Quaker Religious Education Collaborative
Fall, 2019
Dear Friends:
Warm greetings from the Quaker Religious Education Collaborative (QREC). We are an international, crossbranch,
grassroots community of practice carrying a stewardship for lifelong Quaker spiritual formation
through religious education. We are reaching out to you to extend an invitation into active partnership with
QREC.
QREC is delighted to announce that the Thomas H. and Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund has awarded us a
grant to seed regional QREC circles of practice in three unstaffed yearly meetings. We believe that regional
gatherings and working circles will be conducive for fruitful and economically sustainable work in religious
education in the years to come. Might a local meeting or quarterly meeting in your yearly meeting
consider hosting one of the pilot sites for a QREC Regional Working Circle? A formal decision on
behalf of the whole yearly meeting would not be required.
This would involve:
• getting to know the QREC network and community of practice by sending two or three Friends to our
annual conference. We have travel support for 2-person teams from the three unstaffed yearly
meetings to attend our annual conference for three years in a row.
• helping us to connect with one or two local meetings which are poised and eager to blossom as we
seed regional working circles in three different unstaffed yearly meetings—one in the south, one in
the middle of the country, and one in the Pacific area. We will mentor and “walk with” them over the
three years of our project.
• sponsoring a team of QREC mentors to travel to a location in your yearly meeting once during this 3-
year period to offer a workshop on a topic named by your religious education community. We would
avoid scheduling this during your annual business sessions as that time is usually very full. About
three-quarters of the cost of travel and registration would be funded by the grant. The local and/or
yearly meeting partners would fund about one-quarter of the cost.
It has been our experience that revitalization and encouragement of Quakerism happens most effectively at
the grassroots. In 2018, two East African Friends attended our annual conference. As a result, they invited us
to send two QREC members to work with East African Friends involved in religious education. The attached
epistle gives voice to the clarity and sense of call of East African Friends gathered at the first East Africa
QREC meeting held at Friends Theological College, Kaimosi, Kenya, in January 2019. The QREC presence
was a catalyst for this blossoming of their ministry. We would hope that a similar dynamic would take root in
your yearly meeting.
We are listening for places where Spirit rises and Friends are eager to dig in, sharpen their skills, get creative,
and tune up their ministries and programming in religious education to best serve Friends of all ages. Please
share this opportunity with your religious education community. Ask them to be in touch with Beth Collea,
bethcollea@aol.com, or Liz Yeats, liz.yeats@outlook.com, members of the QREC Steering Circle.
In faith and friendship,
Beth Collea, New England Yearly Meeting Sita Diehl, Northern Yearly Meeting
Kody Hersh, Southeastern Yearly Meeting Marsha Holliday, Baltimore Yearly Meeting
Liz Yeats, South Central Yearly Meeting Yanire Zamora, New England Yearly Meeting
and Mexico City