Intervisitation Program of
Baltimore Yearly Meeting
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- For Visitors from BYM
- For Visitors to BYM (under constructioin)
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- For Hosts from BYM
- Discernment
- Preparing
- Reporting
- For Hosts of BYM visitors
- What to expect
- Share your thoughts with us
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Reports on Completed Visits
From BYM
- Indiana YM 2005 (to be posted)
- New England YM 2005 (to be posted)
- Winston Salem MM 10/2005 (to be posted)
- North Carolina YM Mid-year Gathering Spring 2006 (to be posted)
- Great Plains YM 2006 (to be posted)
To BYM (first visit expected Fall 2006)
Committee Reports
- Interim Meeting, 4/2005, Minute I2005-3
- Interim Meeting, 6/2005, Minute I2005-51
- Annual Sessions, 8/2005, Minute Y2005-29
- Interim Meeting, 10/2005, Minute I2005-73
- Interim Meeting, 3/2006, Minute I2006-28
- Interim Meeting, 6/2006 Minute I2006-47
- Interchange, Spring 2006
- Interchange, Fall 2006
- Interchange, Fall 2007
Our program of intervisitation with other FUM Meetings
is growing. Consequently we need more committee
members, minuted visitors, and traveling companions.
Consider how you can support or become part of this
program! Here are a few ideas:
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Become a committee member who attends
meetings and helps plan our next phase.
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Become a tele-commuting member. Many jobs
can be done from home and many decisions are
made by e-mail.
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Become a minuted visitor or traveling companion for a minuted visitor.
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Hold our relationship with other parts of FUM
in the Light.
Since August, 2006 we have sponsored eight visitors
or companions to six Yearly Meetings: North Carolina,
Indiana, Great Plains, Southeastern, Western, and New
York. The last three were new visits. The first three were
return visits, which have given Friends an opportunity
to know each other better. At 2007 Annual Session
we welcomed return visits from: FUM-Africa, New
England, and Great Plains. With delight we welcomed
a new visitor from Southeastern.
Check out our website at
http://www.bym-rsf.org/quakers/committees/intervisitation.shtml. Contact us
at intervisitation@bym-rsf.org.
Among the things we have learned from our visits are:
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Some FUM Yearly Meetings are giving loving
attention to the FUM personnel policy.
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Other FUM Yearly Meetings have their own
controversies, leaving them little energy or
interest in the personnel policy. Even so, they
welcome visitors from BYM.
One of our busier minuted travelers reports that:
As a general observation, I found that some
Friends are experiencing divisions on issues
other than the FUM personnel policy. In each
case, the initial tendency of the more liberal
Friends was to disengage from the larger group.
In some cases, this disengagement enabled the
growing control of the larger group by more
doctrinaire Friends. The disengagement helped
to feed the estrangement and division that eventually
erupted.
Dear Friends,
We wanted to check in and thank those courageous and loving Friends who have expressed interest in the Intervisitation Program of Baltimore Yearly Meeting. There continue to be opportunities for visiting.
Friends United Meeting has ten other Yearly Meetings in the US and Canada. We hope to have Friends from our Yearly Meeting visit them all. (When it is available, a schedule of Yearly Meetings will be sent out and posted to our website.) Would you be interested in being a visitor? As with all visits within the Religious Society of Friends, we strongly recommend that Friends led to travel have someone accompany them, so both primary visitors and support persons are needed. Also, Young Friends are encouraged to visit.
Funds are available to offset some (or, in some cases, all) of the expenses of visiting a Yearly Meeting. Please think about whether you would like to be a visitor with this program, talk with those helping you with clearness in your monthly meeting, and then be in touch with us.
The Committee is ready to help support those with such a leading, especially in helping clarify information about FUM and Friends generally, and by providing training for visitors. Please call on us if you have ideas and urgings in some area of visiting among FUM Friends. Our website has a variety of information on our web page.
Ad Hoc Committee on Intervisitation
Submitted by Georgia Fuller and Walter Brown, co-clerks
Interchange, Spring 2006
Traveling to Knit Us Together
Our purpose, as presented to Interim Meeting, is to spiritually oversee and financially support a traveling ministry of presence within Friends United Meeting- a traveling which we hope will knit us together. What is intervisitation under the care of our committee, and what is it not?
The committee does not sponsor travel "with a concern" to change the personnel policy of FUM, though most of us hold the firm truth that FUM's policy is hurtful. Our purpose is not "to promote dialogue" about the policy or sexuality issues, though we hope honest conversation and open sharing are not strangers to our gatherings and visitations.
Ad Hoc Intervisitation Committee of Interim Meeting
Report of Initial Meeting – March 5, 2005
Introduction
On March 5, our committee met for almost five hours and had the goal of taking the first steps in bringing into being an intervisitation program between Baltimore Yearly Meeting and other yearly and monthly meetings that are part of Friends United Meeting. We met after two of the three 2005 meetings had been held to discuss a recommendation on how BYM should allocate funds for Friends United Meeting.
Through our March 5th meeting, we drafted a mission statement for an intervisitation program, discussed what an intervisitation program would look like, considered requests regarding intervisitation projects that we have already received, shared our collective knowledge of Friends’ history and practices, and enjoyed getting to know one another better.
Present at the meeting: Howard Fullerton, Ken Stockbridge, Georgia Fuller, Sharon Stout, Walter Brown, Rebecca Richards, Marcy Seitel
The mission of an intervisitation program
The intervisitation program of the Baltimore Yearly Meeting is being planned because of BYM’s concern for Friends United Meeting’s policies on sexual diversity and sexual conduct in community. This concern has awakened us to the fragility of the relations among the yearly meetings and monthly meetings of FUM. We encourage, prepare, and support Friends to travel with the faith that we can listen, strengthen our relationships, offer care for each other, build our faith community, and lay a groundwork for discussions around sexual diversity and other issues as they arise. This plan assumes that intervisitation will be in all directions, and those interested will offer and receive hospitality.
We recognize that diversity raises issues and opportunities within all the FUM monthly meetings. Our purpose is to strengthen the Religious Society of Friends in the hope of leading us toward a clear sense of what it means to know and live in the beloved community of Friends.
This mission statement can best be understood in the context of the full report of this ad hoc committee's initial meeting of March 5, 2005. We propose that this mission statement be reviewed in five years.
We expect that our committee will receive traveling minutes specifically for those visiting under our program and that we will consider and present them to interim or yearly meeting for endorsement.
Background
The idea of an intervisitation program first arose in the summer of 2004 when BYM Friends began to realize how deep were their concerns were about FUM’s employment policy on sexuality. While the idea of visiting was discussed at Annual Sessions, a committee to come up with a formal plan did not come into being until the Fall Interim Meeting in October 2004. The Ad Hoc Committee on Intervisitation was formed with representatives from the four committees which hold the concern over BYM’s financial commitment to FUM, which are Ministry and Oversight, the ad hoc Committee for Gender and Sexual Diversity Concerns, Finance, and Advancement and Outreach.
Visiting – what it is
Because of the diversity of needs, concerns, and interests of the meetings, yearly meetings, and individuals involved, we thought it would be best to keep an open view of what visiting means. Each visit will likely be unique. We discourage the idea of visiting in the role of ministers who travel to impart a truth, but rather to build relationships so that the sharing of truth is done with respect and in an atmosphere of trust. On the other hand, friends traveling may have the intent of only listening, but feel led to share their ministry.
There are meetings among FUM friends who have suffered because of decisions about their members who have come out as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. With those meetings our purpose would likely be more pastoral. Other meetings may want simply to know more Friends, and so our purpose is more of traveling to build community. Visitors may be asked to share their faith and experience, and at times this will likely become more like the visit of a minister. We ask traveling Friends to be open to all these possibilities. We trust that visiting Friends will be open to the leadings of the Spirit as they travel.
The purpose of traveling is to share our life experiences and faith experiences. Those who travel should expect that they will in ways be changed. In addition, traveling Friends may have to be present to people who really believe that being against GLBT Friends is right, and promotes Gospel Order. We hope that this program will change people’s hearts and their lives. We may find that we don’t agree on some important things, but that we can live together.
Who visits and how prospective visitors are prepared
A visitor can be any Friend in Baltimore Yearly Meeting who feels they want to travel. Friends can volunteer, or can be recognized and encouraged. It is our hope that Friends of a wide age range will want to travel. We recommend that Friends consider serving as visitors over a three-year period so that they gain experience with this process.
A person who is interested in traveling should request a clearness committee with their own meeting first. If traveling seems right, then the friend would receive a traveling minute from their monthly meeting. The next step would be to meet with members of the Ad Hoc Committee on Intervisitation of Interim Meeting and be endorsed by this group.
All those traveling would receive an orientation from the Ad Hoc Intervisitation Committee to help them learn about FUM meetings and some of their practices, and learn about practices for listening in potentially divisive situations.
All of these steps are necessary for anyone who wishes to travel as a visitor. After traveling, each visitor would be asked to report back to the Intervisitation Committee to let us know how the visit went, the major concerns of the visited meeting, and what kinds of things were accomplished.
We recommend that people travel in pairs or in larger numbers. It would be best if one of the travelers could be a GLBT Friend, or one who has first hand experience with GLBT Friends and can speak from this experience and another be self-identified as a straight person..
To date, we have focused more on preparing members of BYM to be visitors, but we also hope to receive visitors from other yearly meetings. Shaping this part of the program will be on the agenda for future meetings.
Role of Ad Hoc Intervisitation Committee
We recommend that our committee be kept going for five years, and then have next steps for the program be considered. We would help Friends discern their leadings and help them prepare for visiting. We would receive requests for visiting and seek to fill them. We would support those who visit over the period of time that they serve as visitors, and keep visitors informed of each other’s experiences. We would also regularly report experiences of visiting back to Interim Meeting.
As we proceed, we will be learning more about FUM, the diversity of Friends generally, historical facts, and other information that we would like to share with BYM and other FUM Friends.
Requests for support of programs in 2005
By the time we met in March, our committee had already received three requests regarding intervisitation. Two were for funds to cover programs that are being planned, and one was our first request to have BYM Friends visit a monthly meeting. Joan and Rich Liversidge are planning a marriage enrichment program with a Kenyan couple, and travel and other expenses need to be met. Aron Teel and the Ad Hoc Committee on GLBT Concerns is sponsoring a workshop at Annual Sessions that will include travel expenses. And finally, Winston-Salem Friends Meeting in North Caroline has invited Friends to visit them. All three requests seem important to support.
Big Dreams
It is not know where this program will take us. It might be good to plan a conference for all Friends on the topic of sexuality, or on the topic of the diversity and core of our faith and practice. We may find many ways to gather Friends, share our faith experiences, and strengthen the Religious Society of Friends.
Everyone is invited to participate in this program in some way. Some Friends may want to start a correspondence with another FUM Friend, visiting a meeting can be on the agenda of a vacation, there are workshops and other gatherings to attend that include a diversity of Friends. We encourage all members of BYM to consider how they can learn more about other FUM Friends and help deepen the relationships among Friends everywhere.
If you would like to join in this program either as a visitor or a host, please contact the Ad Hoc Intervisitation Committee at intervisitation@bym-rsf.org.
We welcome any comments.
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