Spiritual State of the Meeting Report 2025 Central Philadelphia Friends Meeting
April 14, 2025
This year’s report on our spiritual condition as a meeting body challenges us to reflect on how we maintain our balance during this historical period of unbalance. As we explore the queries presented below, we also ask ourselves: How well are we listening to Spirit, corporately as well as individually? How are we supporting individuals who carry ministries of activism? And how welcoming are we to those seeking refuge from isolation and danger?
- How has your Meeting been changing in the past year?
Our Meeting has gratefully received many newcomers for worship over the past year, both in-person and virtually. The growing crises of these times are leading people to seek spiritual sanctuary and connection, as well as the opportunity to join with others in finding ways to act in response. Some new Friends have said they are experiencing a refuge in our communal worship. Newcomers are also sharing powerful, Spirit-led messages in Meeting for Worship.
We find ourselves in a period of transition, and we are experimenting with ways to attract our many new attenders and new members into the work of our meeting. During this period of change, we are watching to see what structures might fade away-i.e., what we will be led to lay down-even as new challenges emerge from the current societal context. In the midst of all these challenges, some members and attenders have expressed experiencing more joy in our Meeting for Worship, including Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business-joy as a result of intentional, positive change.
We are rising to the challenge of becoming more welcoming. With a paid Youth Religious Education teacher providing First Day School programs twice per month, we aim to better support families and young children. We are explicitly embracing our transgender community members and have prepared a loving minute of inclusion, welcome and safety. During fellowship after worship, we provide food and tables for small groups to support comfortable connection. We have been placing more emphasis on small group sharing for deepening connections, including encouraging spiritual friendships. We are also seeking ways to provide support to members of our community struggling with lack of financial security.
We are providing more information about print and online Quaker-related information, and about opportunities to join in the work of the Meeting in small and large ways. We are trying to make these easier to access by articulating them in ways that will seem more relevant to newcomers. We have changed the name of our Meeting to Central Philadelphia Friends Meeting (previously Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting), to make it easier to find us online, and to be more intelligible to non-Quakers who often stumble over what “Monthly” means.
We are enriched by consistent online attendance at worship. Hybrid worship opens our Meeting to Friends who reside across the country or across the world and have never attended in-person. We offer online fellowship after worship through small breakout groups on Zoom.
In the past year, we also went through a process of re-examining our committee structure and how we accomplish the work of the Meeting. As a large Meeting with care of a Friends school, management responsibility for a public burial ground, and shared quarters as an equity partner in Friends Center, some of our support systems are struggling-including Membership Care. We did not come to unity on a new approach to revamping committees, and yet we are clear that the existing structure is not viable, with many committees having too few members and working under strain.
- Where are you headed in the next few years?
We envision ourselves embracing diversity in the life of our meeting. It is apparent that some newcomers to CPFM are looking for a spiritual home, and that our meeting can represent a safe harbor for those made to feel unsafe by the current federal administration’s policies-and actions-which actively target already-vulnerable individuals (including, but not limited to, our trans siblings and neighbors).
Living the belief that there is that of God in everyone calls us to embrace our differences. One Friend notes that as Quakers, we have the freedom to explore every other religion for its depth; and that in doing so, we are reminded that at root we are all one. Given our Meeting’s strong tradition of spiritual friendships, we expect this Quakerly form of one-on-one support to continue.
We are a community of strong individuals, and many of our members have been activists. Now, we are feeling a growing need for outward-looking activism, in the names of justice and equity. Some of us are interested in connecting more with other faith groups and organizations to help interrupt patterns of racism and injustice. Additionally, we are looking to be more mindful of where and how our money is being spent; this includes identifying impact investments which might better align with our shared values, as well as making reparations to Black Americans.
Some of our members note that they first came to our meeting against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, having felt a need to connect with other activists for peace. We see ourselves in a similar situation for the years ahead, in which definitive, Spirit-led action will be imperative. The integrity of each individual will continue to be emphasized.
We seek to move to the future with greater mindfulness of inclusion. We find ourselves in a period of welcoming many newcomers of all ages, and we are envisioning paths for attenders to be better included in the life of our meeting. We look to shed systems and patterns which may not serve us in the future.
For example, our existing committee structure needs to become more accommodating to shorter-term volunteers. We seek to listen to newer voices with attention and openness, just as we do with long-time Friends whose wisdom and perspectives are more familiar. And we need to go deeper in understanding and welcoming neurodiversity as a fact of our communal worship.
More and more of our community members participate virtually, and we have identified a need for greater pastoral care for our online-only participants. We are blessed by the expansion of our virtual spaces; we seek to build on this and to ensure those who can only attend from afar feel included and welcomed in worship, business, and fellowship.
We are a community in a period of great transition. Many Friends attest to this palpable moment of change as being a source of joy within our meeting. One Friend notes that despite the rise of attenders and a newly burgeoning First Day School program, it will continue to be the membership commitment which carries the body forward.
It will therefore be necessary to communicate to new attenders the importance, the discipline, and the benefits of becoming a member-including our current understandings of Quaker history and values-as we seek to make a loving change in our world. Future generations of CPFM will need to keep rediscovering the Quakerly balance between activism and inner growth, between the needs of the individual and of the group.
- Please share any triumphs or troubles your meeting has had regarding the climate witness.
Our large membership includes a number of individuals for whom earth care is their life’s work. They include activists and leaders in organizations like Earth Quaker Action Team, Quaker Earthcare Witness, Quaker Action Mid-Atlantic Region, the PYM Eco-Justice Collaborative, Philly Thrive and POWER Interfaith. Activist members experience our Meeting community as very supportive of their work on climate justice concerns.
We have held occasional online small group meetings for sharing ideas and encouragement to support individual actions in reducing carbon emissions. These small group meetings have been received well and have inspired some to take positive actions for climate justice.
Some of our members have been especially focused on influencing policy and legislation to reduce carbon emissions. For example, some individual members of CPFM have dedicated themselves to working with POWER Interfaith, which engages in legislative policy work at the level of state government. Although CPFM is a dues-paying member congregation in POWER, we have not united as a body in consistent engagement with POWER’s campaigns or actions.
On the other hand, our newer attenders and members may not have heard much about CPFM’s long-standing climate-focused ministries or even know about the climate witness from PYM. We wonder if this lack of connection might be addressed by inviting those carrying climate ministries to periodically share their work to provide opportunities for attenders, members and the Meeting as a body to engage more actively with these concerns.
As a body, our Meeting is exploring impact investing and green investing and is working with Friends Fiduciary to shape its offerings in these directions.
Through this work, we hope to better focus the Meeting’s investments in ways that align with the climate witness.
CPFM also owns and shares the management of the Friends Southwestern Burial Ground (FSWBG) with the Monthly Meeting of Friends of Philadelphia. The vast majority of burials there in recent years have been green burials, which we encourage to reduce the carbon footprint of body disposition.
FSWBG is obtaining Level I Arboretum Status and is working to maintain and improve our tree cover and plantings.
With divine assistance, we see much room to deepen our engagement with the climate witness at every level. We look forward to the upcoming PYM Thread Gathering, Climate Witness: Let Our Actions Speak!
