Workshop on Outreach
by Anne Thomas, Canadian Yearly Meeting

There are two prevalent attitudes about outreach in Canadian Yearly Meeting:

a. it's proselytisation and Friends don't do this

b. it's all about notices, phone books and leaflets.

While both these approaches need challenging, the following workshop seeks to centre the idea of outreach in people's own experience of coming to Friends.

Time: about two hours

Opening:

open with a time of worship

if not all Friends know each other, go round the room sharing names

Format:

The format of the workshop is worship sharing. This aims at giving each person an opportunity to respond to a question, or to pass. The response will not be questioned, but will be carefully heard, with time allowed before the next person responds. The length of individual responses depends on the number in the group. A gentle reminder that all Friends need the opportunity to speak, or to begin to focus on the particular question asked may enable Friends to be reasonably concise in their answers. Some information from England is interspersed which can be shared with the group on a flip chart, if possible, leading to informal discussion before the next question is asked.

First question:

How did you get to your first Quaker Meeting?

In Caring, Conviction and Commitment, a survey of ten years' worth of attenders in Britain Yearly Meeting, Alastair Heron found the following breakdown among attenders:

• contact with a member or an attender 37%

• came with parents, family involvement 21%

• miscellaneous 15%

• reading about Quakers 9%

• advertisement 6%

• saw the Meetinghouse 6%

• peace activities 4%

• attended a Friends' school 3%

Is this similar to the local experience?

Do any of these figures surprise anyone (peace, for example)?

Second question:

Why did you go to your second Quaker Meeting?

Heron found that attenders returned because of:

• acceptance 25%

• tolerance 17%

• manner of worship 16%

• silence 9%

• pacifism 9%

• social concerns 6%

• structure 5%

Second question:

What brings you back to Meeting now?

The variety of responses may indicate the ways in which outreach has been effective for particular Friends. Does the Meeting respond to the sort of enquirers that those present in the room were?

Closing:

The technicalities of advertising and providing leaflets are easy to achieve, but these do not make effective outreach. People are the outreach programme. In Making New Friends: Spiritual Hospitality: proceedings of a conference on outreach, Harvey Gillman suggests our house must be in order if we are to be welcoming to seekers:

• Do we notice when new people come to Meeting?

• Do we want new people to come to Meeting?

• Do we look for that of God in new people or expect them to see it in us?

• Do we recognise that we too are seekers and that outreach is a lifelong part of our growth?

Print resources:

Harvey Gillman, ed., Outreach Manual, QHS, 1990*

Harvey Gillman et at, Making New Friends: Spiritual Hospitality, Quaker Universalist Fellowship, 1994*

Alastair Heron, Caring, Conviction, Commitment, QHS, 1992*

Information Kit for Enquirers, HMAC*

North Pacific YM, Survival Sourcebook, 1990**

Pat Patterson, A New Friends Gathering, FGC, 1986**

Philadelphia YM, Outreach Ideabook, 1986**

* Quaker Book Service

** Friends General Conference

1216 Arch St #2B, Philadelphia, PA 19107		(215) 561-1700. Fax: (215) 561-0759
Website: www.fgcquaker.org		Email: friends@fgcquaker.org