Quaker Quest and Meeting Outreach

Workshop Number

Leader(s)

Steve

Chase

Susan

Loucks

Audience

Who may register:

Open to All (adult & high school)

Time breakdown

Experiential Activities:

35%

Lecture:

15%

Discussion:

25%

Description

Short Description:

Gather with other Friends with a concern for outreach. We will discuss simple, radical and contemporary ways of articulating Quaker spiritual practices and testimonies to others and to ourselves, with a particular focus on how to use the Quaker Quest program that is taking root in the United States and Canada.

Long Description:

How can we communicate that which we have found in our faith, the "precious gift," to others who hunger after a spiritual path based on truth, love and social justice? This workshop will introduce ways of making our meetings visible to the wider communities they are in, and ways of speaking our truth clearly to those who come to learn about us. This workshop DOES NOT train participants to give Quaker Quest workshops. However, we hope to inspire participants to start an effective outreach program in their home meetings and to offer practical help to see it through.

We have found that where meetings unite behind a dynamic outreach program, they themselves are enriched and strengthened by it. There is a strong inreach benefit to be gained from dynamic outreach. This has been the experience of meetings throughout Britain Yearly Meeting that have run a Quaker Quest program.

Quaker Quest is a very specific program, which differs in significant ways from other forms of outreach. In this workshop we hope to enable participants to take the Quaker Quest idea back to their Monthly or Quarterly Meetings.

In the workshop we will practice articulating our faith in a simple and dynamic way. We have found that in this way we grow in the spirit, both as individuals and meetings, and we intend for this workshop to be spiritually nourishing for the participants. It will be similar to the workshop held at the 2007, 2008, and 2009 Gatherings, where participants said that they did feel they had been strengthened in their faith.

It would be helpful if participants could make themselves familiar with existing outreach activities in their area. We also suggest that, if possible, participants read the December 2008 Friends Journal article "Three Quakers and Jesus: An Excerpt From A Quaker Quest Session," and one or more of the "12 Quakers and..." series of booklets published by Quaker Quest, which illustrate the process of speaking the Quaker truth. Also, please, visit the following two websites:

www.quakerquestfgc.org

www.quakerquest.org

Leader Experience:

STEVE: When I was a teenager, I was the Assistant Clerk of Illinois Yearly Meeting and have clerked several Monthly Meeting committees over the years. I have facilitated over a half dozen democratically-run study groups, taken four workshops on experiential education through Training for Change, and, for the last seven years, have directed the master's program in Environmental Advocacy and Organizing, a two-year activist training program, at Antioch University New England. I have also given several public talks and radio interviews in the last few years. To listen to my Spirit In Action interview taped at last year's FGC Gathering, go to: http://www.northernspiritradio.org/index.asp?command=showinfo&showid=448984380353. I am also a trained facilitator of the Pachamama Alliance's interactive, multimedia Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium. At last year's Gathering, I also led several interactive exercises and discussions in the Quaker Quest and Meeting Outreach workshop that I co-led with Jane Berger.

SUSAN: I've been working as a facilitator professionally for much of my adult life. As well as working on supporting and facilitating group dialogues in natural resource contexts, I worked as a consultant between 2008 and 2009, facilitating strategic planning and board development processes for nonprofits. In a volunteer capacity, I was clerk of my Monthly Meeting from 2005-8.

Training experiences include working as a CPR/First Aid trainer for the Red Cross and - in the much more distant past - leading workshops in various community development contexts abroad. I've been a trainer/facilitator since 2004 in the AVP program in Massachusetts.