Check out the LEYM Book of Advices and Queries

Annual Queries

Each year LEYM’s Ministry and Nurture Committee prepares a set of queries and readings for the consideration of meetings. The Ministry and Nurture Committee invites each meeting to consider the queries and to develop a written response that describes the insights arrived at during its consideration. Meetings are requested to send this to the clerk of the Ministry and Nurture Committee. The Ministry and Nurture Committee reviews meetings’ responses during committee time at Representative Meeting in the spring. If your Monthly Meeting has prepared a response to the query, please send it to the Ministry and Nurture Committee by March 1, via Flo Friender at flo@dougandflo.com

2024-2025 Query

How do I actively get to know my neighbors?

How do we as a Meeting seek opportunities to understand communities unlike ourselves?

Please send Meeting responses to Flo Friender at flo@dougandflo.com by March 1, 2025 at the latest.

2023 Query

2022 Query

• In what ways has our Meeting been affected by the turmoil of the world around us?
• How might I use my own gifts from Spirit in responding to these new realities?

Additional Suggested Quotes and Readings for 2022 (View as PDF)

From British Yearly Meeting, Faith and Practice (1995), 26.69

There is no easy optimism in the Quaker view of life. (George) Fox had no illusions about sin; but he asks us deal with it in a new way. . . We are to use the little we have to make it more. We are to attend the small Seed and to help it grow.”   Edgar B. Castle, 1961.

“Give over thine own willing, give over thy own running, give over thy desiring to know or be anything, and sink down to the seed which God sows in thee . . . .”   Isaac Pennington

Bible Passages:

• John 14:1 – “Do not let your heart be troubled. Trust in God, trust in me.”
• John 14:27 – “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
• John 16:33 – “I have told you these things, as that, in me, you may have peace. In this world, you will have troubles. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

From Faith and Practice, advices and queries 28, The book of Christian discipline of the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain:

Responding to divine guidance, try to discern the right time to undertake or relinquish responsibilities without undue pride or guilt. Attend to what love requires of you, which may not be great busyness.

Friends may also want to share Chapter 23 of Britain Faith & Practice for meetings /members to explore and ponder. See https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/chapter/23/

Finally, the book “A Call to Friends: Faithful Living in Desperate Times” by Marty Grundy is suggested to Friends and Meetings that wish to ‘go deeper’ on this topic. See short review in Friends Journal here: https://www.friendsjournal.org/book/a-call-to-friends-faithful-living-in-desperate-times/

2021 Query

The 2021 LEYM Query comes from a careful reading of last year’s State of the Meeting reports along with attentive listening to the interests and concerns of Friends in various gatherings within LEYM. There is a hunger for more connection to Spirit, to know one another on a deeper level, and to put faith into action.

Ministry and Nurture looks forward to receiving a report on your Worship Sharing or discussion on these two simple questions which are designed to respond first as an individual and second as a collective meeting.

• 2021 LEYM Query:
  
  • In what ways do I experience a sense of spirit in my life?
  • What is the role of the meeting in nourishing depth of spirit among us?

Quotes to supplement the LEYM 2021 Query

“If you belong to the population of the Kingdom of God, you are a practitioner because you are producing understanding and love in your daily life. That makes the Kingdom of God continue to be the Kingdom of God. If the population of the Kingdom does not practice understanding and love, they lose the Kingdom in two seconds because the essence of the Kingdom is understanding and love.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh 31 December 2005, Lower Hamlet, Plum Village

“Do we live our lives in the awareness of the presence of God so that all things take their rightful place?”

— Pacific Yearly Meeting Quaker Faith and Spiritual Practice First query in the section on Simplicity

“We have seen that, in its early years, the Quaker movement was a utopian community that vigorously challenged the dominant norms and values of English society. A glimpse of heaven transformed their lives, and brought them into the vanguard of the Lamb’s War. They found themselves caught up in a spiritual struggle to establish heaven on earth.”

— Stuart Masters   From the article: The First Quaker Communities Friends Journal 06-07/2021

2020 Query

We didn’t write our own query this year. Instead we are asking that Friends use the queries that are included in the epistle that the Friends of Color of Friends General Conference sent out at the end of their pre-Gathering meeting this summer. The epistle may be found on the FGC website.
Near the end of the epistle are six queries that the FGC Friends of Color ask all Quakers to consider. Ministry and Nurture is asking that meetings and worship groups read the epistle before meeting to discuss the queries. You can approach the queries as you wish. Some may choose to concentrate on one or two of the questions; others may choose to discuss all of them.

See our Previous Annual Queries

LEYM Book of Advices & Queries

A set of advices and queries drawn up by an ad hoc committee was approved by the yearly meeting in session in July of 2012. It contains a total of 66 queries organized into 16 sections. It also has  information on the history and current uses of advices and queries, an overview of the process by which this set was arrived at, and considerations for revising the set in the future.

LEYM Book of Advices & Queries (pdf)

Friends may also want to share Chapter 23 of Britain Faith & Practice for meetings or members to explore and ponder. See https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/chapter/23/
Finally, the book “A Call to Friends: Faithful Living in Desperate Times” by Marty Grundy is suggested to Friends and Meetings that wish to ‘go deeper’ on this topic. See short review in Friends Journal here: https://www.friendsjournal.org/book/a-call-to-friends-faithful-living-in-desperate-times/