Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends (SCYMF) is a relatively new addition to the yearly meetings of Friends in the West. Many SCYMF Friends have been involved with other Western yearly meetings, formally and informally, for years, including involvement in “Convergent Friends” – a fellowship which has met occasionally for more than a decade, bringing together members of liberal “Friends Meetings” and Christian “Friends Churches.” Some of us have also participated for many years in the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women’s Theology Conferences, another opportunity for Friends from different branches to share ideas, worship, and fellowship. So, SCYMF is new, but not new.
This past October, I gave a short presentation about SCYMF’s history to an online gathering of Friends from the three yearly meetings that sponsor Western Friend (Intermountain, North Pacific, and Pacific Yearly Meetings). Western Friend’s editor and I then thought that some of you readers might appreciate learning about the history of SCYMF.
For the most part, SCYMF formed from a remnant of Northwest Yearly Meeting (NWYM), which was founded in 1926 as Oregon Yearly Meeting. NWYM now comprises forty Evangelical Friends churches in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. In January 2017, at NWYM’s midyear meeting, leaders announced that all NWYM churches that did not comply with NWYM’s Faith and Practice – specifically around “human sexuality,” as they put it – would be spun off to start a new yearly meeting. Attendees at this midyear meeting had not been told about this decision by yearly meeting leaders until this announcement was made. However, the yearly meeting and its member churches had been in discernment for years about the standing of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other Friends within NWYM, and many very difficult conversations had occurred in that time.
Members of the LGBTQ+ affirming churches that were to be “spun off” experienced this news with mixed feelings – from joy to relief to anger and pain – and many felt traumatized. Those of us who were told to leave met together for months, worshipping, processing, planning, and getting legal matters in order. We took great care to be inclusive in every way as we proceeded. During this time, a few Friends from California reached out to explore the possibility of joining with us. And although these California Friends have not joined our yearly meeting, the name we settled on for ourselves reflects their involvement: Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends.
We held our inaugural annual session in May 2018. It was a joyous occasion, where we finalized our practices for membership and for recording of ministers. We wanted membership to be inclusive, to allow people who felt excluded by the breakup with NWYM to find a home with SCYMF.
Even so, we continue to grapple with the meaning of “membership,” as I imagine Friends in other yearly meetings do, too. What does it mean to be a member? Why is it important? Do we need memberships? How do we nurture members in this age of long-distance worship?
Our SCYMF bylaws say this about membership: “We welcome to membership local meetings and individuals who desire to participate with Sierra-Cascades in worship, ministry, and service as we seek to experience and follow Christ in the manner of Friends. Friends of any age are welcome to request membership.” You can read SCYMF’s complete set of bylaws here: https://tinyurl.com/SCYMF-Bylaws
Contained in these bylaws is a process for individuals to become members of SCYMF directly. This is for individuals who identify with SCYMF’s values, but are not members of local meetings or churches within SCYMF. The application asks the individual to affirm that they wish to lovingly participate in our SCYMF community, which seeks to follow Jesus in the Quaker way, and that they are satisfied with their own discernment to join SCYMF.
SCYMF includes seven member churches, all located in Oregon and Washington. We also include forty-three individual members. Our largest member church has 120 active members and the smallest has twelve. Altogether, SCYMF has about 360-400 members. We have no centralized system for recording members, attendance, committees, or officers within our member meetings. Nor do we have records of age, gender, ethnicity – any demographics, really – of our membership, which is tracked locally.
When Sierra-Cascades was formed, all of our meetings had pastors, but today, only three have paid pastors. SCYMF has twenty-one recorded ministers, who use their gifts to minister in a variety of settings, ways, and circumstances. You can read more about that here: https://www.scymfriends.org/recorded-ministers
During the Western Friend online event in October, we considered two queries. The first asked us to identify signs of excitement and Life in our Quaker meetings today. Looking at SCYMF, I see Life and Spirit evident among Sierra-Cascades Friends as we emerge from the difficult past two years. The pandemic has been almost half of our existence, and it really has had an impact. We felt a lot of joy when we gathered together in person – for the first time in two years – at our annual session in June of this year. Some attended virtually, but many attended physically. There was a lot of Life there.
I also hear Life coming about as a result of hard times that Friends have gone through together – trial by fire. I have talked with many SCYMF Friends whose local meetings have experienced significant loss and change, including loss of the pastoral leadership that they were accustomed to. When Friends have done the hard work, stuck together, taken on responsibilities, and rallied together, they have found joy and comfort in the relationships that have been strengthened in the process. They have felt their community strengthened as they honed in on the question, “What is the work that is ours to do?”
The second query in the online event concerned ways that our communities, structures, and practices are supporting the movement of the Spirit among us, or how they are not. This query led me to consider all the time we spent during the formation of SCYMF talking about structure. At first, our conversations were more about what we knew we didn’t want to have, and what we didn’t want to do. So, our resulting structure is small and loose, focused on the ways we want to be in relationship with each other. As a result, we now have individuals, small groups, and meetings who are guided by leadings to do certain things – or several things. The Life in SCYMF revolves around those issues and leadings. I see us continuing to create more and more ad hoc committees for particular purposes. Of course, we also have a few standing committees, but even those, we are questioning – in this, our sixth year. It’s really an exciting time. ~~~
Norma Silliman became co-clerk of Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends in June 2022. She is a member of Camas Friends Church in Camas, WA, where she is clerk of the Earth Care Committee. She is part of the Portland FCNL Advocacy Team. She lives in Portland, OR, where she enjoys the urban native garden she has created.