SUMMER 2002Third Month 10th, 2002
he Salem Quarter Worship & Ministry Committee met on Third Month 8th, 2002, at the home of Gloria and Bob Horvay, with 11 Friends in attendance from 5 monthly meetings within the Quarter plus our invaluable coordinator. We convened near the appointed hour of 7:30 with a period of worship.
Items of business pertained to three expressed needs within the Quarter that were deemed to fall under the responsibility of this committee. Discussion ensued as to whether we are led to sponsor events that would address these needs. We considered a program for our Ninth Month Quarterly Meeting that would focus on how our monthly meetings responded to 9-11, and we then agreed to facilitate this. The next need, which is for a clerking workshop that would be led by Arthur Larrabee, was discussed at the last Steering Committee meeting. Steering is willing to organize this and has scheduled it in the fall. A retreat on Mysticism, which would be facilitated by Marcelle Martin, was enthusiastically embraced by this committee, and tentative thoughts are to open it to the yearly meeting membership and hold it at the Burlington Conference Center next spring.
Several announcements were made of upcoming events that are of particular value to Worship & Ministry members.
Brief reports were given by Michael Gibson, Gloria Horvay, Shirley Lock, and Mary Waddington, who are the four Pastoral Care volunteers regularly visiting residents in the Health Care unit of the Friends Home. They spoke of the challenges as well as the rewards of this ministry.
Phil Anthony then gave the evening's presentation. He had us look at an area of our meeting life that often suffers neglect. He asked of us, “How do we nurture the individual gift in a corporate setting? How can such gifts enrich the entire meeting rather than a few? How do we recognize and name the gifts of those not on committees, and what do we do with their ministry? How do we provide accountability to the meeting?”
To offer up examples, Phil first asked Mary Waddington to share how her eldering experience in the Traveling Ministries Program spoke to this. He then asked the same of Roshan Dinshah regarding his longstanding ministry with inmates at Southern State Prison. We then entered into worship sharing and attempted to respond to the challenging queries that Phil had set before us. We labored. The difficulty of this task suggests that we are not practiced in such nurturance, that perhaps we have too few examples of successes, that we should labor over these queries with our monthly meetings and revisit them at another Quarter W&M meeting for the enlightenment of this committee and for the strengthening of our Society.
The meeting closed with a brief period of worship followed by refreshments. We meet next on Sixth Month 7th, 2002.
Respectfully submitted,
Mary WaddingtonRETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
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