Friends and Clerking: FGConnections, Spring 2004
Reflections on Being Clerk of a Small Meeting
By Brian Drayton
Chances are good that some of the children in this picture will find themselves clerking in the future. Consider how your meeting can encourage and nurture the skills and opportunities of the children in your care.
Small meetings are an important feature of New England Yearly Meeting: while the average reported Sunday attendance is 30–35 per meeting, a little more than a third of our meetings report an average of 20 or fewer at meeting. Some meetings are small because they are relatively new, or started small and haven’t grown; some once were larger, and have shrunk. I have been clerk of one of each kind, one a new meeting (Fresh Pond in MA) which since “my day” has become much larger, the other (Weare, NH) an old meeting (1795) which has shrunk, but is now starting to grow again. Out of this experience, I would like to offer a few observations, from the particular point of view of a clerk.
First, it is all too easy to enumerate the typical weaknesses of a small meeting. Often, such meetings feel needy—there is not enough of something. Sometimes this something is children, or (as in Fresh Pond at one time) elders. Perhaps there are not enough visitors, or members to fill committee responsibilities, or to represent the meeting on Yearly Meeting committees—or just to hold meeting regularly. Possibly the lack is money. Sometimes it’s variety—in the ministry, in experience of Quakerism, in some other feature that, if only it were present, might give the meeting more of a sense of solidity.
A small meeting, however, can provide a powerful setting in which to understand our spiritual condition and commitments, and to explore the enactment of Gospel order when there is no crowd to hide in. A small meeting, as much as a large one, is working with the fundamental materials of the spiritual life: the forces at work within and between the individuals who make up the community, and the response of individuals and the group to the measure of Light received. The formal life of the meeting, how it conducts its business, can play an important role in the meeting’s growth in wisdom and in witness.
An important trap to avoid here is the assumption that a small meeting must have the same infrastructure as a large one—a certain set of committees, for example. This assumption, which is very widespread, is likely to produce stress and perhaps despair, as too few people are wearing too many hats, and in fact there is more “busyness” than business. The clerk should be among the first to encourage the meeting to seek an organization that is in proportion to the meeting’s strength, and to consider how essential functions can be met with appropriate forms.
I believe that what enables a meeting to live in this simplicity is an intentional care and support of individual concerns and ministry, a prayerful watchfulness for the life springing up in each member. This cannot wait until the meeting gets bigger! After all, a small meeting is not a preamble to something else, it is a spiritual community right now. The intimacy of a small meeting, if it is combined with the expectation that God is pouring out gifts on his people for their own and others’ nourishment, can lead the meeting to gain practice in the naming and supporting of concerns and callings in simple, realistic, and effective ways—practice that is sometimes difficult to get started in a larger meeting. I have been taught this lesson very clearly in Weare Meeting. The 6 people present at our last meeting for worship (a smaller than usual crowd) included two recorded ministers who travel widely among meetings; a third Friend with a long-term minute for work with AIDS and other issues among Kenyan Friends; a couple who have added remarkable energy to our meetinghouse refurbishment, study groups, and other features of the meeting life; and a Friend with a lifelong concern for peace and simple living. We know and speak directly about these concerns, accept them with gratitude, support them as we can.
I confess that I have found it a real struggle to make our business process formal enough to provide the proper care for all this life—but not too formal. It can feel very uncomfortable, pretentious, over-scrupulous, to look around a circle of friends, and insist upon the consideration of a query, care in wording a minute, or the naming of a committee—it seems like overkill, where in a larger meeting it would feel quite natural and orderly. Yet I have found that the meeting for business is a powerful source of teaching and learning about faithfulness in the Quaker path, and this may be especially true in a small meeting with new attenders or members. The judicious practice of our formalities, even if tinged with humor because of the tiny size of the group, is a reminder that we should seek always to be aware of God’s presence, always to give thanks for the blessings we experience, always to be aware of our need for guidance, healing, and strength from the Light of Christ within—and that we can in fact live and walk in that Light. Thus in a small meeting we can experience both the closeness and informality of family, and something of the majesty of God at work.
