April Advices & Queries

LEYM ADVICES AND QUERIES: MEETING FOR BUSINESS

The act of listening to God’s will in Meeting for Business is a way for the Meeting to give back the expression of unconditional love. It requires faith and obedience – faith that God will lead us and that we will obey His leading.

Cleveland Meeting, Eighth Month 15, 2010.

Be faithful in participating in meeting for worship with attention to business. Are our meetings for business held in a spirit of worship? Do we depend on the guidance of God in love and humility? Do we seek the leadings of the Spirit and admit the possibility of error? Do we help one another in our search for unity by listening well and speaking briefly without repetition?

Be tender and considerate of others’ views. Are we careful to meet those with open hearts and minds receptive to creative solutions? Do we allow our personal wishes and insights to take their place alongside those of others? Can we let them be set aside as the Meeting seeks the right way forward, recognizing that the search for unity may call us to accept with grace a decision of the Meeting with which we are not entirely in agreement?

Do we avoid both unnecessarily prolonging and curtailing discussion? Do we prayerfully support the clerk in detecting the movement of the Spirit among us? Do we hold each other and the Meeting in the Light as we conduct our business?

Adapted from Advices & Queries, for Use by Individual Friends, Meetings, and Worship Groups (Lake Erie Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends: Ann Arbor, 2012). Available online at http://leymquaker.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/aq3f2.pdf or in printed form in the GRFM library at the Browne Center.