 March/April 2000 (XXXVIII 2) |
f people want to know more about Friends, why not tell them? In her article in the January/February issue of PYM News, Peggy Morscheck made it clear how she felt about letting the public know about who and what Quakers are all about. I heartily agree.
We, at the Downingtown Friends Meeting, tried something new at our Friends Fall Festival this past October. In past years, we had always had a peace booth, sponsored by our Peace Committee, at which visitors could pick up informative brochures and speak to Friends about peace concerns. A few people stopped by from time to time, but, overall, the booth eventually became part of the landscape of the Festival. From time to time, our Social Concerns Committee sponsored a booth, selling items to benefit local charities, etc.
Last year, in a major overall of the Festival, we decided to try something new — something that would tell our visitors more about us as Friends. The result was The Quaker Way, an all-new booth co-sponsored by our Peace, Social Concerns, and, for the first time, Worship and Ministry Committees. The original concept was to have three booths side by side, each with different information from the three committees. But after careful thought, we decided to combine the three efforts into one explaining Friends' stand on peace, how we help the community, and how we practice our faith.
Our new booth, The Quaker Way, now standing proudly directly across from our food booth along a main thoroughfare at the Festival, offered visitors not only informative brochures, but also had posters on display showing how our Meeting worked by committee, the times of our Meeting for Worship, our Peace Testimony, and a chart of the charities which we help in the community. Francis Brown, one of our leading members, was on hand to sign a newly published history of our Meeting that he wrote.
To me, this was outreach in the purest sense. We didn't dance around the issue. We presented information about Friends in general and our Meeting in particular in a straightforward manner that all of us were proud of.
Bob Santangelo
Downingtown Meeting (PA)
Last modified: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:18 AM