Quaker Life Representatives Council Conference

15 th to 17 th October 2010

Woodbrooke

We heard of the work undertaken by Quaker Life which includes: the team for Children and Young People – responding to any queries from Meetings, creating detailed outlines with resources for Children's Meetings, and more; the team for Outreach, helping Meetings with their Outreach programmes, particularly for Quaker Week; the Library at Friends House; staffing and information at the Quaker Centre; updating Quaker Faith and Practice; working on all aspects of Eldership and Oversight; Swarthmoor Hall and 1652 Country; and any other aspect of our Quaker Lives that you can think of from an Attender's first visit, or before.

The first main session was presented by Jenny Routledge on Reclaiming Eldership in the Religious Society of Friends. Jenny had brought this as a Concern to Friends where it has been tested, recognised and supported by her Local Meeting and Area Meeting, and it has now been taken up by Quaker Life.

We heard of the exploration of the theme of Eldership from a national and international perspective, and of our understandings and misunderstandings of Eldership . We heard of new shoots of Eldership emerging, particularly in the roles and work of accompaniment, nurture and discipline, and of how Eldership might be empowered, sometimes a difficult word for Friends. The text of the presentation is printed in the current edition of Quaker Voices.

We broke into small groups and were invited to discuss some questions from the perspectives of someone who has been, is at present, or who might be, an Elder: How does Eldership contribute to the life of your Meeting? What is it like when it works well and what would you like to see more of? What could you/your meeting do to enhance the role of Elder ? Can you think of Friends who have inspired you in their eldership - what was it about them that enabled them to be inspirational?

The session was found to be extremely relevant by people; they really wanted to hear it, it was important to them and they were glad the subject had been taken up by Quaker Life. During the ending Meeting for Worship there was Ministry which pointed out that the life and progress of this Concern demonstrated that our Quaker processes of testing work well. We were inspired to take it back to our meetings.

On a personal note, Jenny had invited me to act as her Accompanying Elder for the Conference. This meant I was somewhat involved with Jenny's preparations, helped to smooth over an accommodation query, began to uphold Jenny and the organisers and participants beforehand and then during the sessions on Eldership and generally supported Jenny and her work in whatever way I could.

The Conference moved on to hear from Katie Frost, Contributions and Fundraising Officer at Friends House. We heard where Yearly Meeting gets its money from. 21% is covered by individual contributions, down incidentally by 15% since 2001. What would be an individual's realistic annual contribution ? Possibly around £150 with gift aid. What are our own attitudes towards money, and where do they come from? How to look at the gift aspect of money knowing that every single person has something to give and how do we spot other peoples' gifts?

Lastly, a talk by Alistair Fuller, Outreach Development Officer who asked, “How have you and your Meeting been involved with Quaker Week? Has it been a positive outreach experience or a burden? Did you find Quaker Week materials helpful in promoting the event? Is Quaker Week a helpful spur to action?

All these, and any other questions on any other subjects connected with how we live our Quaker Lives can be put to Friends who work at Quaker Life on our behalf.

Felicity Cox
Co-Representative
Norfolk and Waveney Area Quaker Meeting