Finding Friends: Outreach and Faithful Sharing
Friends will gather over Zoom for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Finding Friends: Outreach and Faithful Sharing, September 19, 2026, 10:00 am – 3:15 pm.
This event is especially for Friends who already feel a spark for outreach in their meeting and are looking for direction and practical tools to act on it, including Friends who are not part of a formal committee.
This free event is open to outreach committee members, clerks, and any Friend involved in welcoming newcomers who wants to build skills, learn about resources, and connect with others around Quaker outreach and inreach.
Whether your meeting has been doing outreach for years or is just getting started, this is an opportunity to consider how we welcome newcomers and help current attenders and members feel part of the meeting community.
Friends will share outreach ideas, marketing strategies, and ways they have connected with their local communities.
Schedule
10:00 – 10:15 AM | Opening WorshipWe begin with a period of gathered silence to center ourselves before the day’s work.
10:15 – 11:15 AM | Session: Proselytizing vs. Faithful Sharing – Early Friends shared their faith with a directness and authenticity that changed lives. How did we get from there to here — and what might it look like to find our way back? In this opening session, we’ll explore the distinction between proselytizing and faithful sharing, drawing on Quaker history and our own experience, and asking together what it means to speak of our faith without coercion or apology.
11:15 AM – 12:15 PM | Conversation: A Meeting Thriving in Outreach – Monthly Meeting of Friends of Philadelphia (Arch Street Friends) shares what a living outreach practice looks like — how they built it, what has worked, and what other meetings might learn from their experience. In conversation with Friend Alec Unkovic, Clerk of the Outreach Committee.
12:15 – 1:00 PM | Lunch Break
1:00 – 2:00 PM | Outreach Tools 101 – A practical introduction to three free tools — Canva, Mailchimp, and Wix — that any meeting can use to begin or strengthen its outreach presence. Facilitated by members of PYM’s Communications Team.
2:00 – 3:00 PM | Queries & Sharing – Open, Spirit-led discussion. Queries will be offered to prompt reflection, and participants are invited to share from their own experience of outreach and faithful sharing.
3:00 – 3:15 PM | Closing Worship
Friends can contact Simone Small Gellizeau, director of Programs and Religious Life at sgellizeau@pym.org with any questions.
Register at https://secure.qgiv.com/for/PYMEvents/event/findingfriends26/
