Query: How does our meeting learn of members’ needs and offer its assistance?– PYM Faith and Practice, 2017

Often Quaker meetings are shy about contacting Friends and attenders who might be in need of some sort of support. Meeting members may say, “I don’t want to intrude” or “They’ll call us if they need something.”

Actually, we should reach out! This has always been the practice in our meetings. After all, if not us, then who? Friends forget that we did not get rid of the clergy, but the laity; we are, all of us, the clergy, the preacher, the minister, the pastor, for our meetings. As pastors, we have a responsibility to reach out to seniors, singles, and the no-longer-able to ascertain what role the meeting needs to take in their support. Those who need our help most may be the least able to ask for it. Some may refuse our help, but the fact that we have tried tells them that they can call on us if needed.

It can be easy to lose track of our Friends from one First Day to the next. Often a pastoral care committee is tasked with organizing support for members’ and attenders’ physical needs, but we are all called to provide spiritual and friendship support to those who need care. And we all need care.

Query: Does our meeting nurture members in all stages of life? – PYM Faith and Practice, 2017

These days, many young families live far from family support, most families need two full-time incomes to survive, and many people live alone or do not have children. Thus, meetings have important work to do. It is often through the love of the community that people first experience the love of the Spirit. That love takes tangible forms: meal trains for the sick and those with new babies, connecting people with assistance, alerting families of changes in Friends’ behavior or mental status, and organizing prayer support. In Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Friends can turn to the Aging Support Program; Quaker Aging Resources, Consultation and Help (ARCH) is available to Friends in New York Yearly Meeting.

Query: Am I ready both to offer and to accept meeting assistance? – PYM Faith and Practice, 2017
One meeting cared for an older Friend’s cat during a hospital stay; another drove a Friend to medical appointments; a third contacted a Friend’s distant son when his stepmother needed to be placed in a nursing home and his father was no longer able to get financial papers in order. PYM counselors help Friends who are going through a difficult time; PYM case managers help people facing housing, legal, and medical challenges; and PYM aging grants to individuals can address a variety of concerns. ARCH has worked with meetings and families to identify assistive strategies or to explain how nursing home costs can be covered.

Often the most significant services a meeting can provide are a visit, a phone call, or an invitation to a meal. Both PYM Aging Support and ARCH can offer support to meetings to establish Care Teams. Care Teams identify the needs to be met, then recruit Friends, neighbors, and family to share in meeting those needs. Care Teams result in less work for a few people as the work is shared by more team members. They also result in enormous satisfaction: the person gets the support they need, everyone does only what they have the time and inclination to do, and no one gets burned out.

One meeting realized that they were not as aware of Friends’ needs as they wanted to be. They called everyone in the meeting directory and asked if there was something they needed from meeting. They learned of interpersonal conflicts that needed mediation, received requests for clearness committees, and gained a new awareness of what kinds of care Friends in the meeting were longing for. This kind of pastoral care can lead to a new closeness within the meeting and add depth to worship. It also enables Friends to live out our testimonies of Community and Equality: those who can attend worship in person and those who can’t receive equal care and notice from the worshiping community.

Meetings that step into their role of pastoral care will receive gifts of grace they cannot anticipate.