Great piece from Johanna Jackson on creating new models of Quaker communities
I’m really struggling a lot with this. I attended a Philadelphia Yearly Meeting-sponsored virtual workshop the other night. It was led by Friends from Middletown/Delco Meeting and was well-done and spiritually deep. But so many of the participants were the same old faces. Meanwhile every other day there’s a breathless post on /r/Quakers from someone who just discovered us and the Quaker Discord you can almost count the frequency of newbie posts in minutes. How do we bridge the graying depth of our often small and predictable meetings with the swirling chaos of an online forum. QuakerSpeak kind of does that (it’s almost always cited in response to a Newcomer’s query): it turns thoughtful Friends into compelling ten-minute soundbites. But I really feel the gulf between very settled meeting Friends and a wider movement toward us than few of our formal structures can address.
I particularly like this part of Johanna’s article:
In my research and Quaker ministry, I have met many younger Friends who are either blocked by the Quaker structure, or unenthusiastic about it. These Friends tend to value openness and fluidity more than procedures.