Bristol
and Frenchay Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
Clerks’s
Annual Report 2006
This is the second – and last - Annual Report
produced by the Clerk to Bristol & Frenchay Monthly Meeting. By our next
report we will be known as Bristol Area Quaker Meeting. For a number of years
we have provided financial reports prepared by our Treasurer which fulfil our
legal obligations as a charity exempt from registration, and when we have to
register as a charity we will need to produce an Annual Report to comply with
the Charity Commission reporting requirements. We shall continue to do this.
The purpose of this ‘Clerk’s Report’ is, however, rather different. It arises
from a proposal made by Horfield Friends at their Preparative Meeting held in
September 2005 that was accepted at Monthly Meeting through our Minute 05/137.
Horfield’s original minute proposed that:
…These reports would
show how far the Monthly Meeting has discharged the responsibilities laid upon
it by Quaker Faith & Practice 4.07. They would help Friends to see the
direction and value of all of the Monthly Meetings activities.
From Horfield PM’ s Minute 05/68
This is not an
attempt to provide a complete record of the year – the minutes of our meetings
do that. We have alongside those minutes and this report, the report of each
local meeting, the report from our General Committee, Custodians of Records and
Treasurer.
I hope this report
will show how the seven different Quaker meetings in our area gain spiritual
strength from each other and together find new opportunities to put their faith
into action – in places from Portishead to Jerusalem. And will go some way to explain
why 30-40 Friends gather 10 times a year for 30 hours over the whole year to
share our spiritual journey, and work through some difficult and sensitive
issues. It is in those moments when we have endeavoured to address difficult
questions where our awareness of the spirit at work within our discernment
process is clearest.
The report is organised under five headings:
• The life of the meeting – how we have
discharged our duties in terms of right ordering, membership, nominations,
eldership, financial and legal matters and pastoral care.
• The Monthly Meeting and Local Meetings
• The Monthly Meeting and the wider community
• The Monthly Meeting and Quakers in Britain
• Looking ahead – tasks and opportunities that
lie in front of us.
The
life of the meeting
Membership
This year we have
welcomed ten new Friends into the Society. A recurring issue has been the
balance between Members and Attenders. We have considered ways to encourage
attenders to come into membership. The length of time people have been
attenders before coming into membership is getting shorter, which perhaps is a
sign that barriers to membership real or perceived are being overcome. All the
applications for membership used the visiting procedure set out in Quaker Faith
and Practice, although we remain open to alternatives. We have also welcomed
new attenders, and have held outreach events, an attenders and inquirer’s day,
and Hearts and Minds Prepared has continued to be used within our meetings.
The year has also
seen two Friends transfer their Membership to our Monthly Meeting and one
Friend has moved away from our area and
transferred membership to another meeting. Four Friends terminated their
membership.
Sadly, during the
year it was necessary to record the deaths of nine Friends:
John Wight
(Thornbury)
Vaughan Southam
(Frenchay)
Frances B C Brown
(Bedminster)
Doris Marie
O'Malley (Frenchay)
Phyllis Kathleen
Purnell (Frenchay)
Norah Lucas
(Portishead)
Bryn Crawshaw
(Thornbury)
Laura Margaret
Cairns (Portishead)
Emily Morrish
(Thornbury)
All of these
Friends have been remembered with fondness during our meetings.
A number of Quaker burials at Quakers Friars
needed to be moved during the construction of the new City Quarter. We ensured
they were reburied appropriately.
Marriage
Our Friends Richard Sykes and Aina Pascall
were married at Horfield Meeting House on 1.7.2006.
Attendance
at Monthly Meeting
Over thirty Friends
have gathered for our Meetings for Worship for Business – with all seven of our
local meetings participating regularly. A number of Friends who attend
regularly and faithfully, provide us with continuity. We are delighted to
welcome the fresh energy that comes when other members and attenders join us.
And there has never been a shortage of agenda items! Inevitably in a year when
we began the process of charity registration, there have been much inward
looking business, but the vitality of our meeting has been the spiritual
discernment Friends have bought to those items. Our local worship meetings have
been led to bring forward many initiatives through which we might live out our
testimonies – and our Monthly Meeting has risen joyfully to the challenges
these have led us into.
At the end of the year we held a Woodbrooke
on the Road, called ‘Meetings, Business Meetings!’ through which we explored
ways to remember that these meetings are primarily spiritual meetings for
worship, at which we conduct business.
Posts
in the Monthly Meeting
We ask much of our Nominations Committee:
although we keep under review the number of committees and posts to which we
need to appoint, we continue to need to fill a great many posts. Our
Nominations Committee has looked to the future, and compiled a directory of
tasks, with job descriptions, and indicators of any particular requirements for
the task. This will need to be kept under continual review, but will be a great
help to future nominations committees. Whilst attenders have taken on some of
the roles within our Monthly Meeting, where appropriate, we continue to place
the bulk of the responsibility on a smaller and smaller group of members who
feel able to undertake tasks for the Monthly Meeting. We are grateful to all
who have taken on new tasks, and for all the work done by Friends who have been
released from their tasks, recognising that many Friends in fact fall into both
of these categories!
Financial
and legal responsibilities
We have discharged our legal responsibility
to provide properly audited accounts.
Our General Committee continues to oversee
the majority of our financial and legal duties. Their existence and experience
has been a great help in preparing for charitable status, as we have laid upon
them many of the responsibilities assigned by law to Trustees. They have also
looked after a host of matters to do with the upkeep of our Meeting Houses, the
employment of wardens, the safety of our meetings. Our Collections Committee
oversees the collection of funds from membership and attenders and their
distribution according to the wishes of the donors. Through Weekly Committee we
seek to assist Friends in need.
Elders,
Overseers and pastoral care
Pastoral care is a responsibility for both
local meetings and for the Monthly Meeting as a whole. Our Elders and Overseers
have dealt with a number of issues that have had implications for more than one
local meeting showing real care and discernment. We established a
Testimonies
and memorial minutes
The preparation and
agreement of Testimonies to the Grace of God as revealed through the life of
individual Friends has been one issue that has received a lot of attention from
Friends in Bristol and Frenchay over the last few years. Questions had been
raised over the relationship between Testimonies and the Memorial Minutes that
Preparative Meetings produce when a Friend dies. Effectively, we had put the
preparation of Testimonies on hold. In 2004 this matter was referred to Monthly
Meeting Elders. On the basis of their consideration we decided that:
Memorial Minutes may
provide the basis for testimonies – but Testimonies should not be biographies
and should focus on inspirational aspects of the Friend in question’s life.
Minute 05/28
During the year we
collaborated with New Earswick Meeting in the preparation of a Testimony based
on the life of our Friend Jim Brunton: Jim was a member of our meeting for many
years but was attached to New Earswick meeting at the time of his death. Further
to a minute from 2002 we agreed a Testimony to Kathleen Mary (Molly) Packer. We asked Elders to consider a
Testimony to the Grace of God in the life of Pat Tenor.
The
Monthly Meeting and Local Meetings
There are seven
local meetings within Bristol and Frenchay Monthly Meeting, each bringing
different perspectives and understanding to enrich our meeting: Bedminster,
Central, Frenchay, Horfield, Portishead, Redland and Thornbury,. Each local
meeting held public meetings for worship weekly and regular meetings for church
affairs. All seven of our meetings – from Portishead, which is a Recognised
Meeting to Redland, which is one of the largest Quaker Meetings in the country
– play an active part in every aspect of our shared work. I hope that all seven
also find strength and support from the other six.
We have received a
written report from each local meeting on their progress in their spiritual
journey during 2006. Some have prompted extensive exploration of different
approaches within our Monthly Meeting. Our Elders have helped us explore these
questions – for example in relation to the differing ways in which our meetings
use Advices and Queries:
“Further to minute 84/06 we have
received replies from our Preparative and Recognised Meetings. We welcome the
diversity of detailed practice and note that all our Meetings follow the duty
to read Advices and Queries in a manner appropriate to their needs as required
by Quaker Faith and Practice.
We draw attention to paragraph 1.5 of
Quaker Faith and Practice, and encourage Friends to use Advices and Queries for
private devotion and reflection as well as for use in Meeting and to reflect
upon other ways of using them to strengthen the life of their meeting.
We encourage meetings to give copies
to Inquirers.”
The
Monthly Meeting and the wider community : our corporate witness
We have sought to live out our testimonies
individually and corporately.
• During the year
we agreed to establish a regular programme of events for those wishing to know
more about Quakers.
• We have
continued to provide Chaplains to both of the Universities in Bristol and
Ministers to those local prisons who will accept us. We were saddened when
Ashfield YOI felt unable to have a Quaker member of the chaplaincy team. We are
informed that this is not an unusual experience in light of the changing
approach of some Chaplaincy Teams and is a matter being explored with the Prison
Chaplaincy Service nationally.
• We assisted
Friends seeking to re-establish the restorative justice project at Bristol
Prison – exploring what management role might be appropriate, and making a
financial contribution.
• We have
responded to requests to support Quakers in their work in other groups, such as
Bristol Mediation.
• A longstanding
concern of this meeting has been the role of torture. It has fallen upon three
Monthly Meetings to carry the torch of this concern for some years. We are
grateful for the witness of Margaret Hodson. At times we have felt powerless to
know how we might take forward our concern. During the year we responded to
requests from QPSW for suggestions of how the Society might take this
forward.
• Proposals to replace Trident led us to
renewed our action about Trident. We signed the Faslane 365 Statement of
• One Friend faced trial for her actions at
Fairford.
• We
were much concerned when military hostilities broke out in Israel, Palestine
and Lebanon, and the UK and USA failed to take all steps to secure a ceasefire.
We agreed a range of actions to uphold our peace testimony and make clear our
opposition to this violence and our support for all the people affected by it.
However we were advised by staff at Friends House to be very cautious about
making a public statement. We were concerned that such caution may prevent us
speaking out against violence and injustice. We recognised that we must be concerned
not to fuel enmity or put others at risk. We took what steps we felt we could,
and asked ask our Clerk to write to staff at Friends House expressing concern
about their advice. We were gladdened when QPSW wrote to the Prime Minister.
• A group was set up to plan our part in
Abolition 200, marking the legislative abolition of the transatlantic slave
trade – in a spirit of seeking to address the continuing scars of that trade
and modern day exploitation and slavery.
• Quakers who live in and around Bristol are
active all over the world. A particular concern for many of us has been
Palestine/Israel. Several Friends have visited this troubled area during the
year – as Ecumenical Accompaniers, and in other roles trying to understand the
problems of the region, to bring attention to them and to help find ways
forward.
The
Monthly Meeting and Quakers in Britain
Friends within our
Meeting seek to play their part in the wider work of Britain Yearly Meeting,
with several Friends involved in national committees – to an extent that is
probably unusual for a meeting of our size. A number of Bristol Friends were
able to attend Britain Yearly Meeting itself and have shared their experiences
both within their local meetings and through our Monthly Meeting Newsletter.
Sometimes we need patience. The future of
Bedminster Meeting House has been challenging us for some time, and although it
was not resolved during 2006, the time and consideration given to it by Monthly
Meeting, the local meeting, and the working group established by Monthly
Meeting clarified issues and, with time, led us to unity in 2007.
Looking
ahead
An annual report is inevitably a snap-shot of
work in progress. By the time it is submitted, many of the issues raised will
have been resolved, and new ones replaced them as uppermost in our attention.
But this is a moment for reflecting upon the challenges that face us in the months ahead.
• We will be faced with carrying into practice
the changes that charitable registration brings, and the changes resulting from
Recast. In a time when there is so much change, when we are challenged to lay
down processes and features that have been a comfort to us, we need to find
ways to see behind those changes to the continuing spiritual discipleship which
underlies our processes, and which remains, constantly renewed but unchanged.
• We also need to find ways to give the time
and attention that is required to ensure these changes are implemented in a
manner which is true to our internal discipline and witness – without letting
this deflect us from our calling to walk cheerfully over the world answering
that of God in everyone. The challenge is to remain outward looking living out
our testimonies corporately and individually, whilst nurturing the spiritual
and organisational life of our community.
Christine Willmore
Clerk to Monthly Meeting.
Assistant
Clerk 2006: Robin Arnold Treasurer 2006:
Richard Drake
Clerk: 3 Church
Farm Close, Yate, Bristol, BS37 5BZ A religious charity excepted from
registration under SI 1996 No. 180