Seeking New Ways to Organize Our Meeting

FALL 2022

Friends Meetings have no paid staff; we depend on volunteers to do the tasks that keep Meetings running and to provide the collective discernment of the right path forward. To do this, we have traditionally relied on formal committees. Recently, this has not worked well.

• Even before COVID, we had trouble filling several of our committees; now, it is impossible to do so.
• We have tried giving more tasks to fewer committees, but those committees are now spread too thin. Tasks often fail to get done or fall to the ‘usual suspects’ to do them.
• We have tried leaving things to individuals, but worry that this does not provide the collective discernment that is one of the hallmarks of the Quaker way.

San Antonio Friends Meeting decided to hold a series of Forum Discussions on alternate was to organize our meeting.

Our September 11th forum focused on:

• Identifying the things to which we must attend, no matter what size meeting and how many resources we have, and
• Noting which of these our current structure fails to address adequately.

We dividing the things we need to address into four groups: Spiritual, Pastoral, Physical, and Other.  These are areas, not solutions. (E.g.: we might deepen group spiritual life through formal retreats, through forums, or in another way.) 

The things we need to address are:

Spiritual	Pastoral	Physical	Other
maintain deep Meetings for Worship sustain deep  discussions about spiritual life and Quaker traditions provide other adult religious education children’s religious education encourage  individuals’ spiritual growth provide spiritual friendship or mentoring  sustain Quaker public witness	care and support for individuals  sustain our sense of community connect with visitors & new attenders readiness for major events: weddings, memorials, etc. reach out to those who have lost since COVID outreach to young people connect with other Quakers	maintain buildings and grounds maintain MH electronics maintain website pay bills steward financial resources provide resources for hospitality (snacks, coffee, toilet paper) open / close / run tech on Sundays after-hours site security	outreach, including newsletter, weekly email notices, social media, etc. monitor telephone answering machine schedule building and Zoom use interface with tenants engage outside community with Quaker testimonies

We then identified those that we currently fail to address collectively — though some individuals do pick up some of these tasks. Failures are in red-bold. Inadequacies are in red-italic.

(Note: even the items we currently address well can overburden Friends who take on too much.)

Spiritual	Pastoral	Physical	Other
sustain deep  discussions about spiritual life and Quaker traditions     encourage  individuals’ spiritual growth provide spiritual friendship or mentoring  sustain Quaker public witness	care and support for individuals    connect with visitors & new attenders   reach out to those who have lost since COVID outreach to young people connect with other Quakers	maintain website     provide resources for hospitality (snacks, coffee, toilet paper)   after-hours site security	social media outreach       engage outside community with Quaker testimonies

Our September 25th forum will focus on: 

• Confirming or adjusting these lists, and 
• Brainstorming creative ways to reorganize ourselves to accomplish these tasks.