Are you hiding your Light under a bushel? 

by Jeffrey Aaron
NYYM Nominating Comittee

Once a year, Friends from throughout our yearly meeting gather for a week of joy-filled work together for Summer Sessions, but the work of the committees and our representatives to other groups such as Friends Committee on National Legislation, Powell House and other bodies proceeds year round. The Yearly Meeting also provides valuable resources to local and regional meetings and strengthens our voice in the world. But this requires the work of many Friends, and right now, the Nominating Committee is small, and cannot know about the gifts, concerns and leadings of most individuals in the Yearly Meeting. We hope that many feel led to spend time and energy to move some of these concerns forward. What skills do you have that can keep our beloved yearly meeting alive and vital? Might you be open to exploring your talents, perhaps to discovering a gift you have left untapped?

We can use help in many areas: Ministry (including such committees as Conflict Transformation, Ministry and Pastoral Care, Worship at Yearly Meeting Sessions and the Task Group on Racism), General Services (Nominating, Communications, Financial Services, Personnel, Sessions, Development), Nurture (Aging Concerns, Junior Yearly Meeting, Oakwood Friends School, Powell House, Youth, Young Adult Concerns), and Witness (Alternatives to Violence Project, Black Concerns, Conscientious Objection to Paying for War, Earthcare Witness, Indian Affairs, Prisons, Right Sharing of World Resources, National Religious Campaign against Torture). The Committee members of the committee are listed in the Yearbook, and the Yearly Meeting office staff can help as well with contact information ([email protected], 212-673- 5750). For a full list of the many committees, most not listed here, check your New York Yearly Meeting Yearbook. A current copy of the Yearbook should be available at every local meeting house and others can be obtained from the Yearly Meeting office and the information is also on the YM website.

Fortunately, today, conference call meetings and videoconferencing often allow us to do our work with little or no travel, and committees are finding other new ways to do our work more readily. Where travel is necessary, YM funds are often available.

Service on a committee is a learning experience, about Quaker process, about the focus and concerns of the committees, and about ourselves. Many active Friends, including the author of this article, will testify gratefully to the personal growth and satisfaction that they experience serving the good works of our beloved Yearly Meeting. If you sense that you have a leading to offer to the Yearly Meeting, consider making a contact with someone on the Nominating Committee. We will be happy to talk to you about committee service and we can help you discern the best match for your gifts. It is likely to give you a sense of pride that you are sustaining the viability of this historic beloved community that we call our own New York Yearly Meeting.

Jeffrey Aaron, NYYM Nominating Committee

Other Nominating Committee members:

Elaine Learnard

Deb Wood

Deb Dickinson