Creating Community, Creating Connections

Our day workshop in the autumn was on the theme of 'Creating Community, Creating Connections'. This was led by Lizz Roe, senior tutor at Woodbrooke, which is the Quaker College in Selly Oak, Birmingham. She led us through a stimulating variety of tasks in different groupings, through which we shared views and visions of what makes a Quaker community and how it should relate to its local and wider environment. Lizz also gave us her criteria of what makes for a Quaker community:

*  sharing a spiritual practice and about our spiritual lives;

*  working meaningfully together;

*  learning with each other;

*  celebrating;

*  giving and receiving appropriate friendship.

Such a community needs to be underpinned by:

*  agreed ways of making decisions;

*  agreed way of handling conflict;

*  shared leadership, authority and responsibility;

*  explicit and shared values and visions

*  shared commitment to regular review and exploration.

We explored some of these themes in depth and identified some possible actions for the future.

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