The Future
Changing Organisation
London Quakers are the residuary body appointed until 31 December 2008 to deal with aspects of London and Middlesex General Meeting, a regional body that was laid down on Saturday 23 June 2007, in accordance with the wishes of Britain Yearly Meeting. At the meeting on 23 June there was great interest in pan-London Quaker work continuing.
London Quakers met again on Tuesday 1 April. Following that meeting, Beth Allen, the Clerk of London Quakers, has produced this letter which summarises what London Quakers has been doing and sets out options for the future:-
Friday, 11 April 2008
To Area and Local Meetings in and around London
Dear Friends
Quakers in London have a decision to make about the future of “London Quakers”.
The current situation
On June 23 2007 the final meeting of London and Middlesex General Meeting laid down the General Meeting and set up a small committee, to exist until December 2008. Its task was to oversee the winding up of the General Meeting and to explore whether, with no business to do, we could start some lively things going, to feed our worship and inner life, and to help London Quakers to link up and communicate.
Since then, the committee has set up or overseen
• A Dialogue in November 2007, attended by 120 Quakers and non-Quakers, on “Health, Wealth and Happiness” with two good speakers and a lively discussion. Another Dialogue on Restorative Justice is planned for Saturday 10 May 2008 – details later – and a third on 19 July.
• A Website, www.londonquakers.org.uk with news and events pages, “Find a London Meeting”, a page for people under 19, and a page of details for each Meeting. 24 Quakers will put information on the site for their own Meeting, and 8 have agreed to help run it. The website was launched on 28 February and just four days later, a newcomer attended a Meeting after finding it on the site.
• The publication of the London Quakers List as before; over 200 copies have been bought.
• The 2008 Quaker Meetings in London leaflet.
• An occasional newsletter to Meetings.
Quaker Quest Euston, independent of but working with the London Quakers Committee, has continued to run weekly outreach evenings at Friends House, while the National Quaker Quest group has backed up Quaker Quest series in other parts of the city. In addition, the London Quakers Committee supported “Advices and Queries on the Tube” in National Quaker Week. So London-wide outreach is taken care of.
I do hope your Meeting has benefitted from some of these good things! The committee members think that the past twelve months has shown that it is worth preserving a minimal structure, which keeps us in touch with each other, which enables enthusiasts to do some limited work across London, and which does not require Area Meetings to do a great deal.
This autumn, we need to decide if it’s worth going on with a London Quakers grouping and a small committee. The current committee members feel it is worthwhile, but the decision is for all the 1,600 Quakers in London to make. We have arranged a meeting on Saturday 18 October, at Friends House, from 11 am – 1 pm, to decide on the way forward.
The Committee suggests that we might all agree to set up a group, called “London Quakers”.
The functions
To be an information network
To link up the Area and Local Meetings
To share ideas
To oversee what’s already being done, listed above
To foster other initiatives which might also start up.
As an information network and hub, we receive information for London meetings and send it out by email, which saves time, paper and postage for local Clerks. This function also includes Meetings which are in the geographic London area, but not within the historic General Meeting area.
Initiatives include correspondence between Quaker home schoolers, and also Quaker healers, and a series of Kindling Meetings, which are already planned. We might also have a London-wide Woodbrooke-on-the-Road. North East Thames Area Meeting has appointed a representative to the Churches Group on the Olympics so we have a link to whatever happens there in four years time.
Area Meetings are already using the website to advertise their residential weekends more widely, and several enquiries about Meeting House lettings have come through the site, so there is an outreach spin-off there too.
Structure
Could each Area Meeting appoint one representative for three years at a time to serve on the London Quakers Committee? We hope for an enthusiastic volunteer. The representative would report back if the Area Meeting wished.
The committee would like the authority to appoint sub-groups of Quakers to be responsible for the Website, the Members List, the Dialogues, and the finances, as well as other initiatives which might develop. These subgroups would be drawn from enthusiasts normally outside the committee’s own membership. The committee would like to co-opt the convenor of each group to meet with them.
The committee would report to London Friends as a whole through a page on the Website, and circulate its minutes to Local and Area Meetings.
Authority
It is clear that Area Meetings are the business engines of the Yearly Meeting. We hope that each Area Meeting will appoint a Friend to the London Quakers Committee, and then trust the committee to act within the guidelines set out here. The appointed Friend could report back once a year to the Area Meeting if the Area Meeting wishes.
Area Meetings will not be asked to do any more than they already do; Area Meeting Clerks will continue to receive minutes of London Quakers for information.
Money
By December 2008 we expect that £2,800 will remain from the funds of the General Meeting.
Each of the seven Area Meetings would be asked to give £300.00 a year towards the costs of London Quakers. Other Area Meetings in the Home Counties will also be asked for a contribution, which would bring down the future cost to the London ones.
London Quakers will not be a big enough body to register as a charity, but will behave like one.
Questions for Local and Area Meetings
Do you want the London Quaker body to continue?
Is the Area Meeting prepared to appoint one Friend to the London Quakers Committee?
Is the Area Meeting prepared to budget for £300.00 a year to pay for the work listed above?
Would each Area Meeting please coordinate discussions of this over the next few months in its Local Meetings, and make its own decision by mid-September, in preparation for a London-wide decision on 18 October?
It is interesting to see what other GMs are doing; there was a useful article in The Friend on 30 March describing several of them, which is attached.
Beth Allen
Clerk
London Quakers
Please click to read the full Minutes of the Meeting of 23 June.
For further information, to give your view on the future of Pan-London Quaker work or to volunteer to develop any of the projects suggested, please contact us.