Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 13th October 2024

Dear Friends,

Last week was Quaker Week, a time when Quaker communities share our faith and welcome new people. In Lewes and nationally, our community is getting older, with limited numbers of new members who can support our meetings into the future. For us to survive the next hundred years, we must enable people from the wider community to discover Quakers, to grow into the business methods and to learn from the weighty Friends we have among us now.

This year, as we have been celebrating our new space in Lewes, we have welcomed people into our Meeting House with Art Wave, the Heritage Day, open evenings about George Fox and Tolstoy – all wonderful events! I wonder whether next year, we can be ready to celebrate Quaker Week, with events to welcome people into our meeting, not for the art, or the heritage, or the history, but for the Simple, Radical, Spirituality that has been our Quaker Week theme for the last two years.

Before then, as individuals, perhaps we could think about how we share our Quakerism with people we know outside Quakers? Do we welcome conversations, or are we uncertain how to answer the questions they may ask? If the latter sounds familiar, then please join one of our Discussion Groups, Continuing Explorer meetings, or Circles. The Society of Friends can be a difficult one to fathom, because there’s no doctrine, no “this is what Quakers believe”, and I certainly found it difficult initially to ask questions. However, no question is a silly one and no one person has “the answer”, so keep asking! It has been my experience that every Quaker welcomes the opportunity to discuss the fundamentals of their faith and practice. So, ask away, and maybe enable others to ask the same of you.

All of our Advices and Queries are either inward-looking, in terms of personal or Meeting practices, or outward-looking in terms of how we put our testimonies of peace, integrity, simplicity, etc into action in the world. There is no advice about how to spread the word about Quakerism, and many Quakers feel that this type of witness is contrary to our faith, but George Fox and the early Quakers travelled the country and beyond, sharing fundamental spiritual messages. I fear we face extinction without changing our strategy. I suggest that early in 2025, we start planning for Lewes Meeting’s celebration of October’s Quaker Week, and open our wonderful world of Lewes Quakers to a whole new swathe of people in our local community. Let’s get our thinking caps on!

Theresa Samms

on behalf of the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (David Hitchin, Chris Lawson, Tim Pitt-Payne, Caroline Pybus, Theresa Samms and Nancy Wall)