Spirit-Led Community Building

Join Quaker Voluntary Service staff & alumni for an experimental workshop modeled after the QVS fellowship year! Come build intergenerational spiritual community with us. We’ll offer frameworks and tools to shape your individual and collective experience in the workshop, and that you can bring home to your spiritual communities! Friends of all ages are eager…

Workshop Description

Join Quaker Voluntary Service staff & alumni for an experimental workshop modeled after the QVS fellowship year! Come build intergenerational spiritual community with us. We’ll offer frameworks and tools to shape your individual and collective experience in the workshop, and that you can bring home to your spiritual communities!

Friends of all ages are eager to participate in an immersive experience such as Quaker Voluntary Service (QVS) intimately and intentionally building spiritual community. This workshop is a week-long experience mirroring the 11-month QVS Fellowship year. It is a compilation of curriculum we offer to young adult Fellows who participate in QVS, and in some ways this workshop has been seasoned over the last ten years of our existence.

We look forward to digging into questions with you such as:
What are ways in which conflict supports community-building and spiritual growth?
What are the tools we have to navigate conflict?
What gifts do you bring to relationships with people of a different age than you?
How do you discern what values are sacred to you?
What does faith and faithfulness look like in your life right now?
What is your “right next step” for outward action in the world, and how do you discern this?

Much of our time will be spent in hands-on activities and discussion. We’ll offer tools and frameworks each day, scaffolding on the experiences of the day before. Some tools and frameworks we’ll touch on include: the stages of community, the four roles of social change, deep listening, listening in tongues, conflict transformation, and more.

This workshop embeds a framework of anti-racism and anti-oppression in its design. For us, this means sitting with discomfort, listening, employing curiosity, acting towards growth, choosing openness and trust, and challenging what is “respectable” or assumed authority. Participants will be invited to practice trying on this anti-racist embodiment in a supporting and trusted environment.

And, although we have the privilege of planning this week, we designed it spaciously so you can bring YOUR experiences, identities, ideas, hopes, and dreams. We plan to have fun AND go deep together.

Example: Day 1
Introduction of facilitators & arc of workshop
Worship
Short participants introduction
Introduce Deep Listening as a tool for building trust
Participants introduce each other through longer pair shares
Create group expectations and norms together
Introduce framework & interactive discussion of: Community Nexus & Comfort, Challenge, Chaos

Participants ought to bring a journal/notebook and writing utensil. However, there will be no advanced reading or reading assignments during the Gathering. Participants will not be expected to cover any materials cost.

This workshop is under the care of Quaker Voluntary Service.

Leader Experience

Ruth (she/her) joined QVS as the Recruiting and Marketing Coordinator in October, 2022. She enjoys working with young adults as they discern their path from college into the work of transforming the world. Ruth is excited about the impact that QVS has to revitalize Quaker meetings and give young activists the support and training to be effective change agents.

Ruth is a convinced Friend and a member of Durango Friends Meeting in Durango, CO. She holds a Master of Divinity from Earlham School of Religion. It was while she was working on her M/Div that she had the wonderful fortune to befriend several QVS alums who changed the course of her life.

When she is not at work, Ruth can be found in her garden, at the local gym picking up heavy things or cooking yummy vegan food to share with her friends.