After a discussion about this with a couple of elders after our (shiny new!) Monthly Meeting held in Rotorua last weekend they asked me to put it into writing so they could share it with MM elders & overseers and at the Yearly Meeting E&O's meeting in May. When I mentioned this on facebook Lee suggested I share it more widely... so here you go, blame Lee! (I've edited this slightly from the original to protect the not-so-innocent. Apologies if you don't speak Quaker jargon or know the alphabet soup of acronyms - I've added some links to help out!)
At YM last year in Matamata there were 5 of us under 60 years
of age. Four of whom were presenting and could only be there for part of
the time (for 3 of us due to having to get home to work on Monday or on
to the next speaking engagement - not sure about the 4th as she arrived so
shortly before I left!). Rick was the only under 60yr old
there for the full time and completely through choice rather than
obligation! A YF was there to help set up but had other
commitments and was not able to stay for any sessions.
An increasing proportion of regular attenders at YM are in their 80s
and unless we encourage some younger members to attend YM we are soon
going to find ourselves with a very limited pool of experienced YM'ers
who are familiar with YM business practice and right ordering.
When I have raised this with people the usual response is 'so how do
we encourage our YFs to participate?' - I would argue that the 30-60yr
old group are as much an issue as YFs if not more.
Often family
committments is cited as a reason for non-participation - in the UK the
public holiday long weekend YMs (they have a longer full week
residential event every 3yrs or so) have the full scope of ages from
creche to 90s, some of the American YMs send out epistles from their
main sessions, Young Adult Friends, JYFs, older and younger children's
groups - some of these groups may only have 3 or 4 children in them, but
they are still programmed to be an integral part of the YM event. By
not providing anything for children and young people during YM what
message are we giving to those families in terms of how we value them as
part of our YM structure? Both the children and young people but also
their parents. When you have grown up attending YM, gradually attending
more of the main sessions then attending it fully as a YF or older adult
is a natural step, not a scary step into the unknown.
Image is another reason given - YM is often perceived as lots of old
people doing Quaker business for a weekend. As a description it is
hardly a massive draw card! Yes it is predominantly elderly but that
won't change unless we help it to, however the perception of it being a
weekend full of business is fairly misleading - most years recently we
have had the Quaker lecture, there are several presentations by YM
committees/appointees on a number of really interesting topics of
concern, there is the opportunity for F/friendship and fellowship,
Meetings for Worship, retreat days, meeting overseas visitors... all of
which sound far more appealing! Yes there are business sessions which
can on occassions be lengthy and difficult, but better Friends come and
dip in and out as they build up their YM stamina than not come at all. I
know many in Britain YM who started attending mainly for social reasons
- it was an opportunity to meet up with Friends, and as the years went
on they attended more and more sessions and became self-confessed
YM-junkies, they don't want to miss one or even a session in case they
end up missing something truly momentous - the session on
agreeing to actively campaign for same sex marriage, and BYM making a committment to
aim to be a low carbon organisation being some recent examples.
They want to be able to say with pride 'yes I was there!' - I've yet to
hear anyone speak like that about our YM, but maybe I'm not talking to
the right people about it?
Other obstacles include financial, especially if YM isn't in the
school holidays those tied to the education sector as participants or
staff need to miss school/lectures or take unpaid leave to attend, for
parents it can add many complciations to home life and many of those
working in any sector need to use up scarce leave entitlement or take
unpaid leave. How well do we make it known that financial assistance is
available to anyone who needs it (not just the two MM reps) - and if it
isn't available then why not? How can we acknowledge the sacrifice
Friends need to make up to attend YM and make it more worth their while?
Perhaps a koha from a hardship fund for those who have to take unpaid
leave who can ill afford to do so on top of travel expenses? Or a
reduction in registration fees?
Another obstacle is timing - running from Friday afternoon to Monday
lunchtime on an ordinary w/e means missing two days of
school/college/work for many - if we did provide programmes for children
& young people they would be missing two days of schooling to
attend which probably isn't a good thing to be encouraging! If we aren't
to meet in the term breaks would a weekend with a public holiday
attached work better? Easter is the obvious one - yes YF Camp is that
w/e however Australian YFs organise their YF Camp to be in the same
vicinity as YM each year, this would not be impossible to replicate
here, and then it would be easier for more of them to attend particular
(more appealing?) sessions of YM (as happens elsewhere around the
world).
So what this boils down to is some major inreach - how do we present
YM in session to Friends in our Meetings? Do we encourage those other
than 'the regulars' to attend - what incentives might we offer? A first
timers discount perhaps as an introduction to YM (a good use of the Quaker Education Fund I
would have thought - especially if you got some booklets on Quaker
business practice thrown in to the bargain, there are some Pendle Hill
pamplets and booklets from Britain YM if we don't have something
suitable of our own yet). When we discuss Documents in Advance/White Papers
do we just go through with a nit-picking comb or spend time discussing
some of the work that is being done by/for Friends expanding our
knowledge and sharing experiences and raising wider concerns as to how
Meetings can do more to support the work that is being done in our name?
Who would we like to invite to come and tell us more about what they
have shared? I know from having written several reports for Docs in
Advance that there is always far more you could say if you thought
anyone was interested! Do we use it as a tool to generate interest
within our MMs in the work of Friends at home and overseas (via
QPSANZ,
FWCC,
QUNO etc) or is the idea to get through it as fast as possible so
we can all go home?
Which leads me nicely on to participation in MM....
During
the evening session at the gathering in Rotorua last weekend which
covered the old MMs of Waitemata North, Bay of Plenty/Auckland and
Waikato/Hauraki and the new MMs of Northern and Mid North Island we
lined up in order of years of involvement with Friends - the person at
the bottom of the line with the least experience had been a Friend for
10yrs.
Where were those Friends who have been involved for less? Why
weren't they there? When you look around MM business meetings month to
month is it just the seasoned Friends who have been around either as
members or attenders for many years? My experience of attending MM in 3
MMs in this YM is that generally yes that is the case - and the few
younger faces have almost all grown up in Quaker families and so have
been Friends for far longer than many of those twice their age.
Some of the same reasons apply as for YM. But also many seasoned
Friends will admit that yes MM sessions can be a bit dry and tedious but
they have to be done and no-one wants to make them last any longer than
is humanly possible!
I first attended MM in session at the age of 16, I had to give a
verbal report on attending Junior Yearly Meeting which I had attended as
a MM rep. I did the same the following year on the Quaker Youth
Pilgrimage, and 3 other times that year (and the five years following) I
reported back on Young Friends Central Committee. Given that as luck
would have it all the first couple of years of reporting to MM were at
Meeting Houses other than my local one I was stuck there for the whole
of MM whether I liked it or not as I awaited my lift home! But that
didn't matter so much as for a few years I had been going to MM about 3
or 4 times a year to meet up with the other children and young people,
we'd go for walks, make music, do art work depending on which Meeting we
were at and who was left to look after us - we knew what we would be
doing so came prepared/suitably dressed. Then at the end there was
always an amazing MM tea with so many cakes and other goodies it was
like a birthday party!
Of course we got to know various adults in the MM this way so by the
time I had to give my first report it wasn't entirely a room of
strangers, I was definitely quaking though none the less! This pattern
was much the same as I progressed through YFs and still reported back to
whichever MM I was in at the time. Verbal reports were encouraged,
written ones could follow but on their own were seen as a poor
substitute - they wanted to see and hear us, and looking back now I
realise that such reports were what made the more tedious premises and
budget items etc more bearable. Reports by YFs or any other Friend who
had attended an event etc were usually 3rd or 4th on the agenda, so even
if the Friend did slip away after they had 'done their bit' they had
still experienced some Quaker business and might feel more encouraged to
stay longer next time (tedious items were usually after reports, once
Friends had been lulled into a more relaxed frame of mind!).
Another practice we had was the Sunday following MM a Friend
nominated in advance would give a short verbal report on MM to their
worship group during notices, this way those who hadn't been there got
to hear something of the flavour of the Meeting beyond the bare bones of
the Minutes (and often included a comment on the quality of the MM
spread - each Meeting had it's own specialities!), news of Friends from
other Meetings within the MM might also be shared at this time. This
strengthened the sense of being part of the MM community and gave a good
basis for conversation starters for those curious to learn more. I
started attending Preparative Meeting (the local Worship Group business
meeting held the Sunday before MM) aged 14 as Mum was Assistant Clerk
and then later Clerk and Dad was Treasurer, as a result I ended up being
appointed to be one of our local Meeting's reps on the MM 'Friendship
Day' committee (and annual event of all age activities and discussions,
and of course including a spectacular shared meal!) - I've held some
Quaker post or other pretty much constantly ever since! Do we encourage
our young people to come along and get involved? (Hopefully none of them
will ever have to sit through six months worth of discussion on toilet
renovations like I did though...)
{ no doubt my parents will correct me on the actual timeframe - lets just agree it was too long! } After a while you get sucked in, you
want to know how something resolved that was held over until next month,
you want to be part of the ongoing discernment process over a Friends
concern, was the Friend who applied accepted into membership? etc etc
etc.... almost 30yrs later I'm still going to business meetings but
these days more often than not I'm back to being the youngest person in
the room, surely by now I shouldn't be?
I'm not saying MMs I've attended back in the UK were perfect - they
were not by any means, in fact none of them lived up to the quality and
spiritual depth of business meetings we had at YFCC (now called
Young Friends General Meeting) - those of us who had been active YFs had high
standards and grumbled endlessly about these older Friends who didn't
live up to them outwith YM sessions, but at least we were there to know
how 'bad' they were - and we still went back for more! When serving as
an overseer in one MM we had a roster to ensure that there was at least
one of us guaranteed to be at each MM and the elders did the same.
Sometimes it felt like the short straw when your month came around it
has to be said, but it was attending an MM because it was my 'turn' that
led eventually to me now being here in Aotearoa NZ, the spirit moves in
mysterious ways...
How can we engage more Friends to participate in the work of our MMs
and YMs? YM Nominations Committee has been working hard to try to find
'new' names to bring into the fold and hopefully get them to YM in
session at least once as a result - but it needs more than that. Somehow
we are not reaching out to Friends, we are not offering what we have in
a way that is attractive to them, and possibly that means changing what
we offer. Yes what we have suits many of those who do attend, but given
the proportion of over 80s at YM how much longer can we realistically
expect these Friends to carry the weight of YM decision making on their
shoulders without wider support? How do we give Friends sufficient first
hand experience of Quaker business method so that they can later take
on clerking in the manner of Friends rather than that of a secular
society's committee meeting? Similarly how can we expect Friends to be
able to provide elder support within business sessions if they aren't
sure how it should be run?
At the
'Whoosh!' conference at
Woodbrooke last year, Paul Parker, Recording
Clerk of
Britain YM, shared an anecdote
about two small Meetings he had attended of roughly equal size, one had a
sense of dwindling and dying, the other a sense of excitement and hope -
I would like to think we can follow the example of the latter rather
than the former and find ways in which our YM and MMs, particularly when
gathered for business etc, can 'whoosh!' forwards with enthusiasm
rather than become an inevitably smaller and increasingly elderly and
frail collection of Friends with insufficient energy to follow our
concerns and achieve our visions. I feel priviledged to have been able to read so much of the documentation that came out of that conference and would love to see its like happen here...
Sorry this is so long... succinct has never been my strong point! Thank you for bearing with me this far along what could prove to be an extended journey.
ps Mum's comment on reading this: "But was it only
six months we had the toilet renovation on the agenda?! Surely longer..." - I rest my case! It was probably 6 mths just to decide whether to have two toilets or a toilet and a urinal in the gents... :/
