Spiritual growth through fulfilling roles

This is the script for a presentation at the Southern Marches Area Meeting May 2018

After four months of being AM Clerk to Nominations we thought it would be interesting to give some thought to the roles that Area Meeting depends on. Why we do Nominations in the way that we do. The benefits that Friends who take on this service gain, and to remind ourselves of the responsibilities that we accept by being members of the Society of Friends. We can look at what goes right, and what goes wrong, and how it could be better.

The ideal that we hope for from our Nominations process is that it becomes, through prayerful discernment, the quiet heart of building the framework of our Quaker community. It is about discerning the spiritual gifts and potential of individual Friends, encouraging them to grow in their spiritual life by offering opportunities for service in ways that will nourish them and enrich the community. It is about inclusion and diversity, it's about trying not to overburden Friends. It should be a practical application of our testimony, it should not be just about trying to find people to fill jobs.

From the beginnings of our movement we abandoned the idea of laity. There is no one to keep the Society functioning other than its members. If not me then who? All members are responsible for the spiritual growth and well being of the whole. We appoint Clerks, Elders, Trustees, etc, but not to fulfil their roles in isolation, we are responsible for each other, the roles are only long stops.

We have now populated our website with the details of all the roles that we need to fill. They were collated, in the first instance, to assist Nominations to understand the attributes and experience needed for each role, but, in the context of the previous paragraph, now that they are available to all Friends we can all feed into our local Nominations committee members our own thought on who might benefit from experiencing them. The descriptions point out the support and training available, the knowledge and experience required or needed to be attained. It is interesting that one item of description that has not been forthcoming in the way that we hoped is the spiritual benefits that can accrue by fulfilling the roles.

Our testimony to the world demands equality. We have no hierarchy, and yet I often hear Attenders and some Members referring to one. We should not be a hierarchy, but rather a community assembling itself from its component parts. In practice we often find circulation of jobs amongst a small and decreasing, ageing group of stalwarts. This is unhealthy, it is unsustainable, for the Society, our Meetings and for us as individuals.

When we are looking to fill roles we look for experience and wisdom, and therefore often overlook Friends with youth, energy and innovation. When we appoint we sometimes leave the new post holders to “sink or swim”, when they need a period of hand holding, mentoring. I talked earlier about Spiritual Growth through roles, growth is a process, we cannot expect that the new Clerk to Nominations is going to come to the job with all the necessary experience and wisdom. Our care for each other has to allow for inexperience.

Some of our constituent local meetings are very healthy and growing as a result. Some are struggling with shrinking membership and a succession of problems. It is understandable that when the second is the case Friends put their local meeting before the Area Meeting. Yet the health and dynamism of our meetings, both local and area, depend on increasing inclusion and diversity. We need youth, fresh thinking, different ways of doing things. Our testimony is open to that, are we?
PH