Meetings connected to Friends schools are asked to share this article with teachers, parents, board members, and others in their school communities. Friends who share it can consider how their meeting might welcome families whose connection to the Religious Society of Friends comes through the school their child attends. Sharing the article can be one way to help those families learn that their connection to Friends can extend beyond the school community.
Outreach
Friends Experiment: Event Planning & Event Promotion
When Friends come together, great things happen.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is launching a new program called the Friends Experiment. During virtual gatherings spread across June, Friends will come together to discuss topics important to their meetings and share their challenges and successes, with the goal of learning from each other and collectively building a thriving yearly meeting.
After completing each “experiment,” we hope to learn and share the best ways Friends are addressing these topics with the wider body and potentially organize more gatherings like these in the future!
These gatherings are free and open to all PYM Friends, so please consider registering for any or all of the dates and topics below.
- Children’s Religious Education – June 14, 2026 @ 7 pm
- Finance & Property – June 15, 2026 @ 5:30 pm
- Pastoral Care – June 17, 2026 @ 1:00 pm
- Spiritual Action – June 22, 2026 @ 5:30 pm
- Adult Religious Education – June 18, 2026 @ 5:30 pm
- Event Planning and Event Promotion – June 25, 2026 @ 5:30 pm
Join Friends from across the yearly meeting and PYM’s Content Manager, Isaac Garrison, for a conversation on planning and carrying out a successful event with your meeting. This conversation is for Friends who want to share resources, best practices, and opportunities. Friends can share marketing strategies and ways they connected with their local community during the event planning process.
Friends can also share how they hosted tables at community fairs, planned menus for open houses, gathered speakers for forums, let people know about a food giveaway event, and ensured accessibility to create a successful event.
There are so many roles we can play as members one of another, so we hope that you will learn and grow alongside PYM Friends into a role that empowers you to lift up and support your faith community.
Please contact PYM at communications@pym.org with any questions.
Quaker Hospitality 1: the ABCs of Hospitality & Welcoming New Friends
Explore how Meetings create a welcoming visitor experience that helps newcomers become attenders.
Register for a 60–75-minute interactive workshop that will inspire you with welcome practices and tools to bring people into your meeting.
Taking a newcomer’s point of view, we’ll identify ways to improve the welcome experience. How do people feel they belong? How are visitors seen, invited, recognized and included into the Quaker community?
Find out why ‘Quaker curious’ folks return (or not) after initial visits, best practices, and the unique strengths and challenges for Quaker Meetings.
Radical hospitality is rooted in the Quaker understanding there is “that of God in everyone”. Discover why authentic hospitality requires intentionality, meeting-wide participation, reflection, planning and reliable follow-up processes.
Together we will learn how to:
- Use the Visitor’s Journey to develop a Meeting Hospitality & Welcome Plan with consistent invitation & follow-up processes
- Spot and adopt accessible language in signage, literature, online, speech
- Engage your meeting in a Welcome & Belonging Self Study
- Acknowledge meeting barriers to welcoming new people, while trusting ‘way will open’
- Plan easy entry activities for Seekers to connect to Quakerism at their own pace and level of interest
Registration required. Click link below or scan the QRcode in the event image above. Zoom link will be emailed.
https://forms.gle/sFvrwrKKhy7PQgwV8
Presenters
- Wendy Kane, Bucks Quarter Coordinator
- Lanza, Abington Qtr. Communications Coordinator
- Guests TBA
About
This is a workshop collaboration of Bucks and Abington Quarters.
Join us for more sessions in AQM’s Engagement, Communications, In-reach & Outreach Topic Series — designed to build community and grow Meetings across Abington Quarter (and beyond).
Questions:
- Lanza, 990-3196 AbingtonQTRCommunications@gmail.com
AbingtonQuarterlyMeeting.org (AQM)
Easter Egg Hunt at Haddonfield Meeting
The following is attributed to Friends at Haddonfield Meeting.
Saturday, April 4th was a wonderful, sunny day. Meeting volunteers placed 300 colorful plastic eggs filled with goodies throughout our historic graveyard, with its rolling hills and ancient trees. Curious squirrels came running, and three managed to carry off eggs.
Trenton Meeting Community BBQ Meal
On Saturday September 13, Trenton Meeting will hold our annual Community BBQ at the Meetinghouse. Serving will start at 12:30. Trenton Meeting folks and a number of local volunteers will be setting up and preparing food (shucking corn for example) from 11 am. Any Friends who would like to visit and be a part of the meal is encouraged to come. You don’t have to show up early or stay late. Just enhance this community outreach with your presence.
PYM’s Response to the Political Reality
This week has brought many changes our country, including ones that are out of alignment with Friends testimonies and the way we walk in the world. The PYM community and governance are actively listening and responding.
[Read more…] about PYM’s Response to the Political Reality
Partnership with Church World Service
In October, PYM announced a new partnership with Church World Service (CWS) as a covenant member. During the recent Joint Council meeting, Clerk Nikki Mosgrove led a discussion on PYM’s new relationship with CWS, a national faith-based organization focused on just and sustainable responses to hunger, poverty, displacement, and disaster. This partnership allows PYM to nominate board members and collaborate closely on CWS’s work, although it holds no voting rights. CWS extended this invitation to deepen the connection, reflecting their commitment to building impactful relationships. The council plans to review this partnership at a future session to assess its impact.
[Read more…] about Partnership with Church World Service
Upcoming Grant Deadlines: December 1, 2024 – March 31, 2025
Funds are available for outreach, traveling for interfaith dialog, service, or ministry, Indigenous people and communities, and more. Apply today!
[Read more…] about Upcoming Grant Deadlines: December 1, 2024 – March 31, 2025
Be the First to Shape A Virtual Platform for PYM Friends | PYM Connect
A ministry of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is to keep the body interconnected, and the virtual tools available allow Friends to share their messages and connect faster. PYM staff are finding and providing new resources across the yearly meeting community to help keep connected. Friends no longer have to wait for an event or session; they will be able to connect anytime and anywhere, and PYM is looking for participants to provide input on an online platform.
[Read more…] about Be the First to Shape A Virtual Platform for PYM Friends | PYM Connect
Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting on “Going Veggie” and Using “Creating a Playbook for Climate Action”
Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting has embraced a new initiative to support climate action by “going veggie” on the third Sunday of each month. This meeting-wide project is the result of collaboration between the Climate Action and Hospitality Committees, reflecting a shared commitment to addressing climate change.
Sarah Whitman, a member of both committees at Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting, shared her perspective and the behind-the-scenes on this new initiative. “Last spring, we started a Climate Action Committee to help the meeting address climate change,” Sarah shared. “There have been individual leadings and practices related to climate change, but not a project that the whole meeting does together. I happen to be a member of both Hospitality and the Climate Action Committee, so I felt like this was an opportunity for synergy between those two committees.”
