SUMMER 20079 Third-month 2007
alem Quarter Worship & Ministry Committee met on 9 March at the home of Gloria and Bob Horvay, convening in worship at 7:45 pm. Individuals were present from Mickleton, Mullica Hill, and Woodstown Monthly Meetings, as well as the Quarter coordinator and his guest, a traveling elder from Chestnut Hill Monthly Meeting.
Monthly Meeting Activities. Mickleton has just recently concluded its series of classes on spiritual gifts. In its next Worship & Ministry Committee meeting, they intend to focus on mutual support and accountability in the exercise of gifts and pursuit of ministries. They also are considering Friendly Eights.
Woodstown also has been considering Friendly Eights, but has had a sluggish response. They also have instituted a midweek worship session, on Thursday evenings, to which the community is invited. The Meeting continues its deliberations on having a gifts class.
Mullica Hill's gifts program has branched out into a series of storytelling sessions, each focusing on a principle such as tolerance.
Friends from Mullica Hill and Mickleton recently attended a Lenni Lenape prayer circle. Ministering at the session was Pastor Norwood, who is the only Native American Church minister in New Jersey. The Church, and the prayer circle session, have much in common with fundamentalist Christianity, and some distinctly native aspects. South Jersey Friends are invited to the next prayer circle, 11:30 am on Saturday, June 2nd, at the new tribal grounds in Fairton.
Supporting Yearly Meeting. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, in its upcoming March and July sessions, will be wrestling with substantial questions about its resources and its missions. We ask all Friends, whether or not they are physically in session, to hold Yearly Meeting in prayerful support.
Meeting Visitation. Phil Anthony spoke to us, not as Salem Quarter coordinator, but as a Friend in service of a concern for visitation to Quaker communities that has been recognized by his home monthly meeting, Chestnut Hill. In this, he introduced Jennifer Murray of Chestnut Hill MM, one of the companion elders who have traveled with him in this concern.
Phil has had other roles that involved travel among meetings, however. In one such visit at Third Haven, he grew to appreciate the unique refraction of the one Light that is the gift of each meeting. He also felt the limitations of traveling under the weight of other agendas, which interfered with full appreciation of those unique refractions, and wanted to more fully join with the life of the meetings he visited.
Toward that end, he was encouraged to visit on his own, but with the support of his home meeting. Chestnut Hill considered this for a year, and approved a minute recognizing the ministry and providing a support committee. The committee and he have both arranged for elders to travel with him, an aspect that Phil has found to be powerfully enriching; when an elder goes along, the visit's worship goes deeper, lingers longer, and shares more widely. He also has provided reports to Chestnut Hill on his visits.
In practice, he's found that just as he has gained much from these visits, so too have the meetings gained from the opportunity to hear and learn about themselves in ways they would not amongst themselves alone. These learnings have also benefited Salem Quarter, contributing practices, techniques and perspectives to our conduct and spirit of being together.
There have been difficulties in pursuit of this concern. Some meetings have he has visited have been perplexed by the formality of an intentional visit, rather than simply dropping in to worship. Chestnut Hill's interests have turned in other directions, and Phil's sense is that another grounding home might be appropriate.
Within Salem Quarter, we have another example of intervisitation in the experiences of Mullica Hill, which, as a meeting, has visited a number of other monthly meetings, including Third Haven, Pennsbury Manor, Moorestown, Tuckahoe, Greenwich, and Chestnut Hill. Typically, three or four Mullica Hill Friends would travel, sometimes ten or twelve.
In subsequent discussion, we considered whether Salem Quarter might provide a grounding home for Phil's concern. His experience is causing him to consider other forms besides a personally focused support committee. One of the forms used in prior days was known as the School of the Spirit, or the Select Committee of Ministers and Elders — a group of mutual support and service among Friends engaged in ministry.
Those assembled keenly felt the need and benefit of supporting Phil, but also realize that engaging in this work would likely mean some significant shifts in how we see ourselves and practice our community. These are matters well worth seasoning and considering carefully. We chose to continue in our next session, not with a formal consideration of either supporting Phil or assessing our vision, but as we did tonight, to consider a matter relevant to our meetings that could also shed light on these issues. For our next session, we intend to dwell on how our meetings support ministries.
We concluded in worship and fellowship at 9:45 pm. Worship and Ministry intends to meet again on 9 June 2007, the Friday evening before quarterly meeting, and we welcome participation from all monthly meetings of Salem Quarter.
For the Committee,
Mario Cavallini, clerkRETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Last modified:
Monday, May 21, 2007 at 11:49 PM
