IMYM Clerk’s Newsletter – Nov. 2022

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Last Updated on 2 years by IMYM Tech Lead

Our life is love
and peace, and tenderness;
and bearing with one another,
and forgiving one another,
and not laying accusations one against another;
but praying for one another,
and helping one another up with a tender hand…
–Isaac Penington
Greetings
In this newsletter you will find…..

Contents

    From the Presiding Clerk (Interim)

    For more than 350 years the type of worship and the good order and manner of Friends has inspired spiritual growth and moved thousands of people into action. Early Friends were able to articulate and nurture a way forward towards the “reign of God”, peace, harmony, and the good. Many of us who have benefited and grown spiritually by our engagement with the Quaker way believe and hope that something will happen and that folks who have a need for and would benefit from the Quaker way will discover it.

    Intermountain Yearly Meeting evolved out of gatherings of Quakers in New Mexico and Arizona in the 1950s. In 1970 these gatherings grew to  include Friends from more states and became the Intermountain Friends Fellowship. In 1974 we became the Intermountain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. The original mission was to foster fellowship, community, and spiritual renewal with minimal organizational structure.

    Both our Monthly Meetings & Intermountain Yearly Meeting are all facing challenges, including an aging membership & a shortage of volunteers to perform committee jobs. IMYM’s inability to find sufficient volunteer help to carry out the work of the yearly meeting is an immediate crisis. The recent debacle surrounding the nomination of a new Presiding Clerk demonstrates the dysfunction in our Quaker process.

    We have many questions facing us. How can IMYM serve the needs of our members and Monthly Meetings? What level of volunteer and financial support are our Monthly Meetings willing and able to provide? Can we find Friends with the energy, imagination, and prophetic sensibility to help discern a way forward? Does IMYM need to revitalize its original mission or find a new vision and mission? Can we find ways to articulate and communicate the Quaker Way in language that resonates with a broader range of people?

    As we seek ways to address these and perhaps other questions, how do we do it? Which questions do we address, what tools and resources do we have, or can we find to help answer the questions? For example, some of the tools from formal “Strategic” planning and Project Management may be helpful to us.  Are there Friends within IMYM with experience and expertise in this type of work? Have others either inside IMYM or the broader world of Friends already worked on these questions and thereby be resources for us?

    To create a roadmap for planning, the Representatives Committee approved minute:  

    2022.10.28-1 Intermountain Yearly Meeting (IMYM) will create a Visioning Working Group to develop a process to discern a way forward for envisioning the purpose and mission of IMYM and the structure that will support these.  The clerk will appoint this group and facilitate its work. The working group will report to the Representatives committee in February 2023.

    I need your help to begin this work. Please contact me if you have passion and energy for discernment around moving IMYM forward. 

    In summary, how can we “Become the Quakers the World Needs Today?”

    Seeking the Light,
    Jerry

    Job Opportunity – IMYM Administrative Assistant IMYM is seeking a part-time administrative assistant.

    For more information and to apply:
    https://www.imym-old.org/job-opening-administrative-assitant-imym/

    PLEASE CIRCULATE THIS INTERNET LINK WIDELY IN MONTHLY MEETING ANNOUNCEMENTS AND PUBLICATIONS. ALSO, THE JOB DESCRIPTION CAN BE DOWNLOADED TO ADOBE.PDF FORMAT, PRINTED AND POSTED ON BULLETIN BOARDS.

    New IMYM Website

    Imym.org has been redesigned and updated. Prominent on the opening page is Recent News and Announcements. A goal of the “Recent News and Announcements” section is that if your meeting has unified around a peace and social justice minute, please send it and other news to annoucements@imym.org. Increasing communication among our monthly meetings is important!

    IMYM Mailing List and Internal Directory – Please Update Your Contact Information.

    IMYM is working to improve how we communicate with and serve the IMYM community.  As part of that effort, we are working to improve how we collect, manage, and use our mailing list information.

    Unfortunately, much of the contact information now in our mailing list is incomplete or outdated.  If now receive email messages and newsletters from IMYM, please click on the “update your preferences” link in the footer of the email message and take a minute to review and update your contact information.

    IMYM is committed to protecting your privacy. Our mailing information contains basic contact information to facilitate communication with individuals that have either participated in an IMYM related event or who signed up to be on our mailing list through the imym.org website.

    IMYM uses the mailing list primarily to send out newsletters and notices about events sponsored by IMYM and affiliated regional and monthly meetings.  As a Friends General Conference (FGC) affiliated Yearly Meeting, IMYM allows FGC very limited use of our mailing list.  IMYM does not sell or share our mailing list information for use by other outside organizations. See our privacy policy here for details.

    We are also creating an Internal Directory to support communication between Friends who serve on IMYM Committees or work on IMYM sponsored events and projects. This Internal Directory will not be shared with the general public but only with others included in the Directory. Online access to the Internal Directory will be password protected. By default, your information will not be included in the Internal Directory unless you opt into being included by checking a box when you update your mailing list contact information.

    Send questions about the IMYM mailing list, the Internal Directory, or our privacy policy to meeting@imym.org.

    Faith & Practice Committee Announcement

    A call to discernment for all in the IMYM Community who among us have the needed gifts as writers, experts, curious, and interested people: 

    The Faith & Practice Committee invites you to join a content working group to contribute to the revised Faith & Practice. We seek collaborators to research, share knowledge, interview, discern, edit, or write. We are currently forming working groups to explore our IMYM Community’s light on right relationships within our families and our shared planet.

    Whether you have interest in a whole chapter or specific parts of it, we look forward to hearing from you! (If you have already shared your interest, we will be in contact with you soon.) Contact us at faithandpractice@imym.org.

    Fall 2022 Queries from IMYM to our Monthly Meetings.

    The Representatives Committee approved the following queries. Please forward your meeting’s responses to me at clerk@imym.org on or before Sunday, January 15, 2023.

    Both monthly meetings and the yearly meeting are experiencing challenges, for example: aging members and too many volunteer roles. To be relevant and vital we need to be open to change. To provide a context for discerning the change needed, the theme for Intermountain Yearly Meeting for 2023 is “Becoming the Quakers the World Needs.”

    • What does Intermountain Yearly Meeting mean to you?
    • How should  we continue to support the action, service, and events of the Yearly Meeting?
    • In what ways can Friends in Intermountain Yearly Meeting come together in fellowship and sharing? 
    • Can we build energy and broaden our sense of community with mutual action, connection, and support?

    2022 Annual Gathering While many of us miss Ghost Ranch as a host site for Annual Gathering, overall, clearly, Fort Lewis College in Durango better meets our needs at this time. There were 175 participants in person including children, and 40 joined the online sessions.  To understand what happened at the Annual Gathering check out our well-crafted Epistle from IMYM to Friends everywhere available HERE. 

    Indian Boarding Schools Minute of Concern

    See the text of the minute HERE. 

    Nuclear Disarmament Minute of Concern

    See the text of the minute HERE.

    Coming Events

    • Arrangements Committee Martin Luther King holiday weekend January 13-16, 2023 will be hosted by Mountain View Friends Meeting, Denver, CO.  We are planning for this to be an in person meeting be hosted by Mountain View Friends Meeting.
    • Representatives Meeting is planned to be online on Presidents’ Day holiday weekend February 18 & 19, 2023.