Faith and Practice for
Canadian Yearly Meeting

Minute Establishing the Committee

CYM 2000 Minute #29

29. Faith and Practice Review Committee: Betty Polster reported. She began with a reminder that Canadian Yearly Meeting's Discipline is composed of three volumes:

• Organization and Procedure. prepared and revised by Canadian Yearly Meeting
• Christian' Faith and Practice - London Yearly Meeting 1959 (now out of print), adopted by Canadian Yearly Meeting
• Advlces and Queries - Britain Yearly Meeting 1995, adopted by Canadian Yearly Meeting in 1997

Faith and Practice Review Committee is addressing the possible development of a Canadian version of Christian Faith and Practice, appropriate to our unique needs.

Faith and Practice Review Committee has completed the tasks assigned to it and has three recommendations, developed after wide consultation with Canadian Friends and experienced Friends in other Yearly Meetings. Development of a Canadian Faith and Practice will be managed by a small Development Committee but the work will engage Friends of all ages, from across Canada.

Material will first be sought from existing materials; sources are not limited to Canadian authors or Quakers who are part of Canadian Yearly Meeting. If there is no suitable material for particular sections, new compositions may be created. Co-ordination includes collection, selection and editing of material, resulting in the preparation of a draft.
We agree the new Canadian Faith and Practice should be comprehensive rather than dependent on the continued use of the Faith and Practices of other Yearly Meetings.

A working outline will be developed and circulated among Friends. As sections are given first approval, they will be distributed to Friends for immediate use and testing.

We approve the recommendations of the Faith and Practice Review Committee, as follows:

1. That Canadian Yearly Meeting establish a Faith and Practice Development Committee (F&PDC) to oversee this work. We estimate that this work may take up to ten years, and therefore recommend that the F&PDC be established for up to that duration.
    
2. Based on the research we have done into the experiences of other Yearly Meetings in either revising or creating a new discipline:

   i. Committee members will be appointed for the duration of the task rather than for specific terms, and new members appointed only to fill vacancies as they may occur;
   ii. There will be five members of the Development Committee: two from Western Canada, two from Central Canada, and one from Eastern Canada;
   iii. Individuals, small groups, and meetings will be encouraged to undertake the work of identifying significant Canadian quotations;
   iv. All of the material will be co-ordinated by the Development Committee, and drafts circulated throughout the Yearly Meeting before being brought to the floor of Yearly Meeting;
   v. Individual sections will be given first approval as they are completed; and then the final volume approved as a whole after all sections are done.
   

Names of members of the Development Committee will be proposed by Nominating Committee, if possible at this Yearly Meeting. We hope for gender balance and geographic diversity.

With the approval of these recommendations, the Faith and Practice Review Committee is laid down. We express our deep gratitude for the efficiency and compassion of the members of the Faith and Practice Review Committee in carrying out their task so effectively. We are all excited by this "adventurous venture" and the opportunity to grow together as a spiritual community.

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