Advancement and Outreach Committee
The Advancement and Outreach Committee consists of approximately
nine members nominated by the Nominating Committee and appointed
by the Yearly Meeting with care to name Friends who are familiar
with Monthly Meetings throughout the Yearly Meeting.
This Committee provides tools and resources to local Meetings
looking for outreach ideas, for help starting new meetings and for
ways to help those new to Friends learn about the Religious Society
of Friends. The Committee works with the Publications Committee
to assure that useful information about Baltimore Yearly Meeting,
its local Meetings and the Religious Society of Friends is available
from the Yearly Meeting web site and other Yearly Meeting publications.
The Committee appoints two of its members to serve on the Ethel
Reynolds Fund Committee for one-year terms. It also names one member
to serve on the Sue Thomas Turner Quaker Education Fund Committee
for a two-year term.
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Manual of Procedure, July 2004, p16
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Advance Report - 2008
The mission of the BYM Advancement and Outreach Committee is to support meeting growth and revitalization and encourage outreach to seekers. We meet three times a year at Interim Meeting, and hold an open committee meeting at Annual Sessions. We usually have four or five present at our meetings during the year, and a dozen or more at Annual Sessions. Several of our members have been prevented from being more active by their own health problems or those of their immediate family. We are grateful for all they have given over the years, and hold them in our prayers.
We are encouraged by signs of vitality and growth in Baltimore Yearly Meeting, including the organization of at least one new worship group. We have been impressed
with how much outreach work is already going on in our local meetings, from peace vigils and service projects, to programs on Quakerism for newcomers, to meeting open houses and community celebrations. We are collecting notices about such activities and will be posting them on the BYM website as a way of sharing ideas and encouragement.
We are excited about the “Quaker Quest” project being promoted by Friends General
Conference. “Quaker Quest” involves holding public meetings where Friends present personal statements of belief and experience on such topics as “Friends and God” or “Friends and Peace”, and encourage seekers to explore their own beliefs in small worship sharing groups. The idea is to demonstrate how first-hand experience and deep sharing, not doctrinal unity, is what binds Quakerism together. Several Friends from BYM attended a one-day session at Pendle Hill in January to explore the “Quaker Quest” idea and discuss how FGC can support local and yearly meeting projects. Several of our meetings have begun developing their own “Quaker Quest” programs. The BYM A&O Committee will be following these efforts, and helping other groups to get involved.
We are also looking for ways to encourage visitation within Baltimore Yearly Meeting to share ideas about how our meetings can become more visible, accessible
and welcoming. Please let us know if you would like to be added to the BYM A&O list of corresponding members, or potential visitors. We are a small committee, with important work to do.
Deborah Haines, clerk
Advance Report - 2007
The mission of the BYM Advancement and Outreach Committee, as we see it, is to offer support for meeting growth and revitalization, encourage the formation of new worship groups, and find ways to communicate Quaker ideas and values to seekers in the Baltimore Yearly meeting area.
One of A&O’s priorities has been to promote visitation within BYM. At the 2006 Annual Sessions we were approached with the suggestion that we take over the visitation program then being developed by Ministry and Pastoral Care. The Friends who had taken the lead on this project had reached the end of their term on M&PC, and were asking to be appointed to A&O, with the intention of bringing the project with them. Their vision was to recruit seasoned Friends to undertake visits in order to strengthen ties between local meetings and the Yearly Meeting. These volunteer visitors would communicate BYM’s interest in its local meetings, and offer to report back to the Yearly Meeting the joys and concerns local Friends might want to share.
Thinking it might be helpful to pool our resources, we agreed to try out this arrangement. Unfortunately, we quickly ran into problems. Attempting to combine service to the Yearly Meeting as a whole with attention to the work of A&O raised unexpectedly thorny questions about how visitors would be recruited, what resources they would offer, what body they would be responsible to, who they would report to, and how they would explain their purpose in visiting. When the Friends who had brought the project to A&O were forced to resign from the committee for personal reasons, we realized that we as a committee did not feel clear to continue the effort. Instead, we have returned to our original focus: to organize a visitation program aimed at finding out what local meetings are doing in the area of outreach and meeting growth, and offering to bring workshops on outreach and revitalization to local meetings. We would love to hear from you if your meeting would like to a visit from A&O.
We are also continuing to collect stories and ideas about local meeting outreach, and are working on the A&O page for the Baltimore Yearly Meeting website. We are monitoring the Friends General Conference “isolated Friends” project, to identify seekers in the BYM area in search of a meeting or interested in organizing a worship group. We are looking forward to supporting the outreach work of William Penn House, and the “Quaker Quest” pilot project being considered by Chesapeake Quarter.
Finally, we are putting together a list of Friends throughout BYM with an interest in outreach. As “corresponding members” of the A&O committee, these Friends will receive committee minutes and mailings and will be able to participate in committee discussions or support projects in their area as feasible. Please let us know if you would like to be added to this list! We are hoping that our small committee can be the nucleus of a growing network of Friends with a concern for sharing the Quaker message.
Deborah Haines, clerk
Advance Report - 2006
The Advancement and Outreach Committee has focused this year on laying the groundwork for an intervisitation program within Baltimore Yearly Meeting. Two of us traveled to the Nottingham Quarterly Meeting session held at Oxford in March to give a brief program on outreach and meeting revitalization, which was very well received. We would love to have invitations from other meetings that would like to schedule a program or workshop on this topic.
We are also hoping to encourage more Friends in BYM to visit meetings other than their own. Visits to other meetings can enrich our understanding, and build community within the yearly meeting. We are preparing a set of guidelines on how to set up and carry out a meeting visit, and will be recruiting volunteer visitors during annual sessions.
We continue to collect stories about outreach activities, and are amazed at the amount of outreach work and community involvement that is routinely carried out in many local meetings in BYM. We are looking for more ways to share these stories. We have committed to publishing at least one outreach item in each issue of the BYM Interchange, and are preparing to post an overview of outreach ideas, tips and success stories on our committee webpage.
Advancement and Outreach is a small committee, with big dreams. Five or six of us gather at our committee meetings, which are held during Interim Meeting, three or four times a year. The prospect of increased funding through the Ethel Reynolds Fund has set us to thinking about specific things we might do to support new worship groups, reach out to isolated Friends, make our meetings more visible in their communities, and promote meeting growth and vitality. We look forward to the future with anticipation.
Interchange, Spring 2006
New Outreach Resource
Friends General Conference has just added a new feature for
"isolated Friends" to the online meeting directory, www.QuakerFinder.org. Visitors
to the site can still type in a town name or zip code and
get a list of the half dozen nearest Friends meetings. Now they will also see a
prompt on the listings page asking if the nearest meeting is too far away. If
it is, they can register their location and find out if anyone else has
registered in the same geographic area. The system puts the nearest registrants
in touch with each other through a doubleblind e-mail system, with the list
constantly updated as new registrations are received. Over time, FGC is hoping
that new worship groups will grow out of clusters of isolated Friends who find
each other this way. Why not check out the QuakerFinder website to see if there
is anyone registered in your area'? You may feel led to register yourself, in
order to be put in touch with people feeling isolated and looking for Quaker
connections. This new outreach tool opens a world of opportunities. Baltimore
Yearly Meeting will certainly have a role to play in ministering to isolated
seekers and any new worship groups that may grow up in our area.
Deborah Haines, clerk
BYM Advancement and Outreach Committee
Interchange, Fall 2005
Outreach Notes
New Growth at Pipe Creek
We appear to be in danger of violating a possible Friends testimony on refraining from boastfulness. Our usual number of worshipers has nearly doubled recently: two new members, one prospective transfer from another meeting, and six faithful new attenders. All strive to be present also at meetings for business. However, we do not yet describe ourselves as a megameeting. This substantial gain in attendance is largely attributable to an invitational “Yule get-together” on 5th 12th month, conceived and arranged through divine leading by one of our seasoned attenders.
Some observations offered by various members and attenders are:
The Pipe Creek Meeting has always been welcoming to newcomers. Both the meeting house and those who worship in it have always made new people feel accepted. When one sits down for meeting for worship one can feel the spirit, the peace and the light flowing through the room and everyone present. It has always been that way for the seven years I have attended. However, over the past year the Spirit has moved us to be more open to new ideas and ways of doing things. This has been very exciting for our meeting. It has helped us to acquire some new attenders whose energy and enthusiasm more than make up for lack of knowledge of the Quaker Process. We are very fortunate that the Spirit moved among us and led us to seek these people out. We will have to be careful not to overwhelm them with responsibility too rapidly. This has become virtually a new meeting, divinely led.
I can say that our spiritual state is “On Fire”. By that I mean there is an energy anyone should be able to perceive. In my time here I have found the people welcoming and kind and the worship invigorating and powerful, oft times in a smoldering way, but powerful none the less. Coming here each week can be compared to attending an annual retreat, which often can be both a time to escape the world and delve deep into the spirit. Worship and even meeting for business or fellowship at Pipe Creek provide me with a place to communicate deeply and reconnect with what I believe is the Spirit of God in a more personal way that would be impossible or only occasional in other communities.
Excerpted from Pipe Creek Spiritual State Of The Meeting Report - 2004
The BYM Advancement and Outreach Committee is looking for stories of meeting growth and outreach ideas to share. What’s happening in your meeting? Let us know, c/o Deborah Haines, clerk of A&O, at deborah.haines@gmail.com.
Advance Report - 2005
Each time our committee meets, we have a spirited meeting filled with good ideas and directions for advancement and outreach among Friends that surprise and please us. We have not been successful in sharing all the good things so that more monthly meetings can benefit from the good things we hear. Our committee has grown into a strong committee, and that has taken time. In the next year, through web pages and workshops, we hope to share more widely with Friends in BYM.
In addition to our regular committee work, one of the main activities of the year was participating in the meetings to consider what BYM should do about sending funds to Friends United Meeting (FUM). At least two committee members attended each of these meetings, and it was enlightening and interesting to be part of this process. We met to do committee work at each interim meeting through the year, and because the discussions about FUM took most of interim day in October, we met for a long meeting in January as well. All of our meetings this year were well attended with both committee members and other interested friends who brought good ideas and energy to our meetings.
The general topics that we discuss in our meetings mostly fall into the categories of welcoming newcomers and new attenders in monthly meetings, preparing people to become active participants in our meetings, and making our meetings better known to the public, especially the neighborhoods surrounding our meetings. We have recently added to this list a new concern, which is providing materials to local hospitals to give comfort to those who are worried or grieving. Our understanding of how Friends reach out and to whom is continuously expanding.
We have found the materials provided by Friends General Conference very valuable for identifying the various areas of advancement and outreach that a meeting might want to consider. We encourage all meetings to get these materials or to look through them again to explore ways your meeting might grow and develop.
In Baltimore Yearly Meeting, as in other places, welcoming newcomers and those who begin to attend regularly is something each meeting does differently. A difficulty of many meetings, especially larger meetings, is keeping track of the actual individuals who come through the meeting, either once or a number of times. Some meetings send notes to all people who visit, some simply ask for visitors to sign a guest book. One meeting sends notes out at Thanksgiving to people who have not attended for a while. Keeping track of the changes in the "flock" is one of the challenges of anyone interested in advancement and outreach. In this year of political debate and animosity, some meetings found it hard to be welcoming to those with a viewpoint different from the viewpoint of most Friends in the meeting. This was not true of all meetings, and some have a way of honoring differences and welcoming a diversity of political and spiritual views.
Religious education for adults seems to be a strong component of meetings who feel they can guide newcomers in becoming part of a meeting. Introductory courses that run several weeks or discussions of a Pendle Hill pamphlet together are programs that meetings have that are usually successful. Meetings struggle with ways to incorporate active and vocal newcomers who do not yet know the history and tradition of Friends. Both creating an open space for spiritual exploration and holding on to the integrity of Friends' worship and practices need to be kept in balance, and providing good adult religious education is important in accomplishing this.
Social activities are another way for new attenders to become part of a meeting, and meetings seem to have programs that run for a while but then are laid down, and followed by another way for people to get to know each other. Potlucks seem especially important, and some meetings have a meal together each Sunday. Others try for once a month. Programs or events that have both a social and an educational element seem to do well.
Many meetings find that committees other than the one designated to do advancement and outreach actually do this work; the concerns of some committees lead to reaching out to the community. One meeting has a regular peace vigil, which has given Friends public witness for a few years. Yearly fundraising festivals and other events draw neighbors. One meeting holds an open house each year and invites the public. Showing a film, having a speaker, or otherwise drawing people together over an issue were given as ideas that have been tried and should be explored further. Offering a peace award to a student in a local high school was discussed and is being explored as a way for monthly meetings to become better known within their communities. Sandy Spring Friends Meeting currently gives the Lee Stern award to a student in a local public high school.
Reaching out to students in area colleges and universities was another area we discussed. Worship groups have been tried occasionally, and have been requested by college age Friends. How to do this effectively is something we continue to explore.
This year our committee received a request to consider how to reach out to people who would use the hospital chapel at Johns Hopkins Hospital, especially since Johns Hopkins' roots are among Friends. This led to the question of what kind of materials are available, and how could the ministry of Friends be comforting to those in the hospital or visiting loved ones there. This gave us a whole new direction to consider, and we are searching for materials. It was surprising to find that brief materials focusing on illness, death, and grief, in a format similar to the tracts about Quaker faith, values, and practice, to our knowledge at this point, do not exist.
Friends' visiting among Friends has always been a concern of our committee. Some meetings need to be visited, especially those that are small or feel they are struggling with an issue. For Friends to understand the bigger group we are part of, and our place in history, we all need to leave our meetings once in a while and visit another meeting. The intervisitation process now being arranged for FUM meetings is an extension of this ongoing concern of our committee that Friends visit one another. This has been part of our tradition for 350 years. Three of our committee members are serving on the Ad Hoc Intervisitation Planning Committee of Interim Meeting.
In our committee work, we feel the preciousness of our witness as Friends, and of the practices of our meetings. Our goal remains to let Friends meetings be made known to others enough so that those who might have a leading to join us will know what we are about and how to find us.
I have loved being clerk of this committee, a job I took because I wanted the committee to survive, not because I had yet had a lot of experience in this area. Deborah Haines' ministry and her work with Friends General Conference gave us the boost to get our committee going two years ago. With that boost, the ministry and interest of other Friends has had a place to come forth. The next task is to make all our good knowledge better known to all of you.
Marcy Seitel, Out-going Clerk
Interchange, May 2004
The Committee invites Friends to our committee meeting at Summer
Yearly Meeting Day at Deer Creek Meeting at 10 a.m. We have found
it wonderful to share as a committee all the wonderful and interesting
things happening in our Monthly Meetings and our Yearly Meeting.
Now we want to extend this conversation to include all other Friends
who have an interest in Advancement and Outreach.
Please join us! If you cannot come but have something to share,
please send an e-mail to marcyseitel@yahoo.com.
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