On Choosing a New General Secretary

We are grateful for the care and commitment members of Supervisory Committee and the ad hoc Search Committee are showing through the process of discerning who will be our new General Secretary. And we hold in the Light staff and volunteers who have stepped in to handle Yearly Meeting responsibilities during this transition period.

The queries---"discerning our calling and our needs"-Michael Cronin and Lauri Perman circulated for Fall Interim Meeting (still available on the BYM Web site) stimulated prayerful reflection in our Meeting, located at the northeastern corner of the Yearly Meeting region.

Baltimore Yearly Meeting means quite different things to different ones of us. Many of us feel only the vaguest understanding of the full range of activities of the yearly meeting, of its organization, and of the duties of current staff and major volunteer positions. At the risk of oversimplifying, our experiences and sense of the yearly meeting stretch along a spectrum from the yearly meeting as an enterprise, institution or set of administrative functions to the yearly meeting as the collective of Friends who attend monthly meetings.

The former role requires careful stewardship and management by and of staff. The camping program, the logistics for annual sessions, youth programs, and maintaining a communications hub for committees and meetings are important elements of "BYM as institution." Seen in this light, one Friend noted, "Religious organizations need to be run like businesses." We hope that yearly meeting staff receive adequate salary and benefits to meet family needs; benefits being a particular challenge with many staff working only limited hours. It is very important that we have on staff individuals with gifts for careful stewardship of financial resources, who will not allow faith in "way opening" to blind our community when there is a mismatch between aspirations and resources.

But, it is easy for those given administrative responsibility to adopt business-like approaches, top down management styles that feel at odds with Friends' practice. Frank Massey had the gift of not allowing his sense of care and responsibility for our financial assets and liabilities to interfere with his sense of being centered in the Light. While we have every sense of the yearly meeting's enterprises under Frank's stewardship moving forward with efficiency and integrity, the gifts that we associate with Frank's stewardship have more to do with mentoring, facilitating, encouraging others to uncover previously unknown talents. Having seen the long-term benefits of having a servant leader as General Secretary, we tend to crave that in Frank's successor. It may not be possible to find in a single candidate both gifts of financial and administrative management and the other gifts we came to rely on from Frank.

While many in our Meeting have been actively involved in one or more yearly meeting activities-e.g., annual sessions, committees, camping program, youth programs, and now this Search Committee - we are aware that the vast majority of BYM Friends have little direct experience of the yearly meeting as an institution. We guesstimated that perhaps 10 percent of BYM Friends attend annual sessions each year and perhaps another 10 percent have been engaged with the camping programs.

What does the yearly meeting mean to, what does the yearly meeting "owe" to the people who contribute toward the apportionment but don't participate in these institutional activities?

Those who don't participate aren't saying that the yearly meeting's institutional activities aren't valuable. Nurturing our youth (encouraging the next generation of Friends), facilitating communication among Friends, creating the conditions for collective discernment are all important functions. But, it is easy for the communications role to take a backseat to other institutional priorities. It is easy for the yearly meeting as institution to reflect the enthusiasms of those most active in its sponsored activities.

One Friend said that there was little in the Interchange that spoke to her. Another commented that the Interchange might be too much a publication for yearly meeting insiders. The web site has become easier to navigate, but it is not clear to some just what we are supposed to take from it. It has been good to have the General Secretary join us for Quarterly Meeting-makes it easy to ask questions and creates opportunities to share insights or information from other meetings, quarters, committees. This sort of intervisitation encourages sharing that doesn't depend on knowledge of the yearly meeting as an institution. Just as staff felt Frank's presence as mentor, encourager, servant leader - so our monthly and quarterly meetings felt those gifts when he worshipped with us. Geographically distant from Sandy Spring, Nottingham Meeting sees the yearly meeting office not as a major presence in our lives, but as a resource - there to offer support, answer questions, and tap into the pool of resources and information available from other monthly meetings. We also see yearly meeting, the institution, as offering the occasional nudge to turn us as a meeting to concerns that ought to be near our hearts - for example considering peace issues in Iraq or Palestine or focusing on the spiritual state of the meeting. A General Secretary traveling extensively among the meetings may not be necessary to meet these needs, but Frank's tenure offers an example in which it was very helpful.

It is humbling to realize that Nottingham Friends have been gathering together for over 300 years. The dynamics of our local, national and global communities are constantly changing, but the reality of our relationship with the Divine remains the same. That grace unites us with fellow seekers everywhere.

David Ross,
Nottingham Meeting