Friends General Conference

Together we nurture the spiritual vitality of Friends
A Monthly Meeting that is part of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

2014 Fifth Month

Public ContentAnyone can view this post
Minutes Details: 
Drafted

Fox Valley Friends Meeting for Business, May 11, 2014

FINAL

Present: Hayden Groy, Bob Kaeiser, Tina Mercier, Reed Hardy, Jill Hardy, Lissa Field, Mary Klos - Clerk

Approval of Minutes: Minutes from April 13 were read and approved.

Treasurer's Report: There was no Treasurer's report.

New Business.

Invitation to Worship with Winnebago Friends: The Winnebago Worship Group has invited us to come and worship with them on Sunday, July 20, at a member's home in Maribel. There will be singing with Jim Crawford at the piano beginning at 10 a.m., followed by Meeting for Worship at 11. When the time gets closer, we will make sure that we have someone willing to 'stay home' and cover Meeting for Worship at the Mauthe Center.

Summer Meeting for Business: Because of busy summer schedules, we will not have Meeting for Business in June or August. The one summer Meeting for Business will be on July 13.

Request for Clearness Committee: Mary Klos requested a Clearness Committee to help her discern her spiritual calling to a major new step in her work in prison ministry. Lissa Field, Reed Hardy and Hayden Groy offered to serve on the committee. Tina Mercier will also participate if time allows. Mary will organize the first meeting.

Reports from Coordinators of Work Projects.

WISDOM (Ruth/Joshua): Hayden Groy announced that he will be attending JOSHUA meetings more regularly in the future. Friends approved Hayden serving as a representative of our Meeting with JOSHUA and thanked him for his service. This will be additional support for Bob Kaeiser's work with RUTH.

FCNL: The fourth discussion of the new AFSC/FCNL policy on Shared Security will be moved from the fourth Sunday of May because of conflicts with NYM. Instead, it will be held on June 1, the first Sunday of June, at 10 a.m. It will be led by Bob Kaeiser.

Potlucks: We discussed whether or not to have potluck meetings during summer. Some favored continuing to get together monthly even if the turn-out is small, while others expressed concern that they did not want to miss important topics of interest to them. Everyone indicated they would be less likely to attend summer potlucks because of busier schedules. In the end, it was decided that we would continue to have the potlucks during summer, but not have any discussion topics. Instead, we would gather monthly for fun and community. Sheila Thomas has offered to continue hosting the potlucks during summer. The summer potlucks will be on Friday evenings with a meal at 6 p.m. on these dates:

June 27

July 25

August 22

Quaker Cloud: Mary Klos announced that the new Web page for Fox Valley Friends Meeting is up on the Quaker Cloud. It can be found at: https://www.quakercloud.org/cloud/fox-valley-friends-meeting.

It includes posted minutes for March and April of 2014 under the 'Resources' link. The minutes were posted on a trial basis. The Quaker Cloud is a good place to archive our minutes so they are accessible to everyone at all times, and they will never get lost. However, they are public to anyone on the Web.

They could be made private, but that would require members to get a login ID and password to see them. Unfortunately, FGC has announced that they have no plans to make e-mail lists part of the Quaker Cloud. There are too many potential security issues with maintaining e-mail lists. Since the FVFM@yahoogroups.com is very useful to our meeting we do not want to give it up, but it requires its own login id and password. Establishing this login and password has been problematic for many of our members, so we do not feel ready to add another login and password requirement for the Quaker Cloud at this time.

Some members have expressed legitimate concern with all of our minutes being public. To address this concern, we will follow a new process. When minutes are drafted, they will be sent to the private FVFM e-mail list for review. When they are approved at the next Meeting for Business, we will ask if anything is confidential or sensitive that should be left out of the public posting. If so, those items will be removed from the public posting of the minutes. A paper file will be kept of confidential and sensitive items, while all other items will be posted publicly.

The April minutes were reviewed, and nothing was considered sensitive or confidential, so they will be posted as is.

It was reported that when you search for "Fox Valley Friends Meeting" on the Internet, our old Web site still comes up even though we haven't paid the hosting site for awhile. Everyone is encouraged to get the link to our new Web site into other Web pages as much as possible. Reed will work on getting a link posted on the Mauthe Center Web site. Mary will add it to Quaker Finder and NYM.

Library: Hayden Groy has familiarized himself with the current condition of our library and reported that Sheila Thomas did an excellent job of organizing the materials. He will begin work on going through the card file and checking if books have been returned or not.

Announcements:

Lissa Field announced that she will be going to Earlham College on June 6-10 for the Second Annual Gathering of Friendly Mystics. She can take along any Quaker books that we want to donate to Earlham. She will also be leading a workshop with Michael Resman on Friendly Mystic writing, "What Canst Thou Say?", at NYM Session this month.

Friends General Conference will be held June 29 to July 5 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You can get more information from Carol Crawford, or the FGC Website, http://www.fgcquaker.org/connect/gathering

Respectfully submitted,

Mary Klos, Clerk

Share