What Membership Means
Membership means allying yourself with people with whom you feel you have something in common. It is becoming part of a community that shares an activity, goal or trait.· What sort of community do we aspire to be?
· What principles shape and sustain the community we aim to be?
· What practices are necessary if our community is to thrive?
· What practices will prevent its thriving?
Within any community, there must be guidelines to help individual members to live and grow together. Within a Quaker spiritual community, corporately discerned guidelines bear a greater importance because of the delicate and precious nature of the group. Our community's goal is to be a vehicle in which each of us will pursue life's most joyful journey, the search for God. Every one of us has come to Friends as seekers, hoping to experience the realm of spirituality and the inner Light... Guidelines are especially important with the intimacy of a close spiritual community.
- Friends Bulletin, October 2006
Membership is a relationship between a person and the Meeting. The Meeting cares for the member in spiritual and material ways by:
· Providing a setting for corporate worship;
· Engaging children in First Day School;
· Providing pastoral care through the Oversight and other committees, which offer support through clearness committees, support groups, financial assistance, or even simple things such as rides to meetings for worship;
· Providing a process for discerning spiritual leadings;
· Offering opportunities for religious education and spiritual growth in seminars, workshops, classes, worship sharing groups, and Friendly Dinners;
· Providing social events and opportunities for relaxed community activities;
· Helping live a daily life that is enriched and integrated with a spiritual life.
In turn, the member cares for the Meeting by:
· Attending meeting for worship;
· Attending meeting for business;
· Contributing financially;
· Contributing time and energy, such as in committee work;
· Seeking to live by Quaker practice and testimonies;
· Being involved in the greater community of Friends;
· Living as a transforming agent in society through living life in the Light.
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