Membership

Membership in the Religious Society of Friends is a peculiar discipline. We become Members of the Society, but attachment is nearly universally through a Monthly Meeting. For some Friends, becoming a member feels unnecessary after years of attending and contributing to Meeting. At one point years ago, I went through the question myself: "non-Members are only restricted from serving in a few roles such as Clerk, so why bother?" But many Friends, including me today, would articulate membership with the Meeting as a statement of the mutual relationship and commitment one to another- a deliberate step to take on one's life-long spiritual journey.

And for Friends who are unable to hold a Membership with a community where they live, the absence of Membership can be a painful lack.

As discussed elsewhere including my last blog post, Friends who are in a transitional stage of life have particular need for faith community support. This support can extend beyond sympathetic understanding and fellowship. We Friends have clearness committees in order to use our spiritual discipline of discerning God's will for us in our lives. People in transition, making major life decisions, have particular need for clearness committees- and are particularly challenged in finding such support after they have moved away from the people who know them well, or even away from any Quakers.

Before they leave home, Young Friends who grew up in the Society of Friends have particular challenges- they are navigating the transition of becoming an adult within the context of the Meeting where they grew up. I've spoken with a variety of Friends with concerns on this. They note that their Meeting may, despite best intentions, persist in treating the young adult as the child they once were. For birthright Friends, leaving their home Meeting might feel as critically important as leaving their family home. Additionally, membership for birthright Friends is often pro-forma. At a certain preset age (defined in Canadian Yearly Meeting as "upon maturity," between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, at discretion of the Monthly Meeting), the young adult is asked by their Meeting if they wish to automatically transition onto the adult membership list. There is usually no clearness process. This works fine for some Young Friends, but others wish they had a formal clearness committee to discuss their connections to Meeting and understandings of Quaker ways, and to mark their adulthood in the Meeting.

The Meeting I was first part of, Ithaca Meeting, is blessed with many young people, and has had what I think is a very wise approach toward teens growing into adulthood- their "Out of the Nest and Into the World" program (http://www.nyym.org/pubs/net/dec99.html) Briefly, a teen will request a clearness committee, an adult mentor who is not related to them, and embark on a service project outside Ithaca. After their project's conclusion, the Meeting will celebrate the teen's transition to adult membership, and the teen may indeed then find their gifts considered by Nominating committee! Could this program be fruitful for other Meetings with teenagers approaching adulthood?

As I noted in my last blog post, for some Friends in transition, other Quaker bodies are more like their spiritual home than the Monthly Meeting they grew up in. These can be among their most stable lasting connections after leaving home, for fellowship and possibly for spiritual support, from afar and in-person at perhaps lengthy intervals.

In the same way for all Friends, strong connection to Quaker bodies outside a Monthly Meeting can be sustaining and enriching. I had an important opening a few years back when I realized that, given sufficient Light and prompting by Spirit, we might consider this as traveling in the Ministry. We travel, connect deeply, and then return home to our Meeting with the fruits of this connection, be it a sense of "batteries recharged," new ideas, or perhaps old ideas seen in new Light.

I believe one of the fruits of the Spirit is exposure to Friends who are different from us- and also at times being with peers who are in whatever ways quite similar to us; be it similarities of age and life-experience, or in social class, or urban vs. rural life, or faith history, or racial background, or sexual orientation or gender identity. It seems quite important to me that I have both, at various times- the difference, as well as the similarities. Having both feels fairly important- both to me as an individual, and to the balance within a Meeting. So many of our Meetings lack much diversity at all, and this feels a great deficiency.

Considering all of the above, I think we are due to re-visit how we treat membership and belonging. I note the proposal by Young Friends of Canadian Yearly Meeting to extend membership to Quaker bodies other than Monthly Meetings, such as to Yearly Meetings, Half-Yearly Meetings, or any other body that the Friends feel is their spiritual home. This feels like a strong invitation to engage with- it feels much like a statement of "We would like a deeper faith and connection. How can we do this together?"

Canadian Yearly Meeting's Discipline Review Committee has proposed that instead of "transitional membership" as suggested by Young Friends of CYM, that any Meeting (such as a Half-Yearly Meeting, Young Friends YM, Allowed Meetings) could hold membership if they can: convene a membership committee, be in relationship with the person requesting membership, fulfil the administrative tasks of a Meeting toward membership, including holding a Meeting for Business for the approval of membership, keeping minutes, filing statistical reports with Yearly Meeting, and responding to requests for traveling letters as well as financial assistance.

Their proposal adds additional clarity for me, partly in the form of questions: Does convening a membership committee and filing statistical reports with Yearly Meeting fulfil the heart of the commitment to members of the society? What constitutes being in a relationship with the person requesting membership?

I am convinced that a particular form of relationship with members is necessary: the relationship of ongoing mutual accountability. The challenge is in doing this with a geographically diffuse Meeting where its members meet face-to-face once or twice a year, or perhaps less frequently.

How might CYM's membership proposal be fleshed out to become complete? It should support Friends in geographic and other forms of isolation, Friends with strong connection to non-local Meetings, and Friends who want a formal membership relationship while they are in a transitional period of life. It should strengthen the Meetings as well as its members.

I believe that building ongoing relationship and mutual accountability is only possible if there is frequent contact. I wonder if this could be accomplished with the use of audio and video conferencing.

I currently have a care committee, consisting of two members from my Meeting, and one Friend from another Meeting a few hours drive away. We regularly met by conference-call, and this has worked well for us. My Monthly Meeting holds our Ministry and Council meetings with speaker-phone and conference-call in order to include members of our two worship groups, whose members are forty-five minutes or two hours' drive away from the main Meeting. This has been embraced by Friends concerned about the environmental effects of driving long distances in automobiles; and is additionally helpful in the winter, when it allows for M&C meetings that would otherwise be cancelled by snow storms. Although initially I was quite skeptical about discernment over the telephone, I can speak to the experience of Spirit working over the phone.

Neither phone nor video-call have quite the same presence as being in the same room, but they are better than no connection. And they seem better alternatives for an individual than joining a local non-Quaker church, not having any spiritual community, or leaving one's job and moving. I'm convinced these can be effective tools to compensate against physical distance, for spiritual nurturing and community when physical meetings can only happen at most once or twice a year.

Possibilities for non-physical community could include weekly worship; discussion and/or "second hour" learning program, clearness committees, or spiritual nurture programs such as Friendly 8s.

I wonder about how this might strengthen the Meeting involved- be it a worship group, Half-Yearly Meeting, or other Quaker body. Might we look to the existing model of worship groups, which exist within a Monthly Meeting? Could there be ongoing relationship between this non-physical community and another Meeting, in partnership and members of one another? I am imagining a quality speakerphone in the centre of a Meeting-room, conference-called into some number of peoples' homes. The non-physical Meeting, spread over a wide area, might provide some welcome additional diversity, and in turn benefit from the diversity of the physically-centered Meeting. If the non-physical Meeting needed administrative support for the requirements of holding membership, this might best be accomplished by a Meeting that already has clearness committees, established membership rolls, and the ability to respond to request for traveling letters.

As with membership clearness committees, the joined Meeting as a whole might be able to better support Friends seeking clearness for Marriage (with a merged on-site care committee component) or other forms of support.

As a support structure for isolated Friends where there is no current Meeting or worship group, I feel fairly clear about the appropriateness of this idea.

I feel there needs to be additional clarity over seeking membership of a remote Friends group when there exists a local Meeting as well. However, if this model for some Friends means the difference between having a faith community of peers, and not having any faith community, I believe the stronger option is to have a faith community, and as such it is worth the experiment to try.