The work of Redland Meeting can be divided into four categories:
Find out more below:
Areas of responsibility are worship and fellowship in the meeting.
We have around ten Elders, who are responsible for looking after the Meeting for Worship on a Sunday. At each meeting one or more Elders will sit at the centre, welcome people to the meeting, and make themselves available for queries, concerns and discussion. Elders can provide advice on how to become more involved in the life of the Meeting, and about how to become a member of the Society of Friends.
Elders are also responsible for pastoral care in the meeting. We have several Sharing Circles, with an Elder in each, to enable us to get to know and support one another. The sharing circles meet from time to time, often with a shared meal or an outing, and also take it in turns to look after Meeting for Worship by greeting people, bringing flowers, and making teas and coffees.We keep track of who’s in which sharing circle, and publish the current membership of the circles every few months.
The Children & Young People’s committee looks after the regular Sunday morning groups for children during meeting for worship, and organises other activities.
We also have Funeral Advisers and the Memorial Book Group. The Funeral Advisers look after our funerals and memorial meetings, and can advise on planning arrangements and expressing funeral wishes. The memorial book is a record of the life and work of departed members of the meeting, and can be found in the library.
We support the work of chaplaincies in the University and local prisons, and work with other churches on multi-faith issues.
Learning aims to help people to discover and explore what being a Quaker is all about, and Action is about living in a Quaker way, working to make the world a better place.
We organise various learning activities, including study courses and groups, and Meetings for Learning on a Sunday morning. We also provide information about courses run by Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham, and we maintain a library of books on free loan.
We work to bring Quaker action into the wider world. We provide information and encourage participation in the local, national and international work of Quaker Peace and Social Action. We support many local charities (such as those working with refugees and asylum seekers in Bristol) by appealing for donations each Sunday, and encourage help in other ways such as voluntary work. We promote a Quaker presence in, for example, peace movements and rallies in support of local refugees, and at appropriate peaceful demonstrations and protests.
We provide information about Quakers and encourage people to meet us through notices and information inside and outside our Meeting House, and encouraging anyone interested to find out more through our website, freely-available leaflets and personal contact.
The main responsibilities are to do with organising ourselves, making information about Redland available and keeping it up to date, organising our local business meetings and looking after our finances.
The Clerk and Assistant Clerk are a central part of our administration. They organise and conduct our local meetings for business, write the minutes, and follow up agreed actions. Our treasurer looks after financial matters.
We have a group of Friends – known as the Nominations Group – who make sure that all the jobs we need to do in Redland Meeting have someone to do them, usually asking a Friend to undertake a role for three years at a time.
We help to maintain a basic database of members and attenders at Redland. We use the database to send out annual invitations to Friends to contribute financially to the work of our local meeting, Bristol Area Meeting, and Britain Yearly Meeting.
We are responsible for maintaining and developing the Redland Local Meeting website, though content for the site comes from all quarters. We produce a monthly Newsletter.
Areas of responsibility are to do with the way we look after the financial and physical resources of the meeting. This includes budgeting, ensuring proper use of our financial resources, and encouraging our members and attenders to support Quaker work with donations or regular giving.
We take responsibility for the stewardship of our Meeting House. This can mean ensuring repairs and maintenance are carried out and improvements made. We ensure that our building is used to benefit the local community, with rooms let out for other groups to use. We like to ensure that the way we look after, use and treat the building reflects our Quaker testimonies to sustainability, equality and diversity.
