Recording Minutes Can Be Joyful

Workshop # 33
Judy Purvis

Using discussion and hands-on practice, we will explore being a recording clerk, asking questions such as what to record, how to articulate the sense of the meeting, and how to interact effectively with the presiding clerk.

Percentage of time:
Worship/worship-sharing 20; Lecture 10; Discussion 35; Experiential 35

Open to all

My bias is that the role of the recording clerk is more than just recording minutes.  It should be a cooperative effort with the presiding clerk to articulate a growing sense of the Meeting and to labor gently with the Meeting until that sense of the Meeting is clear enough to put into words.  Finding the right words to capture that sense can be a gift to the Meeting because it helps the Meeting to name what it is doing.  At the same time, recording minutes raises some specific issues, such as what to record (and what not to record), how and when minutes should be read back in the face of the Meeting and approved, useful (“Quakerly”) wording for various common decisions, and ways to handle an impasse or to craft a particularly thorny minute.  Finally, being an effective recording clerk involves letting go of the need to have the Meeting agree with your wording—that is, seeing yourself as the servant of the Meeting as they articulate their sense of how they are led.

During the week, we will be talking about recording and we will be practicing recording.  We will begin in worship, continue in a worshipful space, and close in worship.  Each day, several volunteers will take minutes and read their minutes back to the group.  Looking at the differences in what people recorded and how they worded their minutes will help us talk in more depth about recording and help each of us further develop our own unique approach to recording minutes.