Priorities Support Working Group

As of October 12, 2017, the Leadings and Priorities Working Group is renamed. It is now the Priorities Support Working Group.

Quicklinks

Statement of Leadings and Priorities

Priorities Working Group brought their sense of local Friends' priorities distilled from their extensive visitation and 26 recommendations (leadings) for implementing these priorities in a preliminary report to Spring Sessions 2014 as a Statement of Leadings and Priorities. The Yearly Meeting body considered these leadings and priorities at Summer Sessions 2014 and approved a revised version of the Priorities section in a called meeting during those sessions.

Background of the Priorities Working Group

The Priorities Working Group was established at Spring Sessions 2011. By minute 2011-01-35, the Group was charged with responsibility in five areas:

  1. To gather the sense of the monthly and regional meetings and of individual Friends as to how the Spirit is at work among us and where it is leading us as a society of Friends in the immediate future;
  2. To distill those insights and discern from them a proposed Statement of Leadings and Priorities that is both prophetic and workable;
  3. To reflect those insights and priorities back to our constituent regions to ensure that the Working Group has discerned accurately;
  4. To report its findings to the Yearly Meeting Body and to lead the process for considering and approving the Statement of Leadings and Priorities; and
  5. To design a process to assess the implementation of these priorities

The Yearly Meeting agreed that “the product of this discernment process, presented as a Statement of Leadings and Priorities, will become—upon approval—the priorities of New York Yearly Meeting as a community for the ensuing four to six years,” and that the Statement “will be utilized in preparing budgets, staff work plans, and other services and initiatives of the Yearly Meeting and its committees and constituent parts.” (Minute 2011-4-33.)

In fulfilling this charge, the Working Group has met with 78 monthly, regional and quarterly meetings and worship groups and followed up each visit with a written report confirming the meeting’s or group’s insights and concerns. The Priorities Working Group then further reflected back to all the Quarterly, Regional and Half-Yearly Meetings our understanding of the messages we had heard in visiting virtually all of our worshiping communities.

Reports of the Priorities Working Group to New York Yearly Meeting

Comments recorded by PWG during local meeting visitations

The Priorities Working Group has met with 78 local meetings, regional meetings, and worship groups. The links below open the reports for which PWG has received the meeting's permission to publish the notes that the visitors took when they met with the meeting.

Resources

Report: Progress on Priorities, September 2017 09/27/2017
Report: Leadings and Priorities Working Group, 2016-06 07/25/2016
Report of the Priorities Working Group, Summer Sessions 2013 07/22/2013
Report: Priorities Working Group, Fall Sessions 2012 11/10/2012