There are a wide variety of Quakers across the world. Monthly meetings of Canadian Yearly Meeting are what is known as “unprogrammed,” which refer to the fact that we have no pastors to lead our worship and that our meetings for worship are based in silence from which spontaneous spoken ministry may arise. Other Quaker meetings are “programmed” with paid pastors and meetings for worship which may appear more similar to services in other Protestant churches. We’ve listed some useful links below.
- Friends General Conference (FGC) is an association of mainly unprogrammed Quaker Yearly Meetings and some monthly meetings in the USA and Canada. It holds an annual gathering for Friends at a university campus each summer during the first week of July. Canadian Yearly Meeting is a member of FGC.
- Friends United Meeting (FUM) is an association of mainly programmed Quaker Yearly Meetings in the USA and internationally. It holds a Triennal conference of Friends. Canadian Yearly Meeting is a member of FUM.
- Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) was set up at the 1937 World Conference of Friends in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, USA, “to act in a consultative capacity to promote better understanding among Friends the world over, particularly by the encouragement of joint conferences and intervisitation, the collection and circulation of information about Quaker literature and other activities directed towards that end.” About 175 representatives, appointed by the almost 70 affiliated yearly meetings and groups, meet together every three years at Triennials. Canadian Yearly Meeting is a member of FWCC (Section of the Americas).
- Britain Yearly Meeting (used be called London Yearly Meeting) serves as important resource, partly for historical reasons since that is where Friends were first established by Georege Fox in the middle of the 17th century. CYM used Britain Yearly Meeting’s “Advices and Queries” as part of our Quaker discipline until we developed our own. Quaker News, the publication of Quakers in Britain, is now available on-line.
- Pendle Hill is a Quaker center for study and contemplation in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. It offers weekend conferences and retreats, five day courses and a resident study program consisting of three 10 week terms each year.
- quaker.org As a personal witness, with the encouragement and help of other Friends, Russell Nelson of Potsdam, New York, a member of St. Lawrence Allowed Meeting of Ottawa Monthly Meeting, created and maintains this World Quaker Website of all things Quaker. When it began in early 1995, it was the first Quaker website in the world. An amazing collection of Quaker references and links to other Quaker sites from the serious to the trivial.