By Mary Linda McKinney
The Faithful Meetings program has three primary components: An online classroom, learning sessions for the whole community, and small spiritual formation groups. Two months ago, I introduced the spiritual formation part of the program. Last month, I wrote about the online classroom. Today, I’m focusing on community learning sessions.
Learning sessions involving the majority of the adults in a community are what most people think of when they imagine a program like Faithful Meetings. The program will begin with a weekend retreat during which Friends will begin to examine and share their experiences with and beliefs about the Divine, and how they want to be in community together. Over the next 7 months, the meeting will gather in hybrid half-day sessions to explore different aspects of Quaker faith and practices together. The final gathering, in the 9th month, will be a full day to reflect on seeds that have been planted and consider how to nurture what may be sprouting.
During the community learning sessions, each topic will be introduced with quotes or resources by historic and contemporary Friends so folks can get a sense of what the topic has meant to other Quakers. The Friends gathering by Zoom and in-person will then have opportunities to explore their own thoughts, ideas, and experiences about the topic. Through sharing in small breakout groups and the large group, exercises, worship sharing, writing, and play, Friends will find what is meaningful for them in the topics, as individuals and as a community.
Each session will center around a theme with a few topics. As noted in my last blogpost, these same topics with quotes and additional resources will be available in the Faithful Meetings online classroom. Each topic has a forum so that folks who are not able to attend the learning sessions can engage or folks who did attend can continue their exploration and conversation about what they have learned.
I am not a teacher so these learning sessions will not have lectures. They are designed to be experiential and interactive. My role is that of facilitator, providing structure, being sensitive to the needs of those gathered, and listening for how the Spirit wants to guide us. Together, as a community, we will worship and listen to one another and for the wisdom that is given to us. In this way, Faithful Meetings will be a unique program for each Quaker community that participates because each community will be guided in its own way. We grow into faithfulness in the big things by learning to follow Spirit’s leadings in the small ones. The community learning sessions will provide many opportunities to practice corporate discernment as we listen together and share what we hear so that together, each Friends community can grow as a faithful meeting.