Outreach
New! Download my PDF booklet on outreach to use in your meeting here.
Generally speaking, I like to look at outreach from the perspective of the seeker. Defined that way, “outreach” includes everything from the moment a person first finds out that Quakers exist to the time when that person is a fully integrated and experienced member of a meeting. That also means that the work of outreach–or rather, some portion of the outreach journey–is the responsibility of every Friend.
I first talked about this approach in From Seeker to Quaker, and then I followed that with a series reflecting each of the six steps of the seeker. This includes Being Visible, Helping Seekers Find Us, The Path to Visiting, Will They Come Back?, A Sense of Belonging, and Nurtured and Nurturing.
If you’re interested in asking me to come and do a workshop on the six steps of the seeker, please write to me here. If you’d like to download a PDF version of the six steps, with added queries and exercises to work through with your meeting, I have that for you, too.
In addition, though I believe that the entire outreach journey is essential, there came a point when I realized that social media in particular–though far from being a cure-all–was something that many Friends shied away from. That’s when I began some in-depth work on outreach though Facebook, including two phases of active experiments in partnership with local meetings. You can read the detailed reports here.