Meeting for Sufferings

3 February 2018

Henry S. Thompson, SE Scotland AM representative

All the papers for the meeting are available online at

  http://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/mfs-feb-2018-updated-agenda--papers-package3

The minutes and other follow-up material will also appear sometime
soon linked from

  http://www.quaker.org.uk/our-organisation/meeting-for-sufferings/papers-and-minutes

*Yearly Meeting 2018 -- report from the Clerk*

We had a brief introduction to plans for Yearly Meeting (4--7 May 2018
at Friends House, London).  Perhaps the most interesting thing in this
regard was a phrase from YM Agenda Committee (YMAC) at their recent
meeting: "Preparing YM for radical change".  This came up several
times in different contexts during the day, and was explained as
referring to the growing awareness of the need to recognise and
respond to the fact that we are shrinking, and getting older.

Further to Sufferings' decision, as reported in December, to recommend
to YM that we should set about revising our Book of Discipline and
that Sufferings should manage the creation of a Revision Committee to
undertake the necessary work, the largest agenda item at YM 2018 will
be devoted to preparing for and making that decision and addressing
the consequences.

Deadlines for young people's participation in May are fast
approaching:

  Junior Yearly Meeting:  23 February 2018
  Young people's YM programme: 18 March 2018
 [Those two are not at Friends House]
  Children's programme at YM: 18 March 2018
 [This one _is_ at Friends House]

See http://www.quaker.org.uk/events/?category=1 for details.

Once again those planning to attend YM in May are asked to register in
advance:

  https://forms.quaker.org.uk/ym/

*Yearly Meeting Gathering 2020*

Deborah Rowlands, YM Clerk, also gave some background to the
recommendation from YMAC, which Sufferings agreed to, that the 2020 YM
Gathering should be held at the University of Bath from 1--8 August,
2020.

*Report from BYM Sustainability Group*

This Group, which is not itself empowered or funded to do work itself,
is near the beginning of their 2nd 3-year 'term'.

They have sometimes found the lack of resources of their own difficult
to deal with.

They are concerned that the uptake of the sustainability concern is
very uneven across the YM -- YM said we need to change in the 2011
Canterbury Commitment [1], but that hasn't always translated into
action

Sufferings received the report but postponed any discussion until our
own review group, appointed last year, reports.  This is now planned
to be in time for April MfS.

The Group's report closed with these lines from G. K. Chesterton's
_The Ballad of the White Horse_:

   “I tell you naught for your comfort, 
    Yea, naught for your desire, 
    Save that the sky grows darker yet 
    And the sea rises higher.”

[1] http://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/minute-36-leaflet-2011

*Quaker Life Central Committee (QLCC) report*

This item took by far the most of our time, and was structured by way
of a response to a challenge from QLCC's Clerk (now co-Clerk) Jocelyn
Bell Burnell in her report to us in December 2016 to make these annual
reports from the major central committees more than just a box-ticking
exercise (see my report of that meeting for details).  The core of
this year's report is QLCC's new Strategy (see the Agenda link above)
and their proposed priorities within that.

Jocelyn gave a brief introduction to these before lunch, and QLCC
members were available over lunch to discuss them.  Then after lunch
we met in our geographically-determined House Groups (Scottish and
Welsh representives in our case) for an hour-long worship-sharing
session, followed after a short break by a return together and a
continuation of the worship-sharing approach.  I think the change in
process worked very well, although we really need to hear back from
QLCC as to what _they_ got from it before we really know how well it
succeeded.

In our group, and more widely, I think the deepest concerns around
QLCC's role all centred around membership and worship: the process of
admission to membership, the need to understand Quaker discipline as a
key part of membership, the centrality of deeply experienced worship
in holding our community together, making it attractive to enquirers
and sustaining us as we seek to witness to our faith in the wider
world.