Following the money in a downsizing Quaker meeting

January 20, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Adria Gulizia’s series on dying meet­ings:

Final­ly, we might see dying meet­ings dis­in­vest from their First Day School pro­grams, as the needs of par­ents and chil­dren are tac­it­ly acknowl­edged to be in com­pe­ti­tion with those of set­tled old­er adults. Those with pow­er and longevi­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty ensure that their needs keep get­ting met, while increas­ing­ly neglect­ing those they are called to serve — chil­dren, those new to our faith, peo­ple in prison, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and peo­ple who are strug­gling financially.

Friends instead spend their dwin­dling resources on inter­nal pri­or­i­ties and the expens­es asso­ci­at­ed with keep­ing a meet­ing­house well-warmed, well-lit and well cared-for — even if there’s nobody in it.

When doing out­reach, you have to focus less about the peo­ple in the meet­ing­house and more on the peo­ple who would be join­ing if they knew we exist­ed and were wel­comed in. So too, I think, for our pri­or­i­ties in a shrink­ing meet­ing. It’s easy to turn inward and just keep the status-quo rolling. I see meet­ings in well-populated areas that are shrink­ing and not doing what they need to do to be more vis­i­ble in their local community.


Turning Our Resources Inward

Turn­ing Our Resources Inward 

Dying church­es use their resources for their own com­fort, rather than to serve others.

In the Shadow of Babylon In the Shad­ow of Babylon 

The importance of Google listings

January 20, 2023
· Martin Kelley

The blog archives will show that I’ve long been inter­est­ed in Quak­er out­reach. As I’ve grown more involved at Crop­well Meet­ing in Marl­ton, N.J., this past year I’m learn­ing some prac­ti­cal lessons for hyper-local out­reach that I’ll share occasionally. 

Two non-regular vis­i­tors to Quak­er meet­ing this Sun­day, one a first-time enquir­er and the oth­er a Friend mak­ing a spe­cial vis­it. Both saw our Google Maps entry first. One said that all the pic­tures there made the meet­ing look espe­cial­ly active. Good to remem­ber that for a lot of poten­tial vis­i­tors this is our homepage.

When I was in my wandering-between-meetings phase, vis­it­ing dif­fer­ent meet­ings all the time, I’d often upload pho­tos to Google Maps and update con­tact details as I was sit­ting in the park­ing lot before I left. Some of the Crop­well pho­tos are from my first vis­it a year ago. Adding pic­tures is very easy and is a great way to help places we like look good to poten­tial visitors. 

At Crop­well we’ve also been post­ing events to Google (via Eventbrite, as I under­stand the process) and these also appear in Google Maps. 

Autopsy for Quaker Meetings?

January 6, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Adria Gulitzia, in Autop­sy of a Deceased Church: Quak­er Edi­tion:

Think about that: since 2010, near­ly one in four Quak­er meet­ings or church­es has closed its doors. The top­ic of dying con­gre­ga­tions, and how to save them, feels urgent to me, and I’ve been unable to write much of any­thing since I read these dev­as­tat­ing numbers.

These are pre­lim­i­nary U.S. num­ber from Friends World Com­mit­tee for Con­sul­ta­tion, which does a peri­od­ic cen­sus. We need the usu­al dis­claimer that mem­ber­ship num­bers are always more a lit­tle dodgy (which FWCC read­i­ly admits) and that the pic­ture is dif­fer­ent out­side the Unit­ed States, espe­cial­ly in Evan­gel­i­cal Africa. But, how­ev­er you slice it, these are con­cern­ing numbers.

Adria promis­es a whole series of posts. I’ll be tuned in.

Autopsy of a Deceased Church: Quaker Edition
Autop­sy of a Deceased Church: Quak­er Edition 

A new series on the book “Autop­sy of a Deceased Church”

In the Shadow of Babylon In the Shad­ow of Babylon 

Update: a new post has dropped, Wor­ship­ing the Past, Aban­don­ing the Future:

When con­gre­ga­tions die, it’s usu­al­ly after a slow ero­sion rather than a cat­a­clysmic event. Dur­ing that process, there are sev­er­al points when they could change direc­tions. The decline is sel­dom irre­versible. But instead of fac­ing real­i­ty and respond­ing accord­ing­ly, peo­ple use some high point in their past to jus­ti­fy why they should not change now. And so they die. 

I like Adri­a’s ques­tions at the end about focus­ing on the periph­eries of our com­mu­ni­ty. It was some­thing of a per­son­al rev­e­la­tion for me many years ago when I real­ized I should focus my out­reach efforts on the peo­ple who would be Quak­er if only they knew about us (and if only we were accom­mo­dat­ing and wel­com­ing) rather than the folks already on the benches.

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished 1/3, updat­ed 1/6

Updating QuakerQuaker

January 4, 2023
· Martin Kelley

I just sent out a mes­sage on Quak­erQuak­er about retool­ing it for the mod­ern age:

I’m not one to make New Years res­o­lu­tions most of the time but it seems as if mod­ern­iz­ing Quak­erQuak­er should be one for 2023. While it still boasts over 3,700 mem­bers, it’s built on Ning, a long-outdated and semi-abandoned plat­form that has any num­ber of frus­trat­ing tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions. Quak­erQuak­er isn’t used as much as it should be, even by its members.

Reimag­in­ing Quak­erQuak­er and set­ting up the tools to make it work will cost some mon­ey. Please con­sid­er fund­ing Quak­erQuak­er and its evo­lu­tion for 2023, either as a month­ly dona­tion or a one-time gift. Also I’m open to emails with ideas about what you’d like to see (I’m imag­in­ing some­thing that’s more mod­est but also more used).

I had a much-longer orig­i­nal draft that detailed all the rea­sons why Ning is hope­less­ly inad­e­quate in 2023 but it was nixed by my Advance­ment Direc­tor (okay, my wife as she sits next to me at the table work­ing on home­school cur­ric­u­la). Suf­fice it to say that I’ve let Quak­erQuak­er stay in a kind of sta­sis because I did­n’t want to lose some great com­ment threads. The best ones could be eas­i­ly archived. I have a day job pro­duc­ing great Quak­er con­tent but there are still ways to reboot Quak­erQuak­er and make it a use­ful des­ti­na­tion for infor­ma­tion and con­ver­sa­tion that com­ple­ments oth­er Quak­er online spaces.

Quaker sing song ministry

January 4, 2023
· Martin Kelley
blank

Over on Mastodon (yes you should be there), Aus­tralian Friend Evan start­ed an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about Quak­er sing song. This is a form of deliv­er­ing min­istry that seems to date back to the begin­nings of our reli­gious soci­ety but which bare­ly exists any­more. To my untrained ears it sounds more like some­thing you’d hear in a small Catholic or Ortho­dox church. Many years ago Haver­ford Col­lege Library excerpt­ed a field record­ing on a page ded­i­cat­ed to Music and the Ear­ly Quak­ers:

Evan posts to a pas­sage on it from nineteenth-century Quak­er chron­i­cler Thomas Clark­son:

The Quak­ers, on the oth­er hand, nei­ther pre­pare their dis­cours­es, nor vary their voic­es pur­pose­ly accord­ing to the rules of art. The tone which comes out, and which appears dis­agree­able to those who are not used to it, is nev­er­the­less not unnat­ur­al. It is rather the mode of speak­ing which na- ture impos­es in any vio­lent exer­tion of the voice, to save the lungs. Hence per­sons who have their wares to cry, and this almost every oth­er minute in the streets, are oblig­ed to adopt a tone. Hence per­sons, with dis­or­dered lungs, can sing words with more ease to them­selves than they can utter th6m with a sim­i­lar pitch of the voice. Hence Quaker- women, when they preach, have gen­er­al­ly more of this tone than the Quaker-men, for the lungs of the female are gen­er­al­ly weak­er than those of the oth­er
sex.

I’ve always won­dered if lat­er oppo­si­tion to sing song might have been par­tial­ly moti­vat­ed by the fact that it was favored by women or sound­ed a bit too Catholic for Angli­cans like Clark­son or Quak­ers lean­ing that direction.

There’s a great 2011 post from the now-dormant Quak­er His­tor­i­cal Lex­i­con blog by Illi­nois Friend Peter Laser­sohn. The com­ments are also great.

Outreachiest Ever Redux

December 23, 2022
· Martin Kelley

Talk­ing with some­one from anoth­er meet­ing out our respec­tive out­reach strate­gies I remem­bered my long ago blog post, The Biggest Most Vibran­ty Most Out­reachi­est Pro­gram Ever. I’m sure this must have been inspired by some grand announce­ment by Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing or Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence about some now-forgotten out­reach pro­gram with breath-taking goals. But as I work at out­reach in a local meet­ing lev­el again and talk with oth­ers doing the same, it real­ly does seem like it need­n’t be so complicated.

Caroling at Cropwell

December 19, 2022
· Martin Kelley

I’ve writ­ten a wrap-up of a car­ol­ing event this Sun­day at Crop­well Meet­ing in Marl­ton, NJ. These write-ups aren’t real­ly writ­ten for prospec­tive vis­i­tors (they can get­ting FOMO jeal­ousy from the Face­book and Insta­gram feeds) but for oth­er Friends. Crop­well is a old meet­ing but almost died out and has been recon­sti­tut­ed over the last 15 months. Every­one seems espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in out­reach and these posts are a record of what we’re doing.

I’m cur­rent­ly in-process of for­mal­ly trans­fer­ring my mem­ber­ship from Atlantic City Area Meet­ing in Gal­loway, NJ, to Crop­well. ACAMM is a great meet­ing and seems to be doing well but Crop­well feels like a bet­ter fit for this phase of my Quak­er journey. 

Christ­mas Car­ol­ing Comes to Cropwell