Meetings.

Although the Meeting provides regular members not only with the opportunity for corporate worship but also for social contact, some members caution that outreach to new members during the social time immediately following the Meeting for worship is also important. Friends are aware that the temptation to catch up with old friends can sometimes preempt the responsibility to reach out to new ones. The time allotted for social contact between second hour and the Meeting proper has been extended and now allows more time for both activities.

We are still blessed to have the use of two members’ house in which to meet, in a hushed and comfortable room set aside for the Meeting. However, members feel they have perhaps become too comfortable in this arrangement, with the consequence of not having devoted enough time, attention and resources recently to look for other accommodations when this temporary arrangement is no longer available.

Our Meeting has suffered from the loss of many core elders over the past two years, but we have also been blessed with some new members who bring serious spiritual commitment to the Meeting. Although we feel confident that in time there will be an experienced new “crop” of elders, meanwhile there are tasks to be done by elders but with too few elders to accomplish them all. Members feel that the Meeting is chronically “understaffed.” A number of elder members serve on multiple key committees, making committee meetings difficult to schedule and resulting in tasks taking longer to complete.

Some members are distressed that our regular first day second hour activities are not better attended. The feeling is that these activities represent an opportunity for members to interact with one another verbally concerning social concerns and corporate issues, thus expanding and strengthening our corporate identity. Related to this is the perception by some members that although individual members engage in various important social witness activities, that as a Meeting we do not seem to have a cohesive corporate social witness. This is an issue that Williamsburg Friends will attempt to address more completely in the coming year.

Adult Religious Education:

Except for those second hours cancelled due to major weather events (notably Hurricane Isabel and winter ice storms), a second hour forum or community building social activity was scheduled every first day. In the process, the WFM adult RE program covered a wide spectrum of leadings and foci. Given the events of the world, attention to the Quaker Peace Testimony was uppermost in our consciousness. Forums were presented that had to do with the historical roots of this testimony, initial efforts toward drafting of our own Peace Minute, and a guest speaker who educated us about the psychology of peacekeeping in this world. Racism was the focus of another major forum, with a series on the topic offered by Friends well versed and active in the field. Public funding of education K-12 was also addressed. Forums about spiritual practices were offered on lectio divina and spiritual journaling, and in another activity Friends shared with the Meeting their most treasured spiritually themed poetry and prose. Finally, second hour offerings specifically targeted to nurture the growth and development of the Meeting included reading and discussing Thomas R. Kelly’s The Gathered Meeting, informative presentations about the workings of Quaker worship and WFM committees, procedures of Meetings for Worship with Attention to Business, the nominating committee, and religious education.

Child Religious Education:

WFM is blessed by the presence of many members’ children in attendance, as well as by the attendance of adults who are committed and experienced in their religious education. Weekly First Day school is typically well attended and the children participate enthusiastically in activities ranging from education about Quaker history and practice to athletics and art projects. Many children and members participated in the Quaker Summer camp, enthusiastically reporting on the joyful sense of community of the experience a second hour forum, and have made commitments to attend again.

Peace and Social Concerns:

Given the small size of our Meeting, the peace and social witness of Williamsburg Friends is remarkable on many accounts. The commitment of individual members is all the more remarkable when the social witness of our members’ vocational choices are taken into account. Work toward advancing the Peace Testimony, improving educational opportunities for the youth of Virginia, eradicating racism and domestic violence, addressing economic inequities and providing basic necessities such as shelter, food, clothing, health and child rearing, and offering compassionate care to animals are some activities in which individual members are engaged.

For all the gifts and strengths of individual Friends, however, the Meeting as a whole continues to lack a corporate commitment to the Peace Testimony or to any other single witness. This fact is highlighted in this report to emphasize that not only would there be synergistic benefit to the specific focus if we were to undertake a concerted collective effort, but there would also be a spiritual blessing bestowed upon the Meeting as a whole. While several factors undoubtedly play a role against a group effort (for example, the Meeting’s size, geographic dispersion, political heterogeneity, socioeconomic factors, and the developmental evolution of our 23 year old Meeting), members of the Peace and Social Concerns Committee will identify a specific witness that will engage the participation of more WFM Friends.

Overseers:

Overseers has continued the work of caring for WFM members and attendees. In 2003 there was one wedding held under the care of the Meeting and several people requested clearness committees to deal with personal and spiritual issues.

Because we are a small Meeting, and all members and attendees are known to each other, Overseers is searching for ways to communicate personal needs of members so that the Meeting community can respond more quickly to those needs. For example, when one of our attendees was ill, most members did not hear of it until he had recovered. In the effort to prevent such situations arising in future, we have instituted a “Joys and Sorrows” book that Friends can use to communicate their needs to the community. We are also considering a phone tree. We are aware that we all lead busy lives and that we must be mindful to remember those in need.

Ministry and Counsel:

Our Committee hosted a day long program at one member’s house on crocheting and knitting for the benefit of Warm Up America, facilitated largely by one member.

Conclusion:

Although members and attendees of the Williamsburg Friends Meeting struggle with ongoing issues of too many tasks and too few resources (and sometimes, it seems to some members, too little commitment), our community feels grateful and blessed for the opportunity our Meeting affords us for spiritual guidance and inspiration, as well as a strong sense of caring community support, in a world in which there appears to be less of either. As a result of being together in the presence of the Holy Spirit each week, we all look forward to the coming year with love for our lives together, and the hope that our spiritual commitment to help each other to be peaceful and loving, will also benefit our world to do the same.

Submitted by: Bill Carroll, 13 May 2004