{"id":3155,"date":"2026-01-28T19:55:48","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T19:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pym.org\/state-of-the-meeting\/?p=3155"},"modified":"2026-01-28T19:58:53","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T19:58:53","slug":"westtown-monthly-meeting-2024-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pym.org\/state-of-the-meeting\/westtown-monthly-meeting-2024-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Westtown Monthly Meeting, 2024-2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>How has your meeting been changing?<\/strong><br \/>\nWe have created more diversity in leadership by no longer requiring that co-clerks be drawn from only more seasoned Friends.<br \/>\nWe have thoroughly studied and developed a seven-point plan to encourage and retain clerks.<br \/>\nWe have laid down our Care and Nurturing Committee and replaced it with a Nominating Committee to respond to changing needs in the Meeting.<br \/>\nWe have increased our membership and rekindled relationships by offering more and varied ways to be involved with the Meeting.<br \/>\nWe have expanded assistance to the Recording Clerk position in response to younger members taking on the Recording Clerk task.<br \/>\nWe have made liberal use of virtual and hybrid connections.<br \/>\nWe have formed a School Relations Ad Hoc Committee to work on improving our connections with Westtown School.<br \/>\nWe have increased our connections with the Quarterly Meeting\u2019s Committee on Aging with a regular member and enhanced publicity.<br \/>\nOur new website better communicates our calendar of activities as well as who the meeting is, how to be more involved, and how we are expanding our outreach. We have a sprint team collaborating with all meeting committees. We want to reflect our growing diversity within the meeting.<br \/>\nWe have expanded our team of Children\u2019s Meeting (First Day School) educators to include regular paid professionals, high school student aids, and member volunteers.<br \/>\nWe now have several members trained in Godly Play, offering regular Intergenerational Meetings every other month.<br \/>\nWe have returned to our practice of having an Advent Garden event and continue with our annual Christmas Eve gathering.<br \/>\nWe have scheduled a brainstorming session to determine ways to support the Yearly Meeting\u2019s Carbon Footprint Program.<br \/>\nWe have supported Combatants for Peace \u2013 seeking a lasting resolution to the Israel \/ Palestine conflict.<br \/>\nWe have actively collaborated with AFSC by signing the anti-apartheid commitment.<br \/>\nOur DEI Committee work and our Reparations study group with Lansdowne Bethel AME Church led to three ongoing commitments:<br \/>\n*To provide support for the Bethel AME Church Food Pantry;<br \/>\n*To join in an effort to lift up and preserve the history of the Shiloh AME Church; and<br \/>\n*To support regenerative farming on Westtown School Farm led by FarmerJawn.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Where are you headed in the next few years?<\/strong><br \/>\nWe will work to strengthen our relationship with Westtown School.<br \/>\nWe are making plans to improve our record-keeping and methods of retaining archival materials.<br \/>\nWe have written a minute in support of the lawsuit to protect our right to remain free from incursions by ICE during worship, and will continue to support members of the immigrant community.<br \/>\nWe will persist in our efforts to strengthen diversity, equity, inclusion and justice within the Meeting and our nation.<br \/>\nWe expect our youth ministry to continue growing, making our Meeting more attractive to young families.<br \/>\nWe hope to establish adult to adult and adult to youth buddies so that individuals can grow in supportive spiritual relationships with one another.<br \/>\nWe want to continue to hold regular Meetings for Healing as a way to strengthen and deepen our spiritual lives within the meeting, our community, our nation, and the world. It is out of worship we can discern more clearly our calling\/s.<br \/>\nWe want to engage in more activities to help grow in relationships with one another.<br \/>\nWe hope to schedule a run-through of our recently developed disaster plan.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Given where you are headed, might Ministry and Care help you find resources? <\/strong><br \/>\nSupport for intervisitation, Interactive Quaker Study, Healing, Addressing Racism, Ending Gun Violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How has your meeting been changing? We have created more diversity in leadership by no longer requiring that co-clerks be drawn from only more seasoned Friends. We have thoroughly studied [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":3156,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"iawp_total_views":26,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"quarterly_meeting":[53],"year_of_repprt":[65],"class_list":["post-3155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reports","quarterly_meeting-concord-quarter","year_of_repprt-2024-2025","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pym.org\/state-of-the-meeting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pym.org\/state-of-the-meeting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pym.org\/state-of-the-meeting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pym.org\/state-of-the-meeting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pym.org\/state-of-the-meeting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pym.org\/state-of-the-meeting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pym.org\/state-of-the-meeting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pym.org\/state-of-the-meeting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pym.org\/state-of-the-meeting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pym.org\/state-of-the-meeting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3155"},{"taxonomy":"quarterly_meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pym.org\/state-of-the-meeting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/quarterly_meeting?post=3155"},{"taxonomy":"year_of_repprt","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pym.org\/state-of-the-meeting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/year_of_repprt?post=3155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}