In 2008, one of our former ministers, Dan Kasztelan, wrote a booklet entitled Living with the Body of Christ: A Field Guide to Quaker Process. To share this valuable information about how Friends make decisions during monthly meeting, sections of this booklet are being posted via the online Traveling Friend. This is the seventh installment of an eight-part series. You can read the entire booklet, complete with recommendations for further reading and end notes, by clicking here.
Many of the decisions made in Monthly Meeting involve the use or expenditure of Meeting resources. Therefore, in good practice, the Meeting often establishes some form of accountability during the life of a project and at its conclusion. Accountability is a single word for asking some or all of these questions: What have the resources gone towards? Have they had the intended effect? Have the effects—intended and unintended—worked for good? Does the plan we are following need to be changed in any way? What have we learned in the course of answering this leading or concern?
In the past, accountability has frequently been established without special effort, and the Meeting continues to assume that will still be the case most often. Sometimes accountability will be as simple as a thank you letter, a receipt, or a report. For example, when the Meeting sends a donation to the American Friends Service Committee, they send us a thank you note, and three or four times a year send a report of their activities. If the Board of Trustees requests special funds for a lawn mower, they give a report to Monthly Meeting when the lawn mower has been purchased, and they tell us how it’s working; most of-us will also be able to see the results.
In the past, Cincinnati Friends Meeting has used a range of options for establishing accountability for Meeting resources. All of these methods are worthy of continued use. New methods might also be created. The following are a sample of some of the methods we might use for establishing accountability:
- A receipt, thank you letter, or acknowledgment
- Sharing information, either with a presentation or in The Traveling Friend newsletter
- A detailed budget for a proposed project or endeavor
- Regular or one-time audits
- Regular reports to Monthly Meeting about special projects
- Annual committee reports to Monthly Meeting, similar to the State of Society report which is prepared annually
- One-time reports to Monthly Meeting for one-time events
- Visits to project sites
Other methods of establishing accountability might arise from the Monthly Meeting as it considers a request at hand.
Establishing a means of accountability can be as simple or complex as business demands. Monthly Meeting might say, “Please give the treasurer the receipt for those supplies” or “Please write up something about the conference for The Traveling Friend when you get back.” The request might be more complex: “Please provide a detailed budget for your project” or “Please provide tax records which can indicate how you’ve spent money in the past.”
The request for accountability and the decision about how it will be established will grow out of Monthly Meeting’s discussion of a proposal. Generally, accountability will arise as part of the sense of the meeting, as it has in the past. If it isn’t already part of the discussion, the clerk might ask specifically about accountability before the minute for a decision is approved.
Sometimes when Monthly Meeting supports an individual’s leading, our Handbook recommends that Monthly Meeting establish a committee of support.
Support Committees for Individual Leadings
When the Meeting decides to support the leading of an individual active in the Meeting, it may also name a support committee for that individual. The three or four members of the support committee will be responsible for establishing regular meetings with the individual, during which time they will hear what work is being done, how the work is going, where the individual senses the next leadings lie, etc. The members of the support committee will become friends and advocates of the work.
The members of the support committee will also be concerned about the well-being of the person doing the work. They will point out trouble spots as they see them, and work to find solutions. And, eventually, they may suggest that it’s time to lay down the work, or to pass it on. (If the work is passed on to another member of the Meeting, a new support committee will be appointed.)
Our Quaker history provides notable illustrations of how support committees have functioned. In the 1700s, many American Meetings appointed one Friend to accompany another Friend who was led to travel in ministry. The Meeting’s oversight, and the accompanying Friend, served as one kind of support committee. In 1763, when John Woolman felt a leading to visit the Wyalusing Indians, a group of Philadelphia Friends discerned the truth of his leading with him, and then helped him prepare for the journey. When they heard on the night before his journey of English-Indian conflicts in the area where he was headed, they traveled from Philadelphia and woke him in the night to be sure he was aware of the danger. Both the formal planning and the spontaneous concern of the Philadelphia Friends were forms of support.
More recently, Friends John Calvi in Vermont and Patricia Loring in Maryland were both released by their Meetings for public ministry. Each had a support committee which took on the responsibility of gathering and disbursing the funds which supported their work. Ruth Paine, who worked with Southeastern Yearly Meeting’s Pro-Nica Committee and St. Petersburg Monthly Meeting’s Sarajevo Project, appreciated the work of support committees which worshipped together, helped to raise money for the work, and were buffers in difficult situations. Vicki Cooley, working for the New York Yearly Meeting Alternatives to Violence (AVP) Project, had a support committee which provided a midweek meeting for worship, since her AVP work took her away from worship on Sunday. She appreciated that the support committee kept her company in her work, and assisted her discernment about directions the work should take.
More information on the responsibilities of support committees can be found in the Report on the National Conference of Quaker Volunteer Service, Training, and Witness, pages 17–28. Copies of the report are available in the Quaker section of the Meeting library.
