WINTER 2008Phil Anthony
(856) 769-0066 (voice)
(856) 769-1416 (fax)
salemqtr@verizon.netSimple. Contemporary. Radical.
That’s the slogan which describes Quaker Quest. The new outreach effort was unveiled to almost a hundred PYM Friends one Saturday in late October during a “consultation” at Arch Street. It comes to us from Britain Yearly Meeting, where it has been in operation since 2002.
QUARTERLY MEETING
Salem Monthly Meeting
Sunday, December 14, 20089:00 am Gather: refreshments provided by L MM 9:30 am Christmas Carol Sing Along 10:30 am Worship 11:30 am Lunch: soup, bread, beverages, and desserts provided by Salem MM 1:00 pm Business meeting Child care provided From southernmost NJ:
Take Route 47 to Route 49, which takes you in to Salem. The traffic light at Main and Walnut Sts. is directly in front of the meetinghouse. Turn right into the Salem Mtg. driveway.
From northern South Jersey:
Take Route 40 or 45 to Woodstown. Take Route 45 from Woodstown to Salem. Route 45 dead ends into Main St. Turn left onto Main St., then left at the first traffic light (one block) into Salem Mtg. driveway.
It wasn’t entirely new. Shirley Lock, clerk of Worship & Ministry at Woodstown MM, brought back a leaflet and a description some years back from one of her periodic trips to England. The leaflet showed only the surface, however, and British Friends weren’t ready to share what they were just developing and testing themselves. Now they’ve opened it to Quakers in the United States, with training sessions at Friends General Conference and a working group within PYM.
The program itself is deceptively simple. A monthly meeting (or a quarter) holds public sessions weekly. A coordinator moderates a panel of presenters from the meeting, each speaking for about six minutes on a particular topic. After they make their presentation, there’s time for participants to talk in small groups. Then the presenters continue with another six-minute talk. This is followed by questions and answers, a half-hour meeting for worship, and ample time for refreshments and mingling. The mingling, Friends found, gave an excellent opportunity for the attenders to ask questions that concerned them individually.
The meeting chooses the topics for presentation from a broad list. They might include Quakers and God, Quakers and peace, Quakers and worship, and a variety of other subjects. Printed materials are available to give the presenters a foundation, if they want it.
Two themes, however, are strictly forbidden: Quakers and history, and Quakers and structure. People encountering Quakerism for the first time aren’t interested, we were told, in what Quakerism once was. Our pride in George Fox, William Penn, John Woolman, and Lucretia Mott isn’t directly relevant to their lives. Or, for that matter, Captain John Fenwick and Cornelia Hancock. They don’t much care how we govern ourselves, either. They’re interested in the spiritual path the Religious Society of Friends has to offer them now, in the twenty-first century. Simple. Contemporary. Radical.
And when the three or six or eight topics have been presented, the cycle begins again. Those who missed a subject during one cycle because they were unable to attend that afternoon or evening have a chance to hear it the next time through. Or the time after that.
What isn’t so simple is the preparation behind the program. For example, each presentation is rehearsed, not once but twice, before each session. What seems to be most important is not dry lecture, but testimony to what the topic has meant in the speaker’s life. The presenters are also helped to think about questions they might be asked during the social time so that they can provide simple, brief, but informative answers. This adds an “inreach” component to the program. Jean Jenn, an English Friend who was involved in the original group that formed Quaker Quest, described how preparing to answer others had deepened her own spiritual understanding.
It’s important that the core group—the Friends responsible for planning and putting on Quaker Quest—be present for each session. That way the seekers, or “questers” as British Friends call them, will find familiar faces each time they visit. The two most important elements, they have discovered, is the community that questers find and the opportunity for worship in the manner of Friends. The worship is deliberately kept short, since many people are uncomfortable at first with long periods of silence. However, questers often seem to find depth in the worship that surprised the core groups of Friends at meetings in England. Simple. Contemporary. Radical.
In addition to the time commitment, there is a financial investment that must be made. A key to the program’s success is advertising. The public must be told that it’s happening. This may take the form of leaflets (in color!), posters, and lawn signs. But it also includes newspaper advertisements and spot announcements on radio. When Haverford MM ran a pilot program last spring, they found that between the advertising, refreshments, and sprucing up the meetinghouse so it would be clean, warm, and welcoming, they spent around $6,000.
Could this work in Salem Quarter? That of course was the big question on my mind as the day-long gathering went on. My own conclusion was that it could. Larger, well-situated meetings may be able to provide both the committed members and the monetary investment it would need. Woodstown, for example, had three participants at the Arch Street gathering, the only Salem Quarter meeting represented.
Smaller and less well endowed meetings might join together to provide the core group and the funds. The sessions could be held at the more convenient, accessible meetinghouse. The idea, after all, is to inform the public about what Quakerism has to offer, not to grab new members greedily for one’s own meeting.
Or Salem Quarter could create a committee of dedicated Friends to run Quaker Quest sessions at a reasonably central location that would benefit all the monthly meetings. It would require a great deal of work. It would require extra financial support from our monthly meetings, some of which are already stretched thin. The possible benefits, however, might well be worth the effort.
There will be a community effort of a different kind when Salem Quarter meets at Salem MM on Sunday, 14 December. Beth Johnson of Mullica Hill MM will join her wonderful voice with the piano playing of David Lamont of Woodstown MM, to lead us in an hour of Christmas carols. After that we’ll have worship, brown-bag lunch, and business meeting. Children, of course, are always welcome.
Please come join our community celebration. We’ll be looking forward to seeing you there!
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