See also: Questions and Guidelines for Becoming a Monthly Meeting, by Mountain View (CO) MM

When a Worship Group Wishes to
Become a New Monthly Meeting
by Marshall Massey, Intermountain Yearly Meeting

Intermountain Yearly Meeting has a reputation for being the fastest-growing yearly meeting in any branch of Quakerism in North America. Here in Colorado, the impact of that growth has been enormous. Mountain View Monthly Meeting (in Denver) is bursting at the seams, and there have been threshing session discussions as to whether it should divide into smaller meetings. Meanwhile, Colorado gained its third Monthly Meeting recently. And the worship group in Colorado Springs has already begun meeting with a Clearness Committee from Mountain View, to prepare for advancement to Monthly Meeting status.

This growth has spurred Colorado Friends to inquire deeply into what is needed to make a new Monthly Meeting succeed. In particular, the Mountain View Clearness Committee working with the Colorado Springs worship group felt led to draw up a list of Queries.

As far as anyone here knows, these "Questions and Guidelines" are something new. They were drawn up with reference to the Disciplines of Pacific and Philadelphia Yearly Meetings. In an era when great uncertainties exist as to what, precisely, it means to be a Friend, these questions challenge us at a very deep level, in every dimension of our corporate life, to find a way of being Friends without denying the uncertainties. We hear the working of the Spirit in such a challenge. And it doesn't surprise any of us when we hear Clearness Committee members say that the process of developing this list was "powerful"-and is "still ongoing."

The Questions were submitted for review to Mountain View Monthly Meeting and accepted for use by the Meeting with only minor revision. Mountain View presented the Questions as revised to Colorado General Meeting (our equivalent of a Quarterly Meeting), which received them with many favorable comments.

Meanwhile, the Clearness Committee also submitted these Questions to Colorado Springs Worship Group to work with. Like all Queries, they were not offered as test, but as a basis for self-examination. The Worship Group, after internal discussion, produced a written answer to each and every question on the list; their answers then became the basis for further discussion with the Clearness Committee.

Everyone involved seems to have felt that the Questions were enormously helpful. In fact, Question 16, concerning the group's ability to care for its members, ultimately prompted the Worship Group to ask for continuing support from Mountain View, even after Colorado Springs becomes a Monthly Meeting.

Martha Barrett, Convener of the Clearness Committee, hopes Friends will take the list with "a very large caveat-a warning-that these questions aren't engraved in stone. I'd hate to see these Queries written down so that everybody says, 'Now we have these Queries and we don't have to work up our own.'"

Only part of this caveat stems from the fact that the Questions are still new and imperfectly tested. Beyond all the flaws these Questions may still contain, what weighs most on Friend Barrett's mind is a sense that such Queries, like the sunrise, cannot merely be summoned from a Book of Discipline when their hour comes round, but must be freshly discovered in the skies of participants' hearts. The meaning is all in the process of discovery, she says-and I agree.

- Marshall Massey is a member of Mountain View Meeting in Denver.
This article and the following questions and guidelines were printed in Friends Bulletin, January, 1987

See also: Questions and Guidelines for Becoming a Monthly Meeting, by Mountain View (CO) MM

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