The member of a Quaker group who has been asked to lead or facilitate business meeting is known as the clerk, or the clerk of the Meeting. Quaker Meetings also frequently appoint committees to think through issues and to come up with options that they present to the full meeting for consideration and decision-making, and the members of the Meeting community generously take on and share committee and other responsibilities with each other, the facilitators of committees and work groups may be called clerks or conveners.
The individual who becomes the clerk of a committee or a whole meeting is not its leader but its servant charged with the orderly preservation of the Quaker process. Friends rely on the clerk to sum up and clearly state the sense of the Meeting after a period that includes both discussion and quiet attendance on revelation of the Inner Light. When a major item has been considered, this sense of the Meeting may be recorded as a minute, or written statement of position, of the Meeting.
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