Coming Up: "Why I Became A Quaker"

Recently I attended a Quaker Outreach conference, which was as much fun as you'd expect - or possibly more... ;)

It's always interesting to be in a room with eighty or so other Friends - the nice thing is that they feel like friends as well as Friends - and it was great to get a lot of input about the best ways to Reach Out. We would like to do more reaching out, frankly, so I was frantically taking notes. You'll be glad to know that I'm not going to summarise an entire weekend in this blog post, but one of the themes that came through most strongly was the need for us all to share our stories. Because, after all, most of us come to Quakerism because our lives have somehow led us to it - and those stories, personal and specific as they are, sometimes speak more strongly to other people than all sorts of theological debates.

So I have asked members (and attenders, of course) of Tunbridge Wells Meeting to share their stories of how they came to Meeting. At the conference, telling and listening to stories face-to-face, I realised how much of a privilege it was to hear people talk frankly about their spiritual journeys - so thank you in advance to everyone who contributes.

That's a bit of an introduction - call it a trailer... And coming soon, to a screen near you...