At Midlothian Friends Meeting, as in other Quaker Meetings, we record minutes. There are two main types of minutes:

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1. Business Meeting minutes.  Every 2nd Sunday of the month we hold a Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business. This meeting is where the business of the meeting is conducted, i.e. the operations, decisions, and approvals of proposed actions. It is not a meeting in the normal sense of the word in that it is led by the Clerk of the Meeting, and is conducted in a worshipful manner, with respect accorded to all views. NOTE: Effective August 2017, the name of these meetings was changed to Meeting for Discernment.

2. Occasionally we record minutes that become official statements of direction, intent, or purpose. These are also recorded at Meeting for Discernment, but are more specific, and are called Recorded Minutes. For example, we recorded a Minute on Climate Change.

 

Once a year we record an annual "State of the Meeting" report that draws on the minutes developed during the year as well as other experiences and events in order to summarize the spiritual state of the Meeting.