- PYM 2013 Plenary V (Download PDF file)
PLENARY V
Plenary V opened with worship at 1:45.
Epistle Reading
Monteverde Monthly Meeting. The meeting is exploring the balance between practical concerns and their spiritual lives. They are a small meeting overseeing a bilingual K-12 Friends school, and are striving to balance their energy and financial challenges. While this legacy can be overwhelming, student contributions are also a blessing. The meeting also benefits from its elders and is enriched by new attenders. The Religious Education committee nurtures the connections among meeting members in multiple ways, notably with a second children’s meeting in Spanish. The meeting has touched the wider world of Quakers through members’ attendance at Friends World Committee for Consultation and the Quaker Youth Pilgrimage.
Pacific Friends Outreach Society – Gift offer: Liz Baker, clerk of PFOS, read the proposal (first read at RepCom) to create an endowment from the funds that remain after laying down PFOS. They propose that income from the endowment be used as determined by the Youth Program Coordinator Supervisory Committee but that it is not to be used for salary or wages. (The full contents of the original proposal and the history of PFOS are available in the 2013 RepCom minutes.) Due to legal requirements, the transfer of funds must be very specific and transparent.
Comments from the floor included some discomfort with the ambiguity of the long term use of the funds or what a successor committee might look like. If PYM accepts the gift, then it also internally arranges for its management. Liz Baker states that PFOS’s intention is that the yearly meeting would be able to change the nature of a successor committee. We need to be aware that the management of the endowment may cause some difficulty.
Many questions were raised from the floor and remain to be discerned. A Friend pointed out that no amount of planning will completely eliminate the possibility of conflict in the future. A Friend noted that naming the endowment after an individual seems not to be in good order nor in keeping with our traditions.
Minute PYM AS 2013-04: PYM accepts the gift from Pacific Friends Outreach Society under the conditions of the following section of Pacific Friends Outreach Society Board minute:
The Board minutes its decision to offer the assets of Pacific Friends Outreach Society, that remain after expenses are paid, to Pacific Yearly Meeting. The income from the fund is to be used as determined by the Pacific Yearly Meeting committee, Youth Program Coordinator Supervisory Committee (the YPCSC), or a successor committee, with the exception that it cannot be used for salary or wages.
Minute PYM AS 2013-05: Pacific Yearly Meeting expresses its gratitude for the long and faithful service of the members of the Pacific Friends Outreach Society to complete the charge given to them and appreciates their generous gift on behalf of the youth of Pacific Yearly Meeting.
Ministry was offered acknowledging the pain all sides experienced in the course of Pacific Friends Outreach Society’s existence and the possibility that the YM might draw lessons from its past decision making processes.
Minutes were held over to be acted on at the next plenary.
Closing Worship at 3:05