March 25, 2007, 8:30 AM
Westtown Meeting House

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

Announcements:

• See the website for the complete listing of announcements.
• Calendar reminders for April & May: 4/15 - committees meet, 4/22 - CQM,  4/29 - Meeting for Business; 5/6 - committees meet; 5/20 - Meeting for Business

Correspondence (The full text of these letters are available in the black notebook in the social room):

• Meeting House Repairs: The meeting has received a letter from Bob Connolly. The letter explains that the roof will be replaced and exterior painting work done this summer at a cost of about $65,000. Interior work including painting, plaster repair, and carpet replacement are not planned for this summer. However, Bob and Phil Genther welcome working with Meeting Members on issues of deferred maintenance.
• Arthur Larrabee will be at Willistown Monthly May 6th. He will make a presentation about the needs and priorities of PYM. This will happen after regular Meeting for Worship and a short social period. Meeting for Worship is at 10:00 AM. The program will start around 11:30. Members of Willistown have wanted this interaction as they have felt uneasy about the responses they have been receiving from PYM about its work.
• The Meeting has received a letter from the Young Friends Winter Gathering in Burlington, NJ. Young Adult Friends from around the world came together to grapple with the wide variety of beliefs among Friends and to seek though places where they can come together in the Light.
• Pendle Hill: A letter arrived from Ken and Katherine Jacobson, Interim Co-Directors of Pendle Hill. The letter served as an introduction to Lauri Perman, newly names as the new Executive Director at Pendle Hill.

Old Business:

• Hickman Spring Cleanup 4/14. Laurie Worth is the contact person
• Greeter job description is coming from Ginny Sutton. Please sign up
• Membership and Marriage Clearness: Deb Wood, Paul Spiegel, Rose Alken.
• Today we will be welcoming Deb Wood at the rise of Meeting. (This is a new cake!)
• The clearness committee for Paul Spiegel met with him and enthusiastically recommends his membership in the Meeting. The Meeting approved his joining with us in membership. Mitch will ask him about a date for welcoming him. He has written a song about his journey to Quakerism. We will ask him if we could use his song during our end of the school year meeting in the glade.
• The clearness committees for marriage and membership for Rose Alken were appointed. Paula Kline and Kevin and Karen Gallagher will meet as a clearness committee for marriage. Mitch Beaver, Tom and Margaret Haviland and Kevin Gallagher will serve as a clearness for membership committee. The two committees will meet concurrently.
  

Reports on ongoing work from:

• Worship and Ministry:
  • Reminders were given for April 8 and May 13th. These are the dates for the “Experiment with Light” meetings from 9-10 in the Meeting House. The group has averaged from 5-10 folks who have felt well supported by the practice in prayer and meditation.
    
• Pastoral Care and Concern:
  • Thanks to Peace and Social Justice for so smoothly picking up the baton of teaching the children.
  • PC&C sent thank you notes to students who helped out with FDS
  • Next meeting we will be discussing building an audio system for the Meeting House as well as the idea of a buddy system linking old and new members and attenders.
    
• Peace and Social Justice:
  • Wrapped up adult outreach for the year. Closed with film “The Corporation” and a presentation on the Jubilee organization
  • Switched to teaching for children
  • Planning a retreat sometime mid-spring to look ahead to the next year and looking for a new co-clerk

New Business:

• The Meeting considered when to discuss and evaluate how well the new Meeting Structure is working. It was suggested that we meet as a whole meeting to discuss this during the May date for committees. The Meeting approved this idea.
• The Meeting considered the best process for planning the last Sunday of the school year meeting for worship, traditionally a time when we mark milestones in our children’s lives. We will plan this special Meeting for Worship on the May committee date. In committees in April we should give attention to this celebration of our corporate worship and milestones in our children’s lives. We should also work on questions we would like to have Worship and Ministry ask of parents. These questions should be to Worship and Ministry by April 15th.
• Peter Lane reported on the PYM Budget process. He is our representative on the PYM Annual Fund. Peter is asking us to be sure to consider contributing to the Annual Fund. The Annual Fund is crucial to the functioning of PYM and pays for a lot of the work of PYM. By end of June PYM is hoping to raise $475,000. To date $205,000 has been raised.
• Nominating Committee reports that we need a new Auditor now that Chip Junkin has moved to Maryland. Elson Blunt volunteered to serve in this aspect. We are still looking for an assistant clerk.
• Corporate Giving at Westtown Meeting: The old practice has been that there is no corporate giving. There are no funds in the budget for corporate giving except for the necessitous fund. What would need to happen from a financial stand point for us to give corporately? We would need to agree on the organization. The beauty of the current policy is that we as individuals can do with our donating dollars as we please. Are we too diverse to agree on a group or witness for our financial support? Some groups are asking for us to make a commitment as churches or communities of worshippers. We as a meeting make all kinds of corporate decisions without having every member present and agreeing to that, how would this sort of decision/witness be any different.
• We can make bank to bank transfers for giving to Westtown Monthly Meeting. If members do this they should let Don Byerly know, otherwise the money just appears.
• Day Care will be installing a keypad at the request of the school.
• Lucille Koenig announced the meeting’s acquisition of Searching for Peace in the Middle East. Produced by Landrum Bolling, formerly of Earlham College.

Quarterly Meeting:

• CQM is asking Friends to think about corporate witness and corporate service through the Quarterly Meeting. This will be an item on the CQM agenda in April. The format might be that CQM would plan some event or project and ask members to participate. Working with Quarterly Meeting folks is energizing. This would make possible the kinds of projects we have talked about over the years but had the sense that we are a small meeting with stretched resources, having the greater resources of the entire Quarter focused on a project allows for small meetings like ours to work on larger more ambitious projects. Peace and Social Justice welcomes the level of unity that a Quarterly Meeting witness for peace and social justice offers to us.
• At the April CQM middle school friends will be assembling kits of useful items both school and personal supplies for children. Laurie Worth will be the point person for collecting. The items will go to Friends Association.
• Two state of the meeting reports need to be sent to Quarterly Meeting. One by Worship and Ministry and one by the clerk, Kevin Gallagher. We will look for past models of letters in our old meeting minute books.

We ended with a period worship.

Respectfully,

Margaret Haviland
Recording Clerk