Order of Worship, Meeting for Business, 9/2016
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Friends Meeting of Washington
Order of Worship
Monthly Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business
September 2016
Do you, as the way opens, share Friends' principles with non-Friends? Do you witness to your Quaker faith by letting your life speak? Do you make non-Friends welcome in your meetings for worship? Do you find ways to encourage their continued attendance?
Advices
It is not easy to find community and fellowship in the modern world. Many Friends view relationships within the local Meeting as similar to partial relationships established with people met regularly at work, at play, and in the neighborhood. It is perhaps too much to expect that we all will make the Meeting central to our lives. But unless the Meeting fellowship can be made to speak to something deep in our lives, our Society falls short of fulfilling the true spiritual needs of its members.
Typically Friends come together in meetings for worship from diverse neighborhoods, seeing one another rarely except on First Day or on special occasions. Many Meetings find it helpful to encourage groups to meet in one another's homes for worship, recreation, study or fellowship. Committees provide opportunities for other kinds of relationships within the Meeting. But all too often these contacts fail to satisfy our yearning for community. Sometimes a glimpse of the meaning of community comes as Friends work together in projects of social service, peace education, religious education or pastoral care for fellow members. Each Meeting should have as an active concern before one or more of its standing committees the nurture of the Meeting community in whatever ways may open. – BYM Faith and Practice
Voices
The very simple heart of the early Quaker message is needed as much today as it ever was… The really universal thing is a living experience. It is reached in various ways, and expressed in very different language… The common bond is in the thing itself, the actual inner knowledge of the grace of God. Quakerism can only have a universal message if it brings men and women into this transforming knowledge. The early Friends certainly had this knowledge, and were the means of bringing many thousands of seekers into the way of discovery. In virtue of this central experience, the Quaker movement can only be true to itself by being a missionary movement.
- Henry T Hodgkin, 1916
Clerk’s Report
Major items
Hospitality – Kate Steger and Susan Griffin
Membership – Janet Dinsmore
Request for transfer of membership of Pamela Lebeaux
Marriage & Family – Jim Bell – first request for Tracy Hart and Ahmad Olabi to be married under the care of the Meeting
Nominating Committee – Todd Harvey
Resignations
- Michael Huffington, resign from Ministry and Worship
- Blair Forlaw, resign from Ministry and Worship
Nominations
- Alex Mathews (m), Property Committee, term through 2018
Milestones
Other business
Report on Baltimore Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions – Virginia Avanesyan and Mary Campbell
FMW Committee Handbook: Hospitality Committee is responsible for providing or coordinating hospitality at Friends Meeting of Washington with the purpose of making the Meeting a warm and welcoming environment where Friends may gather to strengthen the bonds of community and to welcome others to the Meeting for Quaker or other functions.
The team who sets-up, greets, serves, and cleans-up includes:
- Pam Callard
- Kathy Lipp Farr
- Susan Griffin
- Gregory Robb
- Jorgé Sanchez
- Kate Steger
Sarah Radomsky is a new attender who has placed herself in rotation to serve on fifth Sundays of the month when those occur.
Two of our Clerks Emeriti, Bill Strein, and Alex Matthews, volunteer with the committee regularly.In addition to a steady presence on 3rd Sunday’s, Professor Strein is attempting to solve the mystery of multiple coffee makers, with an array of working and non-working parts.All of us are optimistic that his efforts will supply us with one additional working percolator.
Alex Matthews, a kitchen regular, carts away compost and launders dishtowels and tablecloths—Glamorous Work Indeed!
Patty Murphy is an experienced kitchen-hand who responds readily to the committee’s entreaties for help and will often just poke her head in kitchen and see if we look bedraggled.
GT Hunt and Bruce Kellogg regularly make coffee for the early crowd—coffee is always ready for the first Hospitality volunteer—Thank you!
Kate Steger, Co-Clerk, is the director of Souper Sunday—providing much needed sustenance prior to Meeting for Business.Kate also keeps a discerning eye out for plastic utensils and platters that appear through the generosity of the many groups who rent our facilities. These utensils are no longer invited to stay—they are now recycled or whisked away to Church of the Pilgrims.
We now have the once-monthly presence of First Day School Students who prepare cookies to celebrate birthdays of FMW community members.Michael Beer is working with the Religious Education Committee to replicate the enormously successful Family Brunch that occurred First Sunday in September.Our two committees are working out those details—stay tuned.
Finally, Jorgé Sanchez and his wife Mimi expect their first child this week.Upon arrival, Baby Sanchez will be going to Children’s Hospital for special care.Please hold the Sanchez family in the light.
During Jorgé’s time away, we would very much appreciate additional help.Actually, we are in regular need of two or three additional people to ensure that there are 4-hands available for every First Day.Please consider joining our ministry of welcoming and community.