CMM 2017-05-14 Possible Items for Agenda

Here are some possible agenda items for Fifth Month's Meeting for Worship with attention to Business, which will be on the 14th of Fifth Month.  Some of the items from Fourth Month have been carried forward.  Some of the proposed items may need further seasoning. They are in no particular order at the moment.

During worship, please hold in your heart Advices and Queries 14 and 15 from Britain Yearly Meeting.

  1. Are your meetings for church affairs held in a spirit of worship and in dependence on the guidance of God?  Remember that we do not seek a majority decision nor even consensus.  As we wait patiently for divine guidance, our experience is that the right way will open and we shall be led into unity.
  2. Do you take part as often as you can in meetings for church affairs?  Are you familiar enough with our church government to contribute to its disciplined processes?  Do you consider difficult questions with an informed mind as well as a generous and loving spirit?  Are you prepared to let your insights and personal wishes take their place alongside those of others or be set aside as the meeting seeks the right way forward?  If you cannot attend, uphold the meeting prayerfully.
  • Minutes of Fourth Month’s Meeting for Worship with attention to Business.
  • Solar Committee report
  • Finance Committee report
  • Youth Religious Education Committee report
  • Property Committee report
  • Nominating Committee report
  • Ministry & Counsel report
    • Social Justice Fund:  Proposed Policy for process in discerning usage. We ask all committees to be open to ways in which this money could be used to further God’s work in the area of racial, social and economic justice.  Committees should bring seasoned proposals to Meeting for Business.  Individuals with ideas should bring them to an appropriate committee for discernment. 
    • Status of follow-up to Minute 2017.2.8 :  draft text for minute proposing a process for making time-sensitive public statements.  Ministry and Counsel has this under consideration, but we're asking Friends to continue their discernment.
    • 4th Sundays - maybe ask for ideas from those present?
  • Sharing from Sanctuary Meeting and sharing from Mark and Rob on accompanying to ICE- announce ICE prayer vigil June 6?
    • Sanctuary:  Rob attended meetings about how congregations and individuals can provide help for immigrants who are facing deportation.  Ruth, Mark, Rob, and Faith will attend the Concord GSOP meeting on how Concord congregations can support people.  
    • Deportation:  Rob and Mark have accompanied some people under threat of deportation to their periodic ICE check-in.  Rob and Pat Wallace attended last week a training for lawyers and other people to advise people under threat.
  • Modify the purpose of the PSECC Committee.
  • Sponsoring the travelling banner exhibit, Waging Peace, as part of AFSC's 100th Anniversary.  See also Friends Journal, April 2017 issue.

Announcements

  • Registration for NEYM Annual Sessions in Castleton, VT will open online on June 1st at https://neym.org/sessions
  • NEYM Annual Sessions is looking for an Office Assistant and a Childcare Coördinator.  Job descriptions are at https://neym.org/jobs
  • 4th Sunday in May : Meeting for Eating! No program, just sharing over potluck
  • Saturday, June 10, 2017, 11am - 4pm : Exploring Whiteness in a Racist System - A Workshop sponsored by Concord SURJ

    Many people are feeling galvanized to confront and change our country’s patterns of racism and white supremacy, looking for what they can do in their lives and community. How can we make the soil of our culture and communities so fertile with values of dignity, generosity, respect, mutual support, and love so that the seeds of hate, fear, and racism cannot take root? People are asking: “What can I do? How can I take action?”

    Yet, before moving into action, it's important to do some learning and inner work first about how racism and white supremacy work and may live in each of us, and the fragmented narratives and misguided beliefs in our culture/history that perpetuate these patterns.

    In this workshop we will explore, learn, and experience how the destructive patterns of racism work. We will specifically create opportunities to explore white racial identity and position in relation to systemic racism, as well as have a space for honest and meaningful conversations about these issues.

    This workshop is being offered to members of Concord SURJ, with voluntary donations. Space is limited to 20 people. RSVP to Aron DiBacco at stonesoupNH [at] gmail [dot] com.

    Registration will begin at 10:30. Potluck snacks will be offered. Please bring something to share.

    ‘‘We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.’’- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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