College Park Quarterly Meeting (CPQM) is a quarterly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in northern California and northern Nevada (list).
News
The Quarter will be holding two online “Threshing Sessions” (also called “listening sessions”) on concerns that prevented our approving a new Presiding Clerk at Spring gathering. The threshing sessions will be on Monday, August 10, from 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm and Saturday, August 15, from 9:30 am to 12:00 noon.
There is no need to attend both meetings; you will have an opportunity to speak at only one meeting, for a maximum of three minutes.
The planned format for each 1½ to 2½ hour session is: Opening silence, Clerk’s introduction (including method for “raising your hand”), Teen clerk’s invitation, Clerk’s reading of queries, spoken contributions separated by intervals for listening, closing silence.
Queries on the issues being “threshed” and the Zoom link will be sent out before the first session.
We will also provide a form to submit written statements. A summary of those received by the evening of each meeting will be appended to the notes from that day’s meeting. Written statements are not usually part of threshing; in this case, they are like “afterthoughts” following the end of Worship in some Monthly Meetings.
No decisions will be made during the threshing sessions. Thom McCue, clerk of CPQM Ministry & Spiritual Care, will state the issues in the form of queries, and participants will follow essentially the same rules as in worship-sharing.
Notes, without participants’ names, will be sent out within a day or two of each session. These will inform discernment of the Quarter’s course of action at a called business meeting Saturday, August 22, 9:30 am to 11 am (could be extended to noon)
These resources on Friends’ practice of threshing sessions will be posted on the CPQM website:
· Pacific Yearly Meeting, Faith & Practice, page 136 or:
- https://www.pacificyearlymeeting.org/wordpress/faith-practice/
- https://www.fgcquaker.org/exercises/threshing/
- https://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/threshing-meeting-guidance-2011.pdf
- https://www.friendsjournal.org/2010090/
Questions should be directed to the Presiding Clerk CPQMclerk@gmail.com.
College Park Quarterly Meeting will meet next in person at Quaker Center October 16-18.
Useful forms:
- CPQM Tuition Assistance
- CPQM Teen Program Handbook
- Teen Program Packing List
- Minor Medical and Consent to Participate Form
We encourage all Friends to join us for the business of the quarterly meeting. The main purposes of the College Park Quarterly Meeting are to strengthen the life and fellowship of Monthly Meetings and other Friends groups in the northern portions of California and Nevada, to offer increased opportunities for worshiping together, and to consider spiritual and worldly matters of local or broader concern.
About Friends, Monthly/Quarterly/Yearly Meetings
Wikipedia has information about Quakerism. The following brief introduction is intended to simply explain College Park Quarterly Meeting’s context in the Society of Friends.
There are unprogrammed and programmed Friends meetings for worship. Unprogrammed Friends meetings gather in silence for worship, and programmed meetings usually have a pastor and have worship similar to Protestant services. Local meetings, which have weekly meetings for worship, are called monthly meetings because they hold a meeting for the purpose of business once a month. They are organized by geographic region into larger quarterly meetings, which are organized into yet-larger yearly meetings. CPQM is a gathering of unprogrammed monthly meetings in northern California and northern Nevada (list of meetings). It is a part of Pacific Yearly Meeting (PYM).
Another quarterly meeting in PYM is the Southern California Quarterly Meeting, which includes meetings and worship groups in southern California and southern Nevada. Pacific Yearly Meeting also includes meetings in Hawaii and Mexico that are not part of a quarterly meeting.
The yearly meetings for programmed meetings in this area are Evangelical Friends Church Southwest and Western Association of the Religious Society of Friends, which includes churches in Berkeley, Whittier, and Bakersfield, California.
CPQM Meetings and Worship Groups
Institutions
Quarterly Meetings also create institutions to serve the wider world of Friends and their communities. College Park Quarterly Meeting was involved in establishing:
- Sierra Friends Center, Nevada City, CA.
- Ben Lomond Quaker Center, Ben Lomond, CA.
- Friends House, Santa Rosa, CA.
Friends Publications
Links
Site questions or event postings? Contact the website maintainer.