Staffordshire Quakers

Reflections on the ideas brought forward at Area Meeting on 10th February 2024

Our first task, following the February Area Meeting, was to consider the ideas that came forward from Friends that day. To do this the Working Group held an open meeting on February 22nd, where we were joined by two Wolverhampton Friends.

We spent some time reflecting on which ideas seemed worth pursuing in our work, including both those ideas that were held by many Friends and those which were more individual.

Working Group members were encouraged by the large numbers who attended in February, whether in person or by Zoom. The atmosphere was positive and for many Friends it was their first chance to meet each other since covid times. It was clear that Friends want Staffordshire Area Meeting to survive. We recognise that some difficult issues such as the pressure on trustees, finding new trustees and the absence of an Area Meeting Clerk received little attention during the day.

In addition to nurturing community building, which has stood out in all our meetings, we attempted to identify the important themes and ideas for action, from the ideas put forward. In doing this we made use of the BYM document Our Faith in the Future which was agreed at Yearly Meeting a few years ago. This document paints a picture of the change Friends then hoped for in a vision for the future. Our Faith in the Future identifies six themes and we have attempted to place the themes and ideas for action suggested by Staffordshire Friends within the Our Faith in the Future framework. We hope this will provide greater clarity for us all.

The working group reflections led to the view that we cannot attend to all the themes at once. Theme one, where our Meetings for Worship are seen as the bedrock for living as Quakers, stood out along with theme two, where we develop a vision for our Quaker communities.

But we need to know if actions on these themes are what Staffordshire Quakers want. We will therefore share information from the Our Faith in the Future material produced by BYM at the March Area Meeting. The starred themes from the hot air balloon exercise at the February AM such as greater diversity, flexible structures and everyone involved seem to be included within Our Faith in the Future.

We hope that there will be space and time for exploring, developing and taking action on these themes at future Area Meetings during 2024. As well as slots within a business meeting this might also include taking over afternoon sessions for this purpose.

In a brain-storming session in our February 22nd meeting a range of ideas was put forward. Not all of these are for immediate implementation, but we do need to find creative solutions to make our Quaker meetings more sustainable.

What group or process would be the best way to bring to life the ideas under Our Faith in the Future?

Collaboration with Local Meetings
It is not up to this working group to arrange everything. Any change will not be successful unless we are all involved.
We have asked ourselves

• How should we involve Local Meetings?
• How can the voice of individual Friends in local meetings be heard?

Our local meetings have differing needs. It would be of value for us to know what is going well and also whether there are issues
unique to individual meetings. So we ask the Area Meeting

• What is the right way, if any, for the Working Group to interact with local meetings?
• Should two members of working group visit each local meeting – to listen to Friends and talk about anything that they would like to talk about – so that we can better understand and discern ways forward?
• Can we have time on the agenda/in the afternoon of future Area Meetings to bring this all together and discern the next steps?

Jan Baker, Caroline Midmore, Jon Heal, John Babb, Hilary Topp (LDW)
SAQM Working Group