November 12, 2006, 8:30 AM
Westtown Meeting House

We began with a sharing of names of members to hold in the Light

Announcements:

• See the newsletter for the complete listing of announcements.
• The Hickman has a clean up next week for anyone who could help. The focus of the cleanup is on Sharpless Hall. This will be November 18th. Another possible date is December 2nd when Jessi Boyd will be going. The Meeting asks that Pastoral Care and Concern take up this need and work with the Hickman to plan an outreach day in the future–perhaps looking towards the March spring cleanup as a possible date.
• PYM is holding a called meeting on the Peace Testimony this upcoming weekend at 4th and Arch.
• There is a Thanksgiving gathering of the West Chester Council of Churches at Kesher-Israel on Wednesday November 22. Alan Wright is one of the speakers. There will be an email announcement about this.
• Submissions to the Newsletter should be sent to Tom Haviland today. He hopes to have the meeting newsletter emailed out and posted on the internet as soon as possible. The electronic end of this is being readjusted with a new site.
• Oak Lane Daycare has put in the sink required by the state to come up to code in placing a sink near the changing table. The changing table will be moved to where we normally have the coffee table. We will shift the table to north side of the pass through opening. Shelves are needed to be built over the table for diapers. The shelves will have a tapestry over them for cosmetic purposes. The meeting approved this change.

Correspondence:

• FCNL would like to have a contact person in each meeting. We will refer this matter to Judy Asselin and Paula Kline and Peace and Social Concerns. Paul will take this back to Peace and Social Concerns. We will ask Peace and Social Concerns to consider Jonathan Evans as our contact person.
• The Clerk received a letter from a singing group interested in coming to sing here at the Meeting House on Friday December 15th in the evening. This group is called the Skyline Boys Southern Gospel Choir singing quartet. Members thought it sounded interesting, but it is a busy time of year so the meeting decided to say thanks but no thanks. We will post an announcement of their concerts here in the meeting and announce them in the usual manner.
• Nancy Hoffman writes to thank the meeting for its support of the marriage of her daughter Whitney and Britt Suttell. Special thanks to Marc and Marion Dear, Bruce Harrison and Lisa Cromley, Judy and Dennis Asselin and Karen and Kevin Gallagher for their care and efforts.
• Tanguy family, Jen Elam and Steve Gross, are looking to sell their home in the Tanguy cooperative community and are hoping to sell to people interested in living in community. We will post the notice in the Meeting House and in the Mary Leeds room in the main building on campus.

New Business:

Temporary Clerk:

We need a temporary clerk for up to six months while Kevin is rightly focused on his father’s care and needs. This would help Kevin and the meeting. We will make this announcement during Meeting for Worship and in the Newsletter. We still need a co-clerk. The nominating committee will continue to push hard on this front.

Pastoral Care and Concerns:

• Mitch has put together a coffee and greeters list. It will be placed in the traditional place on the bulletin board in the kitchen and placed in the newsletter. The list is through January with space for signing up through June. In early January Mitch will finish out the list to June. If someone needs to trade a date then folks should take it upon themselves to find a substitute and note the change on the list. Pastoral Care and Concern will appoint someone to call and remind folks that their turn is coming. As part of one’s responsibilities when we are doing coffee we should call the team for next week just to let them know about supplies, etc. We are doing dishes by hand as the dishwasher remains out of service.
• How and when does the Meeting want to have shared meals and covered dish suppers/lunches? What do the Meeting members want? Covered dish suppers give us a chance to get to know each other. Can we choose this one thing as a support of our lives as a community? Can we commit to a date for lunches? Could these be simple meals prepared by a few? Could the children make the soup on the fourth Sunday of the month when they are already cooking? This is a wonderful idea. The meeting adopted the following three dates. December 10th which is the day of the building of the advent garden , January 28th , February 25th. The children will help prepare the food for the January and February dates.
• The greeting for the Bairds will be rescheduled. They couldn’t make it this Sunday. The cake for this is sitting in the freezer at Westtown.

Quarterly Meeting:

• The main item for this meeting to know about from Quarterly Meeting was the Minute from Lancaster Meeting on the Iraq War . Both Concord and Westtown Monthly Meeting were comfortable with the minute; the other Monthly Meetings had concerns about the time line aspect of the minute. Instead of a unified statement from the Quarter, the Quarterly Meeting will publish a list of things individual members can do in support of peace. Birmingham Monthly brought this list forward to share with the Quarter. We will ask Peace and Social Concerns to consider what our continued corporate sense should be. The special called meeting of PYM this upcoming weekend will be a place for this work to go forward in a corporate manner.
• Also at the Quarterly meeting was a gentleman from FCNL, Tim Barnar, who gave a presentation on FCNL; what they do and what we can do to help. This is a critical time for FCNL and others as this lame duck congress is likely to pass all kinds of legislation between now and January.
• The safety and liability around the area of children and religious education remains a concern at all levels of PYM. The Quarter has decided to take out insurance for the Quarter in this area. The Quarter considered adopting the policy that PYM came up with. The policy is that we always have two people together at all times when we are working with children. Insurance companies don’t like this but are willing to live with it. They would prefer the purely legalistic approach of full criminal background checks for anyone working with children.

Worship and Ministry:

• Worship and Ministry is preparing to pass the baton to Pastoral Care and Concern for the teaching of our children.
• Please bring rakes for first day school this coming Sunday.
• December 10th Worship and Ministry needs worker bees to put together the children’s advent garden.
• In the spring we need to assess how we as a meeting like this garden and if we want to commit going forward. We have a request to make the garden more widely available beyond the meeting and school community. The children of the meeting come to the garden on Sunday afternoon, the teenagers and others come on the following Monday evening. The Meeting agreed to the outreach to the wider community.

Finances:

• Each of us needs to give some thought to next year’s budget. The budget is a little different. Thanks to the finance committee for getting out the membership contribution letter.

After the reading and correcting of the minutes, we ended with a period worship.

Respectfully,

Margaret Haviland
Recording Clerk