NOTTS AND DERBY QUAKERS

AREA MEETING REVIEW GROUP

INTERIM REPORT

To Area Business Meeting

Derby 14th March 2010

Introduction

The Group was established in September 2009 to review the role and operation of Area Meeting. The members are Margaret Brandram [Chesterfield], Roger Clarke [Bakewell], Roger Sanderson [Nottingham] and John Sturt [Nottingham]. The Group has met four times. Those meetings have included discussion with Dorothy Millichamp [Elders], Ann Hope [Trustees] and Rod Sladen [Clerk]. The Group has based its thinking on material about Area Meeting in Quaker Faith and Practice. It has publicised its work in The Friend and gathered information from other Areas. It has communicated with Local Meeting Clerks and other interested Friends in our Area.

The Group was set up in response to a proposal from Bakewell Meeting. Bakewell Friends were concerned about the decline in attendance at Area Business Meeting, and a perceived heavy burden of administrative work and lack of spiritual content. The Group has also been working against a background of greater recognition of the role of Trustees. The preparation for charity registration has made Friends aware of Trustees’ increased responsibilities.

The purpose of this Interim Report is to inform Area Business Meeting about our work, to seek guidance on the way forward, and to gain approval for a proposed programme of work. It has been prepared by Roger Clarke as Convenor of the Group.

What is Area Meeting?

Quaker Faith and Practice [4.02] reminds us that ‘The area meeting is the primary meeting for church affairs. Its role is to develop and maintain a community of Friends, a family of local meetings who gather for worship and spiritual enrichment … Area Meetings act as facilitators and co-ordinators, ensuring that their constituent local meetings have access to opportunities for fellowship, spiritual development, and spiritual and pastoral care, including the care of children and young people.’

From QFP and our own discussions, we have drawn out a number of general themes.

First, QFP reminds us that our membership is of the Area first, and of the Local Meeting second. While most of our experience of Quakers is through the Local Meeting, it is important that we remain aware that we are part of a wider community of Friends at Area level, and indeed nationally and globally.

Second, the main role of the Area is to foster community, both at Area level and locally. The way in which this is to be done is by the Area Meeting acting as facilitator and co-ordinator. Margaret Brandram has written a short paper on what ‘spiritual community’ might mean, which is attached to this report.

Third, we [and this includes QFP] use the term ‘Area Meeting’ in a double sense, both to refer to all Friends in the Area, and to refer to the Area Meeting for Business. To aid clarification, this report refers to Area Meeting Community [AMC] when we mean all Friends in the Area, and Area Business Meeting [ABM] when we refer specifically to the business meetings.

Trustees

The process of registration wit h the Charity Commission has prompted new awareness of the role of our Trustees. They are legally accountable for the stewardship of our resources. Our Notts and Derby Trustees have been national leaders in clarifying their role alongside the role of Local Meetings and other parts of the Quaker structure. Stewardship means people, property and money. For example, Trustees have responsibility for making sure systems are in place for child protection and health and safety, as well as the long term care of our meeting houses. Trustees are also legally accountable for showing how our resources have been applied to the delivery of our charitable objects, through the Annual Report and Accounts for our Area. Our new Clerk to Trustees, Brian Reed, expects the renewal process to continue. Trustees intend to work further on simplifying the way in which we manage money, and clarifying the responsibilities of Local Meetings, Trustees, and ABM. We intend to work closely with Trustees in carrying forward the review.

Experience elsewhere

Enquiries via Deborah Rowlands [Clerk of Quaker Stewardship Committee] and a letter in The Friend yielded nine contacts with Friends involved in this issue in other Area Meetings. Several of these responses included useful details of consultation processes completed, under way, or planned. While some enquiries have focused more on the workings of the ABM, others have, like us, considered the wider issues of spiritual life and community. We hope to continue this exchange of experience via this informal contact list and by a later meeting if appropriate, and also hope to liaise with our Area Representatives on Quaker Life Representative Council.

Our Area Meeting

Rod Sladen reports that about 600 people are associated with Quakers in Notts and Derby [members and attenders] of whom around half are active. About 70 people are involved with work at Area level in one form or another. The normal attendance at Area Business Meeting is around 25.

Rod reports that there is a heavy burden of administrative work for the ABM to consider, with requests for information from Friends House as well as issues raised by Local Meetings. He sees his own role as largely reactive, managing the flow of correspondence and preparing material for the ABM.

The lengthy and sometimes tedious administrative agenda can act as a deterrent to attendance at ABM, which can appear more of a duty than a pleasure. Experience of ABM attendance is in contrast to the sense of renewal that many Friends experience when taking part in the local Meeting for Worship.

Other Groupings within the Area

There are many other ways in which Friends work together across the Area. These include the annual Area Meeting Retreat, quarterly Link Group meetings for teenagers, and biannual meetings of Elders and Overseers. Trustees also meet regularly. There are ad hoc meetings on issues of social concern held in Nottingham, Derby and Chesterfield, spiritual events such as occasional study days and the Bakewell Carols by Candlelight, and social events such as the Bakewell summer walk.

Looking to the future

If the primary role of the Area is to develop and maintain community and sustain the Local Meetings, it would appear to the Review Group at this stage that there are a number of ways forward. These include:

* Placing a much stronger emphasis on the Area as a network, with Area-wide events of all kinds, including new groupings of Friends doing the same job in Local Meetings [Treasurers, Children and Young People convenors, Outreach convenors, Premises Committees], and ad hoc spiritual, outreach and social events
* Reviewing the volume of ABM business to see whether it can be managed in different ways, and meetings made more attractive, but not striving to make the ABM the main or sole channel for deliberation and information exchange
* Continuing the work, led by Trustees, to simplify and clarify the part played by different parts of our Area structure
* Reviewing the means by which we communicate with each other in the Area, including giving priority to maintaining up-to-date lists of Area Meeting contacts, and disseminating [electronic and/or paper] information about what’s going on.

Consultation

These are only initial conclusions of the Review Group. We think that the next stage should be a programme of consultation with Friends throughout the Area, to explore what they want from the Area. This should not start from consideration of ‘how can we make Area Business Meeting better’. It should focus on a broader question such as ‘what does it mean to be a Quaker in Notts and Derby’. Our ideas would feed into the consultation, but would not determine its outcome. The consultation programme would be led by the Review Group in partnership with Trustees.

We have in mind a lively and stimulating programme of events throughout the Area, structured in such a way as to make it possible for as many Friends to take part as possible. We would place emphasis on Friends meeting people from other Local Meetings, although we recognise that Local Meetings might want their own discussions. In order to cater for different requirements, we would suggest events in three different venues and at different times, such as:

Saturday 11 am to 3 pm, with shared lunch

Sunday 2 pm to 5 pm, with shared tea

Weekday evening 6 pm to 9 pm, with shared supper.

We would welcome offers from Local Meetings to host such events [provide a venue] if the principle of the consultation programme is agreed.

Conclusion

We hope to present a further report to Area Business Meeting once the consultation programme is complete. As well as consultation with local Friends, we would maintain contact with interested Friends elsewhere in the country, and with our own Trustees, Elders, Overseers and other office holders.

Roger Clarke, Convenor

Area Meeting Review Group

March 2010