Approaches to having children in Quaker meeting for worship

[NOTE: I wrote this as a comment on Wess Daniel's post, "Thoughts on Bringing Children to Meeting for Worship."

[His article in turn also refers to Kathleen Karhnak-Glasby's excellent article in Friends Journal, "Bringing Children to Worship: Trusting God to Take Over from There."]

Green Street Monthly Meeting, our liberal unprogrammed Friends meeting in Philadelphia, is looking at how to better integrate the children with the rest of the meeting -- though I doubt we're ready to ditch Firstday School.

A commenter on Wess's post decried the practice in some unprogrammed meetings of having an occasional "all-ages" meeting that is poorly conceived, and a "poor hash." I can certainly imagine being in an otherwise-unprogrammed meeting that did a semi-programmed one poorly. However, I wanted to share some of my recent experience of the last two years.

Green Street has the children in Firstday School for the first 45 minutes (in two groups, elementary and middle school aged), and to worship the last 15 minutes. The teens generally come to meeting for worship.

On the 5th Sundays, a few times a year, we have a mostly programmed meeting for worship. It's definitely a hash, and a tasty one at that!

The one or two I've attended were led by a Friend who grew up expecting to be a minister in another tradition, so has some ability to lead worship; and more important, who is now a high school teacher, with a real gift for drawing young people at many different ages.

One 5th Sunday I missed featured my older son singing a Green Day song ("21 Guns") with his peers playing electric guitar. Since he has never sung with those peers before or since, I'm sorry I missed it. (And it's not like we're about to organize a worship band or something; I have personally never seen anything more high-powered than an acoustic guitar or a violin, usually around the year-end holidays, at this meeting myself.)

The warmth of the greetings at rise of meeting and expressions of joy following these semi-programmed meetings are enough to reassure me that we are saying something quite positive about our worshiping community. To me, it needn't imply anything negative about expectant waiting worship the other 48 Sundays a year.

Board Binder

Among the transitions I've made this summer, in moving from San Francisco to Philadelphia, I also took on a new volunteer role: clerk of the Board of Trustees of Friends Publishing Corporation, the publisher of Friends Journal magazine.

I know it's un-Quakerly to say it this way, but here's my new favorite status symbol, which came in the mail today:

I'm excited and honored to be a part of the organization. With Gabe Ehri as the new Executive Director and Martin Kelley as new Editor, the organization is ramping up its online presence.

I hope you already subscribe. If not, click here. Or, choose the new digital subscription and save paper & reduce mailing costs. Also, letters will be going out to Friends meetings about student subscriptions shortly. If you know a student who could benefit, please consider this.

Be sure to look at the recently published list of focus topics for 2012 and 2013.

Finally, there will be an event at the Arch Street Meetinghouse in Philadelphia on October 1, 2011, to celebrate and appreciate Susan Corson-Finnerty and Bob Dockhorn, who are both retiring this year after many years of service to the Journal. (Email celebration -at- friendsjournal.org to learn more; replace "-at-" with "@".)

I look forward to serving alongside my fellow Board members and the staff to continue this ministry of Quaker communications and outreach.