Friends Center Director's Report
Fall 2003

Friends Center General Programming

With the close of the 2002-03 academic year in May, Friends Center activity turned quickly to planning for the upcoming year and putting the finishing touches on the Annual Fund campaign. A new campus religious life brochure was prepared, as was a brochure for the fall Quaker Renewal Program. Syllabi for three fall semester courses offered through Friends Center were prepared: Quaker Testimonies; Quakers, Community, and Commitment; and the QLSP senior seminar. Details were finalized for upcoming speakers and special events. The Friends Center site on the Guilford College web page was updated and expanded; it now contains upcoming speakers and programs, director's reports, newsletters, and brochures. It was a busy summer.

Friends Center staff continued to speak at Friends meetings and retirement communities, attended the annual conference of Friends Association for Higher Education, and attended the sessions of North Carolina Yearly Meeting - both Conservative and FUM. They were also involved in the orientation of Guilford College Resident Advisers and new students, faculty, and staff. Campus historical tours were given to a visiting group of Japanese students as well as to new employees of the college.

Tentative work is progressing on helping New Garden Friends Meeting develop a multi-age curriculum for Quaker studies and Bible. The Education Studies Department is assisting in the project. We are only in the very beginning stages of exploring this possibility.

A busy year of visitors and special programs will include the following:

August 22		Annual Friends Meetings progressive dinner for Guilford students.
Sept. 4-9		Visit of released Friend John Calvi (in cooperation with the Initiative on Faith and Practice).
Sept. 21		Visit by Kenyan Friend Malesi Kinaro.
Sept. 27-30		Visit by author Irene Lape.
October (tent.)		Visit by "peripatetic communitarian" Geoff Kozeny.
November (tent.)		Visit Ramallah Friend Jean Zaru.
January 14-16		JM Ward Visitors Ben Pink Dandelion and Janet Melnyk.
January 25-27		Luby Casey Visitors Michael Heller and Michael Birkel.
January 28		Visit by eminent Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
February 21-29		Visit by psychotherapist and Pendle Hill staff Dan Snyder '72.
March 15-16		Judith Weller Harvey Scholar James Childress '63.
April 18-24		Annual Quaker Festival Week.

In upcoming months Deborah will continue her studies with School of the Spirit, clerk the ministry & counsel committee of Friendship Friends Meeting, serve on ministry & counsel of NCYM (Conservative), lead a retreat for Tallahassee Friends, and offer a session on Spiritual Eldering to the Traveling Ministries Program of Friends General Conference. Max will be an invited participant in the national conference on simplicity in Seattle, lead an Inquirer's Weekend at Pendle Hill with Liz Baltaro '03, teach a course on Quaker spirituality at the Wake Forest Divinity School, and be the Bible leader for YouthQuake '03 in Colorado. The October issue of Quaker Life will carry an article by Max, Liz, and sociology professor Kathryn Schmidt on the Guilford County Quaker survey done by Guilford students this past spring.

Attention given by the college and Friends Center to recruiting students from the Ramallah Friends Schools resulted this year in four new students arriving, bringing the total of current Guilford students from Ramallah to nine.

Campus Ministry

Campus Ministry grabbed a table under the new students welcome tent during orientation this year and handed out the new religious life brochure and offered other information on places of worship, opportunities for spiritual growth, and a collection of Quaker quotes related to the college's "five normative Quaker testimonies."

College Meeting for Worship began a full semester of Sunday worship opportunities on August 17. Speakers will include faculty, staff, students, and visitors. Morning and midweek meeting for worship in the Hut are also under way again.

Deborah and Max will facilitate the Fireside Group, a small group for students interested in being more intentional about integrating spirituality into their college life. Max will lead a Seekers Session on introductory Quakerism, and Deborah - through the Initiative - will offer a Taize group.

GCRO will be clerked by sophomore Ben Taylor, who will also edit the Caw. GCRO will continue to oversee the College Meeting for Worship, assisted by the new Committee for the Care of Worship. The Muslim Students Association enters the year as a full-fledged campus organization, and the Unitarian-Universalist students will try to get going again. Fr. John Frambes, the Catholic campus minister, will offer Mass each Sunday evening in Founders Hall.

Fall break work trips being planned include another week with Friends Disaster Service and volunteer service at two organic farms: Goat Lady Dairy and Tompkins' Farm. Planning has resumed on trips to Bolivia and Israel/Palestine for next summer.

Religious Emphasis Week this year will be January 25-31, 2004. Luby Casey Campus Ministry Visitors Michael Birkel (Earlham College) and Michael Heller (Roanoke College) will give presentations on their research and writing about the life of John Woolman. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, one of the world's foremost Islamic scholars, will also speak during the week.

Adult Programming

Two series will be on offer through the Quaker Renewal Program this fall. "Reasons for Hope: The Faith and Future of the Friends Church" will be a seven-week study of John Punshon's important book by the same title. Commencing on September 16 at the new NCYM (FUM) yearly meeting office at 4811 Hilltop Rd. in Greensboro, the book study will be led by Friends pastoral ministers Jack Kirk, Kathy Coe, Randy Quate, and Hugh Spaulding; author Irene Lape; ESR professor Stephen Angell; and Max Carter.

The second series is "Listening More Deeply to God's Word: Praying Scripture," led by Sara Beth Terrell. This six-week series will be held beginning September 25 at High Point Friends Meeting.

Two committees of NCYM (FUM), Christian Vocations and Continuing Education for Pastors, have contributed $1,250 to the book study and are co-sponsoring the series. Brochures have been mailed to Friends meetings, pastors, clerks, and individuals, and notices have been sent to meeting and yearly meeting newsletters. Early numbers of registrations have been encouraging.

The winter QRP series will be two weekend workshops on the spiritual basis of peacemaking, led by Dan Snyder. The first, on February 21, will focus on prayer and peacemaking. The second, on February 28, will focus on forgiveness and reconciliation. Both will be held at Deep River Friends Meeting in collaboration with the meeting's 250th anniversary.

Preliminary plans are being made for the spring QRP series, tentatively entitled "Ethics and the Religious Life."

A second section of Max's Rel. 110 "Introduction to Quakerism" course in the spring semester will be offered as a CCE Fast Track night course, with the hope that it might attract enrollment from people in the wider community interested in exploring Friends faith and practice.

Funding

With the help of our Fifth Month "last gasp letter," posting of payroll deduction gifts, some donors' second gifts, and quarterly contributions from meeting budgets, the final total of $40,555 for the Annual Fund came respectably closer to the goal of $45,000 than appeared possible last spring. The decision not to do a phonathon might have been the reason for some of the shortfall, but the good will kept through not harassing people at dinner is well worth it.

At the invitation of Greensboro Monthly Meeting, a letter was sent to the meeting's White Fund requesting assistance for the Quaker Leadership Scholars Program. We are hopeful that the Fund might be able to make a contribution in the range of $15,000 to $20,000. Requests will also be made to the Taylor and Shoemaker Funds in Philadelphia. Leslie Daisy of the Institutional Advancement Office has been indispensable in this process.

Friends Center is pursuing the possibility of publishing a book as a fund-raiser, similar to the use of Minutiae of the Meeting in 1999. The book, College Spirit: Reflections on 25 Years of Campus Ministry, is a collection of essays Max has written while in campus ministry at Earlham and Guilford. BJ Weatherby of Friendly Desktop Publishing is editing the manuscript. Estimates of publishing costs are around $7,000.

Consideration is being given to the possibility of a Friends Center capital campaign. The idea will be discussed at the fall Friends Center steering committee meeting.

Hut Expansion and Other Possibilities

Phil Manz, Guilford's CFO; Jonathan Varnell, the director of Guilford's physical plant; Ann Hurd of Institutional Advancement; and Max Carter met on August 20 to discuss the possibility of expanding the Hut, should a Friends Center capital campaign be approved. Rough sketches of what such an expansion might look like were presented. The proposal would call for roughly a doubling in the size of the Hut to better serve Friends Center's and campus ministry's expanding programs. Needs include more meeting space and dedicated interfaith worship space, such as a room for Muslims to pray, Buddhists to meditate, and Vaishnavas to chant.

Other possibilities came up during the conversation, including a purpose-built structure for Friends Center, the new high school for New Garden Friends School, and offices of North Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM). The co-heads of NGFS have encouraged such consideration, as have the clerk and superintendent of NCYM (FUM). Ann and Max were asked to meet to discuss the impact of fund-raising for such projects on current college priorities.

Quaker Recruitment

Academic Dean Adrienne Israel has been submitting announcements of Guilford faculty positions to Quaker Life and Friends Journal. This year at least three new faculty and staff are Friends (in art, international student advising, and gender issues). Guilford also runs monthly ads in QL and FJ to keep the college's name in front of the Quaker community.

Friends students are nearly ten percent of the entering traditional aged students this year. A little over a third of those Quaker students are joining QLSP. At least five new students from NCYM (FUM) are coming. Recruitment focused on increasing the number of students from programmed meetings.

It might be of interest to note that over the twelve years of the existence of QLSP, some 150 students have entered the program. One-third of those have come from North Carolina. A little more than half of the NC QLSPers have been from programmed meetings. Of the Quakers from NC in the student body, about half are not in QLSP. Of further significance: in the past 12 years, some 13 QLSPers have gone on to pastoral, youth, and farm worker ministry, along with other religious vocations. Current Guilford Quaker students are serving in an associate capacity at Poplar Ridge and Battle Forest meetings and providing messages regularly for Spring. The youth programs of First Friends and New Garden depend largely on current and recent Guilford students. Four recent QLSP graduates are now in seminary, with two others having just graduated. QLSP alumni are serving Dublin and West River Friends in Indiana YM, New Vienna Friends in Wilmington YM, and the Richmond, IN combined youth groups.