Meeting Care Day: A training & consultation gathering for Friends serving their local Quaker meeting
Do you serve your local Quaker meeting? Are you looking to connect with others serving in similar roles to discuss challenges and explore best practices? Join us for Meeting Care Day, an in-person event featuring multiple workshop options related to specific service areas. Before and after the morning and afternoon workshop sessions, we will gather for worship and fellowship, making for an energizing day.
Schedule
9:00 Arrivals, fellowship, coffee & refreshments
9:30 Welcome & opening worship
10:15 Morning workshop session
11:45 Lunch
12:45 Afternoon workshop session
2:15 break
2:30 Closing worship
3:00 Goodbyes
Workshops
Workshops
All workshops are three hours, broken into two 90-minute Sessions. Participants choose one workshop to participate in throughout the day.
This year's workshops are:
Best Practices in Financial Stewardship of Quaker Meetings
Lyle Miller, Everence
Treasurers, Finance Committee members, and other financial stewards play a special role in the life of a Quaker Meeting. With diligence and care, these stewards manage a meeting’s finances, connect resources to Spirit-led initiatives, and support their faith community in attaining financial sustainability and integrity. In our time together, we will explore both the spiritual and practical aspects of financial stewardship of your local Quaker community including: narrative budgeting, succession planning, cultivating generosity, effective financial reporting, and decisions related to longer term financial health such as endowments, bequests, and the purchase, sale, or remodeling of meetinghouses. This will be an interactive workshop appropriate for new or long-serving financial stewards. Participants will have the opportunity to share their own best practices and questions.
Nurturing Eldership
Janet Hough, Cobscook (ME) and Bruce Neumann, Fresh Pond (MA)
The role of the elder is often misunderstood. Join Janet and Bruce as they shine a light on this important practice. We’ll consider questions such as: What are the various motions which fall under the title “eldering?” How are elders identified? What’s the relationship of ministers and elders? What does “owning” the role of elder do for our monthly meeting? This workshop is for anyone concerned with the spiritual health of their meeting, but especially anyone who feels some tender leadings toward this service.
Pastoral Care
Noah Merrill, Putney (VT) and Patti Muldoon, Cambridge (MA)
Pastoral Care is a reflection of the loving concern for the spiritual and physical condition of Friends within our worship community. Thoughtful attention, careful listening, and prayer are at its heart. This workshop will explore multiple dimensions of pastoral care: spiritual nurture, careful listening, and prayer as well as awareness of tender challenges including boundary setting and the role of a meeting in relation to Friends living with mental illness. In the afternoon, participants will have a choice between two more focused conversations: one with Aging Resources Consultation and Help (ARCH) Coordinator Patti Muldoon about pastoral care concerns related to aging and end of life or with Noah Merrill about the relationship between pastoral care for individuals and the meeting as a whole.
Quaker Group Discernment: Clerking, recording, and active participation
Jackie Stillwell, Monadnock (NH) and Nia Thomas, Northampton (MA)
Join Friends to develop and deepen skills in Quaker group discernment and decision-making processes used in our meetings, organizations, and committees including the particular functions of clerk and recording clerk. This workshop is designed to be of use to both those new to and experienced with Friends’ practices. Whether you are currently serving as clerk or recording clerk in a local meeting or on a committee or you are hoping to strengthen your participation in discernment outside a particular role, you are welcome. In the afternoon. participants can choose between exploration of scenarios such as challenging group dynamics and complex conflicts or a discussion of the nuts and bolts organizational practices that support group discernment including effective practices regarding minutes, shared documents, and reports.
Registration, Fee, and Health
Registration will open in early fall. To be emailed when registration opens, Contact Program Director Nia Thomas.
This event is offered on a pay-as-led basis (sliding scale), with a suggested fee of $35 for workshop participants. Please pay the amount that seems right for you and your budget. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Coffee, tea, and light refreshments will be provided. Participants are asked to bring their own lunch.
Stay home if you are experiencing COVID, flu, or stomach bug symptoms. Refunds are available. Masks are optional and the choice to mask will always be respected. There will be indoor and outdoor dining spaces.
Questions or suggestions? Contact Program Director Nia Thomas.