2023 Spiritual State of the Meeting Queries

December 21, 2022

Dear Friends across Baltimore Yearly Meeting, 

The Ministry and Pastoral Care Committee is looking forward to hearing from each Monthly Meeting early next year with the SSoM report from your corner of our Quaker community. This is always a joyful undertaking for us as we read and sense Spirit's movement among us and use these reports as background for the Yearly Meeting's Spiritual State of the Meeting Report.

Below you will find the queries we have composed to help you in this year's reporting. Please use these as far as they seem right for you. OR feel free to devise Queries which suit you better, and if you do so please share them with us, along with your report, as we might learn from them. 

When your Spiritual State of The Meeting Reports are ready, please:

1. Please complete the report for your meeting by April 15, 2023.
2. Send it electronically to the Baltimore Yearly Meeting Office at Admin@bym-rsf.org. They will send them on to our committee and then archive them on the YM website (did you know you can look up old reports?)

Please contact the committee if your meeting would like help in any way with this reporting task. Many meetings share that this is a meaningful, even joyful, experience. If this is not your experience, please let us help.

In Friendship,
Rita Willett and Eileen Stanzione, Co-Clerks of Ministry and Pastoral Care Committee

THE QUERIES for reflecting on 2022 in your Meeting:

1. How has your meeting addressed the issue of racism as a spiritual concern?
    
2. How does your meeting strengthen the sense of worship during your Meeting for Business?
    
3. What tests the unity of your meeting community? How does it fare? What's building the community up and what is stressing it?
    
4. If you could put a sign out in the front of your Meeting House, what would it say?

The queries were approved by the entire M&PC committee.  The sub-committee on SSoM, which will review them, consists of Eileen Stanzione (Patapsco), Gary Sandman (Roanoke), Henry Apencha (Stony Run), Rebecca Richards (Gunpowder).