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Friends United Meeting |
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April 1998
News From Friends United Meeting
Woodard Trust Opens New Ministry Possibilities
General Board Report
During its meeting February 14 and 15 at the FUM offices, Friends United Meeting's
General Board approved plans for a major renovation of Quaker Hill Bookstore.
Estimated cost: $68,000, to be repaid from Bookstore revenues over a 5-7
year period. (Sue Calhoun shows plans for the renovation, left)
The Board also approved plans for the use, mainly by World Ministries, of a $275,000 distribution from the Woodard Testamentary Trust (see separate story).
Concern over the tension between Iraq and several United Nations countries, especially the USA, led to the adoption of a minute asking all concerned countries to pull back from conflict. (Text.) The Board also approved a letter to all FUM Friends asking for all meetings to set aside specific corporate prayer time for the situation on the Sunday following receipt of the letter. The minute was distributed electronically to governments, Friends organizations and news media the same day it was adopted. Copies were available for Board members to take home, and were mailed out to local meetings two days later. A possible resolution was announced by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan the following Sunday.
Zak Nyongesa (East Africa Yearly Meeting North) raised a concern that many Friends did not understand the circumstances surrounding George Kamwesa's departure from the FUM staff. In her World Ministries report, Retha McCutchen explained that over a period of months it became clear that George is a very gifted public minister and evangelist whose gifts were not well used in the assistant secretary position. He was offered a transfer within World Ministries but declined. Nyongesa urged staff to report openly on the situation to all concerned Friends, in part to avoid exacerbating tensions among East African Friends, and between them and FUM as a whole.
The General Board will meet again June 19-21 in the Greensboro, NC, area. This is a change from the Board meeting calendar distributed in September 1996, which had specified the following weekend.
Woodard Trust Opens New Ministry Possibilities
The General Board received with joy recommendations for distribution of a bequest from the Testamentary Trust of Earle M. Woodard amounting to $275,000. It is envisioned that the Woodard Trust will be used over several years in the following general areas: seed money for youth leadership training and for church planting in North America; partial cost of vehicles for FUM representatives in various areas of overseas mission work including the Lugulu hospital ambulance; a revolving capital development fund which may initially be used for educational work in the Middle East, but is expected eventually to help with medical and educational efforts in Kenya; funding for spiritual life retreats for FUM field staff and support for participation in the 1999 Latin America Friends pastors' conference. A portion of the Trust will also be used at the FUM office to improve financial tracking of mission accounts and purchase year- 2000-compliant equipment.
Earle Woodard, a member of University Friends Meeting, Wichita, Kansas,
had established the trust to provide annuities to various relatives, and
then to benefit Friends University, University Friends Meeting and the
American Friends Board of Foreign Missions (which is now the General Board
of Friends United Meeting). Several years ago the trustees came to realize
that annuities provided for in the Trust had not been adjusted for over
30 years of inflation. This set in motion a reconsideration that resulted
in the early distribution of the Trust while increasing the annuity to
the Trust's beneficiary.
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Vacation Bible School Goal
$4000 for Friends School in Belize
Imagine completing eighth grade, sitting for an exam that determines whether you will be eligible to enter high school and then discovering you do not qualify. Nearly 5000 youth in Belize City face this dilemma each year. Three years ago the Friends Boys School was started as a Prep School, which resulted in about half of the boys resitting and passing the exam for entry into high school. Those who didn't pass could not be forgotten. A Continuation School was started to equip boys for some skill. About 40 students are presently attending this fledgling school.
The classrooms are small and ill equipped. School fees are not sufficient to meet the cost for maintaining the school. Four thousand dollars will provide a daily snack for one school year and build 40 desks.
Would your Vacation Bible School or Sunday or First Day School like to participate in this project? A poster and information is available from Friends United Meeting.
Membership Classes
A new Friends membership curriculum piece will be available by early summer. It is particularly useful to people coming into Friends without other church background or from another denomination. It introduces Quaker history and testimonies and helps participants understand what becoming a member involves. It provides the opportunity to discover what spiritual gifts one brings to the meeting and suggests ways to maintain a growing spiritual life. The curriculum can be covered in six half-hour segments or at greater depth in six one-hour segments or put into a one-day retreat format. Watch for further announcements.
FUM Is Listening
The Communications Task Group of Friends United Meeting is starting to visit meetings in each yearly meeting to hear your perceptions of Friends United Meeting, to listen to your visions for ministry within your local meeting, and to discover if there are ways Friends United Meeting can walk beside you to accomplish your vision. We also want to hear how you would like to see our missions carried on, what your attitude is toward FUM's accountability for money, where you see we could interact with one another more effectively.
Because Friends United Meeting is made up of people like you, we want to hear how we can work together more effectively. We want to hear where you see God calling the corporate body of Friends United Meeting as we cross into the year 2000 and beyond.
We would like to visit with everyone. A more reasonable goal is to visit with groups of people from at least 10% of our meetings across North America. These meetings will be randomly chosen in the hope that we will get to hear from a good cross section of the constituency. We want these discussions to be times when together we can think through the role we are to play as a corporate body.
Copyright (c) 1998 Friends United Meeting
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