Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 3rd August 2025
Dear Friends, All of us in the meeting have needs. Sometimes the need will be for patient understanding, sometimes for practical help, sometimes for challenge and encouragement; but we cannot … Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 3rd August 2025
Dear Friends,
All of us in the meeting have needs. Sometimes the need will be for patient understanding, sometimes for practical help, sometimes for challenge and encouragement; but we cannot be aware of each other’s needs unless we know each other. Although we may be busy we must take time to hear about the absent daughter, the examination result, the worries over a lease renewal, the revelation of an uplifting holiday, the joy of a new love. Every conversation with another Friend, every business meeting, every discussion group, and every meeting for worship can increase our loving and caring and our knowledge of each other.
Loving care is not something that those sound in mind and body ‘do’ for others but a process that binds us together… It would be a mistake to assume that those with outwardly well-organised lives do not need assistance. Many apparently secure carers live close to despair within themselves. We all have our needs.
Careful listening is fundamental to helping each other; it goes beyond finding out about needs and becomes part of meeting them….
How consciously do we listen to and nurture those we interact and worship within the Meeting? By doing so, I believe, we can help not only to meet a need to be heard, but also to enable the fullest possible expression of Friends’ inner Light and gifts.
Sharon Krummel
Quakers value diversity. We share this Friend’s message in the hope it will speak to others.
Pastoral Care and Eldership Team: Patricia Cockrell, David Hitchin, Sharon Krummel, Tim Pitt-Payne, Theresa Samms, Emily Slater.