Author: Cropwell

About three dozen people came out to a community carol singalong at Cropwell Friends Meeting in Marlton, N.J., this past Sunday. The meeting hired three members of the Parson Brown Singers to perform a dozen Christmas classics and lead the group in a singalong of another ten crowd favorites. A highlight was a highly interactive “Twelve Days of Christmas,” for which participants were divided into twelve sets and each given a day to sing and represent in mime. The event finished with cookies, sweets, mulled cider, and conversation as Friends old and new shared stories in the fellowship section of the meetinghouse.

Winter seasonal events are a natural opportunity for community outreach, especially for a Friends meeting with an historical building. The wooden benches, roaring wood stove and singers in Victorian garb instantly set a mood.

The organizers listed the event on Google Events and Eventbrite, as well as Instagram and Facebook (where the meeting bought some event advertising). At the November meeting for business, members had deliberated whether to charge an attendance fee to recoup some of the cost for the singing group, but after discussion and careful discernment the sense of the meeting was that this would be an important outreach event and that expenses should be paid out of meeting funds to allow the event to be free for participants.

A special program is a great event to invite extended networks to visit the meetinghouse: regular Cropwell attenders brought along parents, adult children, neighbors, and friends. The meeting also reached out to lapsed attenders with an invitation to the festivities. It is hoped that some of these new and irregular visitors might come back for worship in the near future.

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Cropwell Friends Meeting in Marlton, N.J., held a free public craft-making workshop after worship today. Joan Morrison of Haddonfield Public Library led about a dozen members and visitors in folding paper Christmas wreaths.

Origami crafts are great opportunities for multigenerational fellowship and there was a wide age range of participants gathered in the fellowship section of the meetinghouse. Many laughs were had as papers were folded and refolded. Each section took 12 folds and it took 12 sections to make a full wreath. A full spread of potluck items including chicken, salads, pies, cornbread, and cookies made for a fun lunch afterwards.

The publicity for the website went out over the standard channels—email, website, Facebook, and Instagram. In addition, members of the nearby homeowners association were invited and the meeting also posted it to Google Events. A listing was placed on the yearly meeting and South Jersey Quakers websites.

Much of the publicity packaged this event together with an upcoming caroling performance and singalong, together dubbed “Christmas at Cropwell.”

Cropwell Meeting held an introductory program on the Quaker peace testimony on Sunday afternoon. Geared toward newcomers, presenter Martin Kelley gave a 25 minute overview of the history of Quaker peacemaking, from the foundational 1660 Statement to more recent expressions of Quaker peacemaking, such as the climate-change advocacy of the Earth Quaker Action Team and the “Statement on the Peace Testimony and Ukraine” release in late October.

About a dozen participants stayed afterwards for a robust discussion, during which they shared concerns but also stories of inspirational peacemakers they have known. Informal discussions continued at the potluck meal that followed.

Cropwell Friends planned this program after identifying the peace testimony as a stumbling block for some of its new attenders. In particular, some have expressed personal doubts about the Quaker peace testimony in the face of the brutality of the war in Ukraine. The program was designed to give a clearer understanding of the theological and historical roots of Quaker peacemaking and to share how Friends have responded to difficult moral dilemmas in the past.

Banner photo: 1930s-era leaflet from the American Friends Service Committee used to solicit support for refugee support work during the Spanish Civil War. Learn more.

Cropwell Meeting held its first annual Trunk or Treat on Sunday, inviting neighborhood families over for games, treats, a pumpkin hunt, and tours of the meetinghouse.

The area around Cropwell has changed quite a bit since Friends first settled there in the 1780s. A patchwork of Quaker family farms has given way to twenty-first century suburbs, and today the meetinghouse property is an oasis of open space in a built-up area of housing developments. Few of the neighbors have ever visited the meetinghouse.

Cropwell contacted the homeowners association for the adjacent Marlton Village development, which agreed to distribute 210 Trunk or Treat flyers to its families. Cropwell also announced the event on its Facebook page and website.

About thirty neighbors showed up. The kids came with great costumes (princesses, dragons, tigers, at least one ninja), while parents came with lots of questions about Friends. “I didn’t know this building was still used for anything,” one told us, adding “I love history!” There were many tours of the 1809 meetinghouse, in which Cropwell clerk Earl Evens and others shared the meeting’s history and explained Quaker worship. One parent said “you guys did a fabulous job” as she left a tour.

The visitors were all invited to come back for worship some future Sunday morning.