Nurture of Ministry Committee: 
On the fragile, new, and beautiful experiment of Sierra-Cascades

Over the last few months what shows up in our hearts when we meet is our overall concern for the health of our yearly meeting. Even in what appears to be our main work, of holding the process of recording ministers, we have had important, honest, and challenging conversations about the current culture of SCYMF. 

In our meetings, we sit in silence together, waiting for God to speak through us, as we observe and wonder what creating the conditions for SCYMF’s thriving should look like for us in this season.

As each of our committee members hold SCYMF in the Light, we continue to see a community struggling to connect, to trust one another, to speak and be heard in the Spirit of Love. These struggles appear to be in front of us, as a committee, each time we meet.

The struggle is that as a community, SCYMF meets in person only three times a year. We continue to wonder if our present struggles are a result of a lack of connection. When we gather together our time is brief, and there are big and important things to work on. We jump into this hard work having not been gathered for several months, unaware of the circumstances of one another’s lives.

The privilege of being involved in a Meeting that gathers regularly is that community members can speak in Love and Light to one another, even if those messages are challenging. We can speak and receive Truth knowing that our community knows and loves us, making conflict easier to navigate, as we acknowledge the Light in one another.

Nurture of Ministry continues to ask what allowing God to join us together as a beloved community means for SCYMF. How would our Meetings for Business feel different? How would our work on committees feel more inspiring and hopeful?

And, of course, Nurture of Ministry continues to hold the reality that several of our individual Meetings are navigating challenging times. We hold these situations in prayer. As we reach out to these Meetings, Nurture of Ministry continually asks how we might be of service to them. Each of us know that it is a uniquely difficult time to be a faith community, as we continue to adjust our expectations to a shifting culture.

We also hold our Friends doing ministry outside of the familiar Meetinghouse walls. These ministers help create the unique culture of SCYMF. We want to continue nurturing their ministries, supporting and encouraging them as they do profound work in the world.

In the coming months Nurture of Ministry will continually examine the recording process, and look at the ways it can more accurately represent what our hopes are for recording the ministers among us. We will also continue to check in with Meetings, asking what their needs are, and how we might support them. We will continue to hold the health of the entire ministry of SCYMF in God’s loving Light, and we hope to continually wonder, alongside all of you, how we might tend to the fragile, new, and beautiful experiment of SCYMF.

With love,
Faith Marsalli, co-clerk
Leann Williams, co-clerk
Anna Baker
Johan Maurer
Mark Pratt-Russum