PYM Monthly Meeting Leadership Meeting 2021-10-19
Over 60 people gathered online. Some of us are first time clerks, some are returning clerks, some are seeking to support their meeting.
Christie Duncan-Tessmer spoke of the need to connect as monthly meetings and across the yearly meeting.
From our yearly meeting clerks:
How do we connect to do the work we have agreed to. An umbrella acronym for this is IDEAS – inclusion, diversity, equity, and access strategies.
The clerks asked us to share: how do we create and use access strategies for our collective work – including successes, failures, needs, stories, how we share, and what will help us move forward:
Smile and greet and wave: we light up with joy when meeting new or old friends;
Reinvigorating our website to be informative, accurate, and navigable (all of this meeting’s new attenders have come through the website);
Have programs to offer to new families;
Weekly vigil and online worship;
Website was good so we made our Facebook page more active and are getting active on Instagram.
Continuing Sessions – Olivia Brangan
Multigenerational programming Friday evening -Sunday afternoon.
The draft agenda is on the website. Meeting for worship with attention to business will be on Saturday afternoon from 1-4pm.
Sunday is in-person at Arch Street Meeting House with author Anastasia Higginbotham. She makes her books in collage format using recycled materials and will do a workshop with Friends on this process.
Google Groups – Zachary Dutton shared that we may try using google groups for sharing and discussion of topics/questions in our meetings.
We spent a few minutes exploring the PYM website for information on our collaboratives and information useful for someone in our meetings.
In small groups we discussed business and committee structure with an antiracism lens; emerging covid trends; community fellowship.
From antiracism lens for business and committee structure:
All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change.
Discerning when to stand fast and when to recognize change is appropriate is ongoing work.
We fear losing members. We fear losing comfortability.
At least one meeting is doing regular adult programming monthly on systemic racism/white privilege.
Managing covid trends – worshipping on zoom has changed us, and the changes were different in different meetings.
Vaccination status is an issue at some meetings and there are a variety of responses taken to ascertain the vaccination status of members.
Mignon Adams of the Monthly Meeting of Philadelphia/Arch Street Meeting and member of the John Martin Trust is accepting grant requests. The trust has funds to assist Friends of limited financial means who are in need. Please see their website for details-
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