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Friends United Meeting commits itself to energize and equip Friends through the power of the Holy Spirit to gather people into fellowships where Jesus Christ is known, loved and obeyed as Teacher and Lord.
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Resources for Newcomers
You are always welcome among Friends! Here is a good place to get started: How to Find a local Friends Meeting for Worship. Resources from Friends United Meeting. An easy way to order some of our pamphlets and a sample copy of Quaker Life magazine. Are you a Quaker? This is just for fun . . . Take the Belief-O-Matic quiz! A separate window will pop open; part of the Belief.net website. We don't endorse it, or assess its accuracy, but we think you'll find the quiz fun and interesting. Download Personal Information Form and/or Application for Employment form. |
Weekly Devotional and Prayer
A meditation: "I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ. . . . Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine." 2 Timothy 4: 1-2 It was a small thing, really, just a week long seminar for high school teachers, a largely self-selected group who saw their mission as corralling the best and brightest students and challenging them with a rigorous curriculum that essentially taught them to think in a box. A good box, a nice box, but a box none-the-less. Their content ruled supreme, and their specific paradigm of facts — be it economics or Spanish, statistics or English literature, was sacrosanct. Don't get me wrong I require high caliber work and push, prod and cajole excellence but what I teach is kids. I'm crazy about my subject — history and anthropology and geography and sociology — but it's secondary to students. So while we were all committed to rigor, those teachers clearly looked at teaching differently than I do. When a vast majority of students miss a question on a test, I often throw it out, reasoning that I must not have taught that material well enough. When I shared that practice, another teacher at the workshop told me she upbraided the students for not studying hard enough. Throughout the week, I was decidedly uncomfortable, but having had this discussion hundreds of times and I decided to avoid it. I was reminded a moment of absolute clarity as a beginning teacher — that if I wanted to be a teacher, I needed to stay out of the faculty room. It is a maximum that has served me well and finding myself in a week long faculty room, I was silent. But look what happened: On Friday, I was talking to a new teacher who is beginning a job in the same county where I teach. I offered him a hand-or an ear — with his course, with class management, with first year survival skills, but needed to tell him that my philosophy was fundamentally different. Much to my surprise he absolutely agreed. How many others had I had sat next to all firm in their thinking, all in agreement, all silent. If I had spoken up and challenged some assumptions I might not have spent the week in grumpy solitude. My task is to share what I know. Simple as that. Sharing my experience, saying what I need to say lovingly, while still listening, is part of what God asks of me. God asks me this in all the corners of my life. Not to do so is a lack of trust-in my fellow travelers, in myself, in God. I confess I feel a little silly now. — cdw Weekly devotional and prayer requests Subscribe to receive this free weekly devotional in your email: |
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