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+*Meeting for Sufferings*
+
+6 February 2021
+
+Henry S. Thompson, SE Scotland AM representative
+
+All the papers for the meeting are available online at
+
+  https://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/mfs-2021-02-agenda--papers-package
+
+The minutes and other follow-up material are available from
+
+  https://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/meeting-for-sufferings-minutes-follow-up-2021-02
+
+*Report by the Recording Clerk on tabular statement for 2019*
+
+Paul Parker gave an excellent illustrated presentation on the changes
+for Britain Yearly Meeting in the numbers of members, attenders, etc.
+
+It's worth noting that the data reported on is all pre-pandemic...
+
+He started with a graph of the whole trajectory of membership from the
+late 19th century onward. This showed that we are down by more than half
+from our peak in the mid-20th century, to 12,498 in 2019.
+
+There was a net loss of 200 members for the year.
+
+There are 70 Area Meetings, made up of 470 Local Meetings, so one new
+member net in every local meeting next year would stop the fall.
+
+Since 2009:
+  22% of Local Meetings have grown by 10% or more 
+  54% of Local Meetings have shrunk by 10% or more
+
+10% of our Meetings have over 50 members, and account for about 1/3 of
+our membership.
+
+Small meetings are more likely to be growing than large meetings.
+
+More than half the meetings which are losing membership are largish,
+that is, with 20 or more members.
+
+The national patterns are often seen within individual Area Meetings
+[true for SESAM, I think]
+
+Paul pointed out that a simple consequence of the numbers is that
+approximately "One in 20 Quakers has to be a Treasurer".
+
+If you're interested in reviewing the numbers yourself, they're online
+in the Tabular Statement summary at
+https://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/tabular-statement-2019-for-ym-2020,
+which also includes one of the graphs from the Recording Clerk's
+presentation to Sufferings, which is not available online (yet, it is promised).
+His commentary for his presentation at Yearly Meeting in December
+2020 _is_ available online:
+https://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/tabular-statement-plain-text
+
+There was some comment on the likely effect of GDPR-induced culling,
+which our Area Meeting certainly experienced.  I noted that we show
+_twice_ as many 'terminations' as deaths between 2009 and 2019, in big
+contrast to the other Scottish AMs.  BYM itself shows 50% _more_
+deaths than terminations.
+
+*Report from Trustees*
+
+The financial situation is not great, but we're not in serious trouble
+yet.  There were 35 voluntary redundancies, with the result that no
+non-voluntary redundancies were needed.  The vast majority were from
+the Quiet Company, which has been hard-hit.
+
+*Reflections on the past year*
+
+We spent time in small groups sharing our Meetings' experiences since
+March, drawing some comfort in hearing that most Meetings seem to be
+coping, and have coped in similar kinds of successful and
+not-so-successful ways.
+
+There's a website at FWCC that offers online Meetings for Worship
+around the world, mostly but not entirely from Europe and the US:
+
+  http://fwcc.world/kinds-of-friends/online-worship
+
+