Bethesda Friends Meeting

  • Home
  • Opportunities for Our Future (OOF)

Opportunities for Our Future (OOF)

Click here to read the final report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Opportunities for Our Future,

dated 12/4/2016. 

 Click here for the short summary of the ad hoc committee and its charge.



Background

Bethesda Friends Meeting has met in the Meeting House of the Sidwell Friends Lower School at the corner of Edgemoor Lane and Beverly Road in Bethesda, Maryland, since sometime in the 1960s. In September 2015, Sidwell Friends School (SFS) announced plans to move the SFS lower school from Bethesda to a site adjacent to the upper school campus at 3720 Upton Street NW, Washington DC.

As a result, Bethesda Friends Meeting entered into a period of discernment to determine where our future home will be. Sidwell Friends School extended a warm invitation to move with them to the Washington DC campus, and that is one possibility that was considered. The Meeting community was committed to exploring all possible future paths and possibilities via an open, caring Quaker process that held all members of our community in the Light as we found our way forward.

To facilitate the discernment process, the Meeting established the Ad Hoc Committee on Opportunities for Our Future (AHCOOF) at the November 2015 Meeting for Worship for Business.

  • The purpose of this ad hoc committee was not to make specific recommendations, but rather to help our community arrive at a Sense of the Meeting by gathering and sharing information and by organizing sessions for information dissemination, worship sharing, and threshing.
  • The full charge of the ad hoc committee can be found HERE.
  • Members of the committee were: Marion Ballard, Alex Bell, Peirce Hammond, Susan Kaul, Gail Kohanek, Jabez McClelland, Doug Smith (clerk), Ralph Steinhardt and Amy Lear White.
  • Click here to read the final report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Opportunities for Our Future, dated 12/4/2016.

This web page was set up to provide the Meeting community with information on Sidwell Friends’ plans and on the options being explored by the meeting, and to provide additional avenues for members of our community to communicate with the ad hoc committee and with each other.

Below are some archived documents that may be of interest

BFM Questionnaire Results Summary

Summary report on responses to the AHCOOF questionnaire of June 2016

Letter from Bryan Garman,
(Sidwell Friends Head of School) September 2016

Links to Some Archived Documents

Comment form and FAQs (2016)

FAQs-1

FAQs-2

FAQs-3 

Ministry & Worship: Space for Spirit (2015) 

BFM Directory Map

Showing the 2014 geographic distribution of BFM

members and attenders.

The map is annotated to show the distances from BFM to other Quaker meetings in the DC area (red pins).

It also shows the distance to Sidwell Friends School

(SFS) DC campus (green pin).


Meeting with BFM, SFS & Ennead Architects

October 2015


Updates from the ad hoc committee

AHCOOF - Dec 2015 Update

AHCOOF - June 2016 Update

FINAL REPORT AHCOOF - December 2016

An archived document that includes

Original Sidwell Friends School 2015 timeline

AHCOOF events and meetings

List of ways BFM Friends could communicate and give input

Bethesda Friends Meeting

Mailing Address:
P.O. Box 30152, Bethesda MD 20824

Our Meetinghouse is on the campus of the Sidwell Friends Lower School at the intersection of Edgemoor Lane and Beverly Road in Bethesda, Maryland

We are a member organization of the Religious Society of Friends

www.bethesdafriends.org
301-986-8681
Contact Us

 | Login | Logout          BFM Privacy Policy

Powered by Wild Apricot Membership Software