Meetings and Umbrella Groups in the Americas

Address: 5350 Broadmoor Cir. NW, Canton, Ohio 44709, USA
Click to Email
Publication: The Evangelical Friend (10 per year)

The Evangelical Friends Church International began as the Association of Evangelical Friends in the 1940s and continued until 1961 when it was established as the Evangelical Friends Alliance. It is a voluntary association of Evangelical Friends comprising, at present, membership of six meetings: Alaska Yearly Meeting, Evangelical Friends Church – Eastern Region, Evangelical Friends Church – Southwest Region, Mid-America Yearly Meeting, Northwest Yearly Meeting and Rocky Mountain Yearly Meeting. In addition, Iowa Yearly Meeting (FUM) is an associate member through its cooperative mission support in Mexico City. Membership is open to additional yearly meetings as they may desire to become associated with EFCI.

EFCI is involved in education with the part-time support of an educational consultant, cooperative involvement in the preparation and publishing of Aldersgate materials and the development of an EFI Sunday School promotion program. The Publications Commission works with the publication and printing of The Evangelical Friend and other publications headed by the EFI. Youth programs become cooperative efforts of EFCI through the Youth Commission.

Postal Address:PO Box 771139, Wichita KS 67277
Physical Address: 5765 Olde Wadsworth Blvd., Suite 28, Arvada, CO 80002
Telephone: +1 303 421-8100
Click to Email
Website: www.friendsmission.com

The purpose and passion of Evangelical Friends Mission (EFM) are to lead our people world-wide to live so close to Jesus Christ that we will worship, serve and obey God as faithful witnesses. We live and die for the cause of fulfilling the Great Commission in the spirit of the Great Commandment.

We exist to fuel a worldwide multiplication movement of worshipping, God-glorifying Evangelical Friends Churches through evangelism, leadership development and missionary sending.

Evangelical Friends Mission (EFM) is the international arm of Evangelical Friends Church International/North America (EFI-NA). It began in 1978 for the purpose of growth and unity in missions.

EFM supervises ministries in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Ireland, Mexico, Nepal, Philippines, Rwanda, U.S.A. (Navajos), and Muslim ministries in three other nations. EFM seeks new mission places as well as encouraging all Evangelical Friends to become missionary-sending churches. Fifteen other countries have Friends churches and affiliate with Evangelical Friends International, although they are financially self-supporting or sponsored by international Yearly Meetings.

Evangelical Friends now worship our Lord Jesus Christ in over 35 languages. Six Yearly Meetings/Regions partner in EFM, namely, Alaska Yearly Meeting of Friends Church, Evangelical Friends Church-Eastern Region, Evangelical Friends Church-Mid-America Yearly Meeting, Evangelical Friends Church Southwest, Northwest Yearly Meeting, and Rocky Mountain Yearly Meeting. Three of these – Eastern Region, Northwest and Southwest – also have their own Mission Boards and mission fields, directly supervising ministries in an additional ten countries.

EFM meets twice per year as an EFI-NA Commission.

Contact Person: Barry Crossno, General Secretary
Address: 1216 Arch Street, 2B, Philadelphia, PA 19107, USA
Telephone: +1 215 561-1700
Fax: +1 215 561-0759
Click to Email
Website: www.fgcquaker.org
Publication: Email Newsletters including Vitality and Book Musings
Members: 33,647
Meetings: 850
Established: 1900
Affiliated Groups: 16 yearly meetings and 12 monthly meetings directly affiliated
Other Centers: Traveling Ministries Program, 1080 45th Street, Des Moines, IA 50311 Phone: (515) 277-2189, Deborah Fisch Coordinator
Book Distributor: QuakerBooks of FGC

Founded in 1900, Friends General Conference is an association of local and regional Quaker organizations primarily in the United States and Canada. FGC is a volunteer led association. Our focus areas and related projects are determined by volunteers representing our affiliates and consistent with FGC’s organizational Minute of Purpose and Vision Statement. What was once an association of seven yearly meetings holding a biennial "general conference" is now a coalition of sixteen yearly meetings and twelve directly affiliated monthly meetings.

Minute of Purpose: Friends General Conference, with Divine guidance, nurtures the spiritual vitality of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) by providing programs and services for Friends, meetings, and seekers.

Vision Statement: We envision a vital and growing Religious Society of Friends—a faith that deepens spiritually, welcomes newcomers, builds supportive and inclusive community, and provides loving service and witness in the world.

Through Friends General Conference, we see Quakers led by the Spirit joining together in ministry to offer services that help Friends, meetings, and seekers explore, deepen, connect, serve and witness within the context of our living faith.

Major Goals:

• Nurture meetings and worship groups.
• Provide resources and opportunities for meetings, Friends, and seekers to experience the Light, the living presence of God.
• Help meetings guide Friends to discern the leadings of the Inward Teacher and to grow into ministry.
• Transform our awareness so that our corporate and individual attitudes and actions fully value and encompass the blessed diversity of our human family.
• Work to grow and sustain a vital, diverse, and loving community of Friends based on a shared search for unity in the Spirit.
• Articulate, communicate, and exemplify Friends’ practices, core experiences, and the call to live and witness to our faith.
• Promote dialogue with others, sharing with them our corporate experience of Divine Truth and listening to and learning from their experience of the same.

In all its work, FGC seeks to help Friends and meetings grow into their Spirit-led ministries.

Contact Person: Kelly Kellum, General Secretary
Address: 101 Quaker Hill Dr., Richmond, IN 47374, USA
Telephone: +1 765-962 7573
Fax: +1 765 966 1293
Click to Email
Website: www.friendsunitedmeeting.org
Publications: Quaker Life, a quarterly journal; Connections, a monthly newsletter; FUM News, a weekly e-mail newsletter; books and curriculum through Friends United Press
Meetings: Approximately 3000 worldwide
Established: 1902
Affiliated Groups: 37 yearly meetings and associations, Turkana Friends Mission, Samburu Friends Mission, Belize Friends Ministries, many schools, hospitals, development and church planting projects in Jamaica, Cuba, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Palestine, Belize and Mexico
Other Centers: Friends United Meeting, Africa Ministries Office, PO Box 478, Kisumu 40100, Kenya
Schools: Friends School Ramallah (Palestine); Friends Theological College (Kenya); Belize Friends School (Belize)
Reference Library: FTC Library

Friends United Meeting (formerly the Five Years Meeting of Friends) – with constituents in the United States, Canada, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Belize, Cuba, Jamaica and Palestine – is composed of 37 yearly meetings and associations and 2 monthly meetings: Baltimore, Bware, Canadian, Central, Chavakali, Chebuyusi, Chwele, Cuba, East Africa (Kaimosi), East Africa (North), Elgon East, Elgon Religious Society of Friends, Friends Church of North Carolina, Great Plains, Highland, Indiana, Iowa, Jamaica, Kakamega, Lugari, Malava, Musingu, Nairobi, New Association of Friends, New England, New York, North Carolina Fellowship of Friends, Soy, Tanzania, Tongaren, Tuloi, Uganda, Vihiga, Vokoli, Western Association of Friends, Western, and Wilmington, plus Ciudad Victoria Friends Church (Mexico) and Ramallah Monthly Meeting (Palestine).

Under a uniform discipline, the Five Years Meeting of Friends was organized in 1902. Its purpose was to create a better spirit of unity and action on the part of widely separated groups of Friends.

While by discipline the business session at the Friends United Meeting Triennial is a representative body and yearly meetings are represented in accordance with their respective memberships, in actual practice little distinction is made between officially appointed representatives and general attenders, except in actions taken on business items. All Friends are encouraged to attend and participate in the discussions. From the time of its origins in 1902, Friends United Meeting sessions have been enriched by the attendance of representatives from non-member yearly meetings all over the world.

Since 1960 the sessions have been held every three years and in 1966 the official name was changed from Five Years Meeting of Friends to Friends United Meeting.

Friends United Meeting commits itself to energize and equip Friends through the power of the Holy Spirit to gather people into fellowships where Jesus Christ is known, loved, and obeyed as Teacher and Lord. FUM is a consultative and administrative rather than a legislative body. The constituent yearly meetings retain autonomy, except in those areas of service and concern expressed through the larger body as a mutually chosen channel.

The work of Friends United Meeting is carried out through the General Board and its subcommittees. Because FUM is a global community and organization, the Board is comprised of representatives from around the world. The General Board/North America-Caribbean generally meets three times each year and the General Board/Africa meets twice a year. Both regions of the General Board utilise subcommittees that make recommendations to the General Board. An Executive Board, made up of 12 members from both regions, meets each month with the General Secretary by conference call to assist in coordinating work and facilitating unity. The Richmond, Indiana, office oversees accounting and bookkeeping services, administration, development, Quaker Life magazine, a variety of publications about the work and projects of FUM, and Friends United Press.

North American Ministries and Africa Ministries incorporate those functions which are designed to strengthen local meetings and yearly meetings in their service to their constituency and in outreach to the world. The concern is to build up the local meeting by collaborating with the yearly meetings, to better equip its members to carry out their true mission in the world. This includes the educational task, maintenance and revitalization of meeting life, worship, leadership development, curriculum development, peace and social justice activities, and helping meetings to grow in Christian discipleship and to be better able to meet the needs of a changing society.

Global Ministries exists to facilitate service and mission within, between, and beyond the constituent yearly meetings. As an instrument of Christian ministry to a needy world, this area of the Church’s responsibility includes administration of local and cross-cultural outreach programs, recruitment and support of personnel, encouraging meetings to reach out in their own communities, to support outreach programs around the world, and responding to requests from local communities for possible development of new ministries and programs.

The cross-cultural ministries of FUM Friends began almost 150 years ago with the work in Palestine in 1869. Other ministries began in Mexico (1871), Jamaica (1881), Cuba (1900), East Africa (1902) and Belize (early 1960s). Today, Global Ministries works in eleven countries, with several more being envisioned in the near future.

The Friends School in Ramallah, West Bank (ten miles north of Jerusalem), provides an essential witness for peace in this troubled part of the world. The school provides quality elementary and secondary education to 1400 Palestinian students, both Christians and Muslims. Friends United Meeting owns the school and appoints the Board of Trustees and the Head of School.

FUM’s work in East Africa continues to grow under the leadership of local Friends and the Africa Ministries Office in Kisumu, Kenya. Friends Theological College prepares Friends for effective ministry and leadership. Friends Lugulu Mission Hospital provides medical care for thousands each year. Among the Turkana and Samburu peoples in Kenya, evangelism, discipleship, education, health care, peace and development ministries have grown very rapidly in recent years.. Uganda and Tanzania Yearly Meetings are both expanding to reach new areas of those countries, and work is beginning in Malawi, Zambia, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In Belize, the Friends School is expanding to serve more at-risk youth, and the Friends Center and Friends Church are launching new community-based ministries on the Southside of Belize City.

Global Ministries works in partnership with Jamaica and Cuba Yearly Meetings to energize and equip their ministries. The Living Letters program offers opportunities for Friends to visit, volunteer, and worship together across all of the cultures that make up Friends United Meeting.

The FUM Communications Department is located in Richmond, Indiana, and is responsible for sharing information about the FUM community, as well as the history, faith, practice, and experience of FUM Friends. The Communications Department produces Quaker Life, a quarterly journal; Connections, a monthly newsletter; FUM News, a weekly e-mail newsletter; a variety of publications about the work and projects of FUM; and books and curriculum through Friends United Press. Increasingly, the Communications Department works to create media for outreach to those not familiar with Quakerism or with Friends United Meeting.

The mission of the Friends United Meeting Communications Department is to Inspire, Inform and Teach:

• Inspire by sharing articles, photos, original art, poetry and essays of interest to the Quaker community.
• Inform through stories of Friends around the world.
• Teach through sharing infromation regarding the spiritual journeys of Friends.

Friends United Meeting and the Quaker Hill Conference Center are located on a 25-acre wooded tract in Richmond, Indiana. The conference center, including a large historical residence and the modern Woodard Lodge, houses administrative offices, dining facilities and overnight accommodations for conferences, retreats, committee meetings and small ecumenical gatherings.

Contact Person: Nancy Hawkins
Address: 5190 Kirk Road, Columbiana, OH 44408, USA
Telephone: +1 330-429-5686
Click to Email
Website: www.ohioyearlymeeting.org
Affiliation: Ohio Yearly Meeting, Conservative
Publications: The Conservative Friend; Conservative Friends Community Directory

Though Conservative Friends have never had a formal organization above the Yearly Meeting level, general gatherings of Conservative Friends have been held occasionally since 1911.

Such gatherings are now held every two years under the care of the Wider Fellowship of Conservative Friends, a committee of Ohio Yearly Meeting. Their purpose is to encourage all who seek fellowship among those who worship in the waiting manner and in the name of Jesus. The announcement of a recent gathering, addressed to “Conservative Friends and those of like mind”, read: “Unto all them that love His appearing... Within our mortal bodies we each long to ‘know the Power of God in Spirit and in Truth’ in a deeper way. We have found that as Friends who acknowledge Christ Jesus gather, and lay all else aside to wait."

Junta Anual de los Amigos Central
Clerk: Simón Quispe
Contact Person: Simón Quispe
Address: Iglesia Evangélica Amigos Central, Calle Sbte. Penaloza No 413 Casilla 7802, LA PAZ, Bolivia
Telephone: +591 2 38 16 96
Click to Email
Affiliation: Independent
Worship Style: Evangelical
Members: 2500
Meetings: 42 churches
Established: 1986

This part of Bolivia is the mission field of Central Yearly Meeting in the United States. It was set off as a separate yearly meeting in 1986 and affiliation with FWCC was affirmed in March 1987.

Iglesia Evangélica Unión Boliviana Amigos
Address: 16 de Julio, El Alto, Bolivia
Affiliation: Independent
Worship Style: Evangelical
Members: 600
Meetings: 10 churches

Mision Boliviana de Santidad Amigos
Clerk: Arles Huanca
Address: Casilla 25003, LA PAZ, Bolivia
Telephone: +591 2 34 05 69
Affiliation: Independent
Worship Style: Evangelical
Members: 15,482
Established: 1986
Meetings: 540 churches

Iglesia Nacional Evangélica “Los Amigos” de Bolivia – INELA-Bolivia
Clerk: Mario Chavez Castro
Contact Person: Mario Chavez Castro
Address: Iglesia Nacional Evangélica los Amigos, Casilla 8385, La Paz, Bolivia
Telephone: +591 2 24 53 776
Click to Email
Affiliation: Evangelical Friends International (EFI)
Members: 5000
Meetings: 215
Established: 1974

Officially recognized as the Iglesia Nacional Evangélica Los Amigos (INELA), the Bolivian Friends Yearly Meeting is under the supervision of an all-national Executive Council composed of ten members, with each member elected by the National Church representatives to a three-year term of office.

The autonomous Yearly Meeting (recognized by Northwest Yearly Meeting in 1974) grew out of mission efforts by that yearly meeting beginning in 1930, and provisionally organized as a yearly meeting in 1961, having received incorporation recognition by the Bolivian government as early as 1956. INELA is affiliated with FWCC.

In addition to an active evangelistic program, Friends in Bolivia are active in education and leadership training. There are fifteen rural schools sponsored by the Bolivian INELA. Training programs for church leaders are carried on through Extension Bible Schools. Friends in Bolivia also operate a residency known as Patmos Bible Institute in La Paz which provides an equivalent of a high school education, including Bible emphasis, and a theological seminary in cooperation with other denominations. The Board of Missions of Northwest Yearly Meeting maintains headquarters in La Paz and in Santa Cruz, serving in an advisory and educational capacity by official agreement between Northwest Yearly Meeting and the Bolivian National Friends Church.

Iglesia Evangélica “Estrella de Belén” Bolivia
Clerk: Máximo Laura Arteaga
Address:Zona Tejar Pavada M Calle 10 de Febrero No 778 La Paz, BO
Members: 1000
Meetings: 20 churches

Contact person:Vickey Kaiser, US Coordinator
Click to Email
Address: 65 Spring Street, Fredonia, NY, 14063-2128, USA

Contact Person: Kerry MacAdam, Office Administrator
Address: 91A Fourth Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1S 2L1
Telephone: +1 613 235 8553
Fax: +1 613 235 1753
Click to Email
Website: www.quaker.ca
Publications: The Canadian Friend
Affiliations: Friends United Meeting (FUM), Friends General Conference (FGC)
Members: 1,169
Meetings: 23
Established: 1955
Book Distributor: Canadian Yearly Meeting

Quakerism in Canada is an offshoot of the Quaker movement in colonial America. Following the American Revolution a wave of emigration into Canada brought a considerable number of Friends’ families who settled in areas adjacent to Lake Ontario in the southern part of what is now the province of Ontario. By 1828 three flourishing quarterly meetings had been established under the authority of New York Yearly Meeting.

The nineteenth-century “separations” in the United States touched off similar separations in Canada. By 1881 there were three separate Canadian Yearly Meetings. Genesee Yearly Meeting became independent of New York Yearly Meeting (Hicksite) in 1834 and later affiliated with the Friends General Conference. Canada Yearly Meeting was organized independently of New York Yearly Meeting (Orthodox) in 1867 with later Five Years Meeting affiliation. Canada Yearly Meeting (Conservative) was established in 1881 following the separation in Canada Yearly Meeting in that year. In the 1870s the total membership was approximately 7,000.

With the turn of the century a widely scattered and rapidly diminishing membership began to draw closer together. The impact of two world wars, the necessity to rethink traditional testimonies, and cooperation in war relief work were uniting factors.

The Canadian Friend, first published at Newmarket in 1904, was an important link in binding together scattered members and kept them in touch both with each other and with the wider movements in Quakerism.

In 1927 Canada Yearly Meeting (Five Years) and Genesee Yearly Meeting (General Conference) decided to hold, in the following year, their yearly meetings in joint and concurrent sessions. Further evidence of growing unity was the organization in 1931 of the Canadian Friends Service Committee, with appointed members from each of the three Canadian yearly meetings.

Conservative Friends who for 13 years had been working side by side with the other two groups in the various activities of the Canadian Friends Service Committee, decided in 1944 to hold their yearly meetings at the same time and place as the other two. After more than ten years of this closer association the three yearly meetings, with the exception of one quarterly meeting, agreed to unite in a single organization. This was accomplished in 1955.

All the meetings at present comprising Canadian Yearly Meeting are unprogrammed meetings.

Though many of the rural meetings have declined in numbers, or have been laid down over the past 75 years, new worship groups have recently sprung up in rapidly growing urban centres in the East and in the West.

Since 1931, Canadian Friends Service Committee has been the peace and social justice arm of the Religious Society of Friends in Canada. These Friends come from all parts of the country. CFSC's areas of focus are criminal justice, Indigenous peoples' human rights, and peace. Its work is carried out by staff and volunteers — Friends from across Canada. CFSC is a standing committee of Canadian Yearly Meeting but is a separately registered charity with its own website,

The Home Mission and Advancement Committee is responsible for nurturing Quakerism in Canada through religious education, visitation, outreach and contact with isolated Friends. The new Publications and Communications Committee is now responsible for The Canadian Friend, the Canadian Quaker Learning Series and the CYM website.

Camp NeeKauNis is the summer camp, the development of which is under the care of Camp NeeKauNis Committee, responsible to Yearly Meeting.

Junta Mensual de Bogotá
Contact Person: Ivan Cabrera
Address: Transv. 9 no 129-81, Santa Fe de Bogotá DC, Colombia
Telephone: +57 1 258 6074
Affiliation: FWCC International Membership Programme
Worship Style: Unprogrammed
Established: 1978 as a Monthly Meeting

Bogotá Friends met for over 30 years, first as a worship group, and then in 1978, FWCC, Section of the Americas, approved their application for establishment as a monthly meeting of the Society of Friends under the care of that Section.

The group is very small at present. Nevertheless these Friends, practically all of whom are Colombian citizens, have a real understanding of the spiritual and social testimonies of Friends and have been deeply concerned for the application of these testimonies to the life of their community and country. They have also sought a relationship with Friends in other countries through participation in the organizing Committee of Latin American Friends (COAL) and attendance at the Triennial Meetings of FWCC.

Junta Mensual de Monteverde
Contact Person: Lucille Guindon
Address: Escuela de los Amigos de Monteverde, Monteverde, Puntarenas, Código Postal 5655, Costa Rica
Telephone/Fax: 506-645-5302
Affiliation: FWCC International Membership Programme
Worship Style: Unprogrammed
Members: 72
Established: 1952

Soon after the end of the Second World War, a small group of Friends emigrated from the United States to Costa Rica. Most of them were members of Ohio or Iowa Yearly Meetings (Conservative). Their chief motive was to live and rear their children in an atmosphere free from militarism. These Friends secured a tract of land some 25 miles off the Pan American Highway and 125 miles from San José. Here they built their homes and a school/meeting house. They established a cheese factory and in the beginning derived most of their income from dairying.

Other interests and organizations have since developed such as the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve, the Monteverde Conservation League and the Monteverde Institute, although not under the care of the Meeting.

In response to revolutions in Nicaragua and El Salvador, the Meeting collected and distributed funds to aid refugees and people in various afflicted zones in Central America. Contact is kept with these areas through visits and correspondence.

The Meeting stays in contact with the Friends Meeting in San José as well as the Friends Peace Center started by San José Friends in 1983.

Junta Mensual de San José
Clerk: Mauricio Rojas Montero
Contact Person: Mauricio Rojas Montero
Address: Friends Peace Centre
Telephone: 506 560 1007
Click to Email
Affiliation: FWCC International Membership Programme

Junta Anual de la Iglesia de los Amigos (Cuàqueros) en Cuba
Clerk: Ramón G. Longoria Escalona
Contact Person: Ramón G. Longoria Escalona
Address: Calle 20, Esq Paz No 118, Holguin 80300, Cuba
Telephone: +53 31 53696
Click to Email
Affiliation: Friends United Meeting (FUM)
Worship Style: Programmed
Members: 535
Meetings: 8 monthly meetings
Established: 1927

Quaker missionaries arrived in Cuba from the USA in 1900. As a result of their work, the present Yearly Meeting of the Church of Friends (Quakers) in Cuba maintains eight monthly meetings.

The five schools operated previously by the Yearly Meeting were taken over by the Cuban government in 1961.

Four important meetings are held during the year: the Yearly Meeting, the meetings of women and Young Friends and the annual family camp. The camp brings together Friends from all the monthly meetings for speeches, Biblical study, preaching and recreation.

The Yearly Meeting receives some financial support from Friends United Meeting including help with the wages of the pastors, and from Friends around the world through the World Office of FWCC for the reconstruction of churches.

Junta Anual de la Iglesia Evangélica de los Amigos en El Salvador
Contact person: Milton Roberto García
Address: Iglesia Evangélica Amigos, Calle Roosevelt Poniente 60, Colonia Las Flores Soyapango, San Salvador, El Salvador
Telephone: +503 227 61 05
Click to Email
Affiliation: Evangelical Friends International (EFI)
Members: 640
Meetings: 8 monthly meetings; 6 churches
Established: c.1991

Friends missionary work began in Guatemala in 1902 under the auspices of the California Yearly Meeting and later spread to Honduras and El Salvador. First Honduras and then El Salvador were set off as separate yearly meetings. Several Friends from El Salvador attended the World Conference of Friends at the Honduras site in 1991 and there established a number of links with Friends in other parts of the world.

Junta Mensual de la Iglesia Evangélica Embajadores Amigos
Clerk: Luis Carlos Ramirez
Address: Iglesia Evangélica Embajadores Amigos, 5a Calle 4-40 zona 1, Chiquimula, Guatemala
Telephone: +502 942 0553
Affiliation: Evangelical Friends International (EFI)

Junta Anual Amigos de Santidad de Guatemala
Clerk: José David España
Contact Person: Edgar Amilcar Madrid
Address: Apartado Postal No 5, Chiquimula 20901, Guatemala
Telephone: +502 79 425 689
Click to Email
Website:  www.radioverdad.org
Affiliation: Evangelical Friends Church International (EFCI)
Members: c.500
Meetings: 8 in Chiquimula and Zacapa, Guatemala
Established:  1992

The beginnings of the Holiness Yearly Meeting of Friends were with the establishment of Second Friends Church on 2 June, 1968, in Chiquimula. With the addition of other meetings, the group organized itself as Holiness Yearly Meeting of Friends in 1986. It was formally set off and recognized as a separate yearly meeting by Guatemala Yearly Meeting on 16 February, 1992. The Yearly Meeting runs a Quaker Theological Seminary, founded in 1985.

At its March 1993 meeting in Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, the FWCC Section of the Americas welcomed Amigos de Santidad into membership.

Iglesia Evangélica Nacional “Amigos” de Guatemala
Clerk: Elcar Vazquez
Contact Person: Hector Romeo Cabera Alonzo
Address: Apartado Postal 8, 20001 Chiquimula, Guatemala
Telephone: +502 9 420 149
Affiliation: Evangelical Friends Church International (EFCI)
Members: 16,000
Established: 1970

Friends missionary work began in Guatemala in 1902 under the auspices of the California Yearly Meeting. In 1932, a General Council of nine men and three women was appointed with responsibilities for arranging conference programs and the teaching of doctrine. A reorganization occurred in 1948 with a permanent Commission set up as a cooperative church government between the Mission and the Church. The Yearly Meeting became wholly self-governing in 1970. The Berea Bible Institute in Chiquimula, established in 1921, has a campus in Chiquimula where pastors are trained. The Yearly Meeting also maintains secondary schools and a summer camp in the mountains not far from Chiquimula. The early history of the mission work is described in Paul Enyart’s Friends in Central America.

Iglesia Evangélica Amigos
Contact Person:  Juan Saúl Sánchez Reyes
Address: Centro Evangélico Amigos, Barrio El Centro, San Marcos Ocotepeque, Honduras, C. A.
Telephone: + 0504 6634253, +0504 6634195
Fax: + 0504 6633819
Click to Email
Members: 5500
Meetings: 57
Affiliated Groups: 40 worship groups
Established: 1983
Schools: 2
Other Centers: “Aloj” Campamento Peniel, Gracias Lempira, Coordinator Francisco Mejía, Telephone +0504 6561621

Junta Anual Amigos de Honduras JALAH
Clerk: Armirio Burgos
Address: Junta Annual Amigos de Honduras, Centro Evangélico Amigos, San Marcos de Ocotopeque, Honduras
Telephone: +504 663 4498
Click to Email
Affiliation: Evangelical Friends Church International (EFCI)
Members: Approx. 2000
Meetings: 36 monthly meetings
Established: 1983 (work began in 1903)

Friends Missionaries, supported by California Yearly Meeting, first came to Honduras from Guatemala in 1903, establishing a mission in San Marcos, Ocotepeque, in that year, and in Santa Rosa de Copan shortly thereafter. This history is told in Paul Enyart’s Friends in Central America.

Friends’ meetings are now spread across the western half of Honduras, with the main concentrations between San Pedro Sula and San Marcos, Ocotepeque, quite near the Salvadorean border. There is also a meeting in Tegucigalpa, the nation’s capital city.

Clerk: Horace Hall
Contact Person: Monica Bigby-Malloy
Address: 4 Worthington Av, Kingston 5, Jamaica
Telephone: 926-7371
Click to Email
Website: www.friendsunitedmeeting.org/caribbean.html#jamaica
Affiliation: Friends United Meeting (FUM)
Worship Style: Programmed
Members: Approx. 300
Meetings: 15 monthly
Established: 1941
Publication: Newsletter (quarterly)
Schools: The Continuation School, Happy Grove School, Several primary and infant schools
Other Centers: The Lyndale Home for Girls, The Swift Purscell Home for Boys, The Kingston Monthly Meeting Centre

Jamaica Yearly Meeting has developed from missionary work begun there by Iowa Yearly Meeting in 1881. While the mission work in Jamaica has followed the usual practice of establishing schools and meetings, Friends’ leaders have recognised that Christian groups must also concern themselves with the economic and social life of the people.

Friends are, considering their small number, deeply involved in education in Jamaica. The Continuation School, a co-educational secondary school in Highgate, has recently moved to more commodious premises and new buildings are in process of construction. Friends also conduct several primary and infant schools. Happy Grove School is a highly regarded secondary school of 800 boys and girls. Many of its alumni are active in public life in Jamaica.

The Lyndale Home for Girls is a residence for 50 girls who attend schools in the community. The Swift Purscell Home for Boys houses 70 boys who attend schools in the community and are also given vocational training in the Home.

The Kingston Monthly Meeting Centre, which was destroyed by fire in 1976, has been rebuilt. There are 17 adult members and 30 children in the Sunday school. The meeting is unprogrammed. The Meeting’s outreach includes the purchasing of hearing aids for the deaf and cultural film shows on the first Wednesday of each month.

Reunión General de los Amigos en México
Clerk: Horacio Peña Garcia
Contact Person:Horacio Peña Garcia
Address: Sierra de San Luis Potosi No. 734, 60. Sector, Las Puentes, San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León, México
Telephone: +52 81 8353 08 29
Click to Email
Affiliation: Independent
Worship Style: Programmed
Established: 1958

In 1958, a group of Friends from Mexico City visited the Friends Church in  Ciudad Victoria for worship and discussion regarding the organization of a national representative meeting which could also represent Mexican Friends in the Friends World Committee for Consultation. That organization was given the name Réunion General de los Amigos en México.

The new organization held its first meeting in Ciudad Victoria in November 1958, and a second meeting was held in Matehuala S.L.P. in April 1960 with the theme “Application of Quaker Principles in Situations of Tension and Conflict”. The Epistle sent to all Friends in the world concluded as follows: “we have been led to the conclusion that in order to diminish tension between peoples and to contribute to reconciliation, it is not ours to identify ‘bad people’ nor any ‘bad social system’, but the task of all Quakers to follow Christ in carrying out personal acts of love wherever there is suffering, anguish or grief”.

Since that time, the Reunión General has continued to meet every 18 months. The Friends who contemplated the beginning of these periodic meetings loyally served the Lord – the basis of their Quaker testimony, and hoped to leave that as a clear message for succeeding generations. The children of 1958 have grown into the present-day men and women, some of whom carry out the work of Friends. Some Young Friends from Mexico attended the World Gathering of Young Friends (July 1985 at Greensboro, NC, USA) and had a rare opportunity to examine together with Young Friends from all over the world the unity within the diversity of their beliefs, as well as the future of our Society.

Iglesia de los Amigos en Ciudad Victoria
Address: Matamoros 737 Ote., Ciudad Victoria Tam., México
Members: 80
Established: Matehuala 1887; Ciudad Victoria 1888

Friends living in Ciudad Victoria celebrated their 100th anniversary as an established Friends Meeting in 1988. The group includes a number of younger Friends, and meets in one of the oldest Friends’ church building in Mexico. The meeting at Matehuala has been laid down.

Asociación Sonorense de los Amigos A. C.
Address: Casa Heberto Sein, calle Felipe Salido #32, coi. centro Hermosillo, Sonora, México 83000
Telephone: +62 1701 42

Junta Mensual de la Ciudad de México
Address: Ignacio Mariscal 132, Col. Tabacalera, Ciudad de México, 06030 México
Telephone: +705 0521/705 0646
Fax: +705 0771
Members: 15
Established: 1947

Mexico City Monthly Meeting was established in 1947, meeting at the home of one of its members. It now meets in a large pleasant room on the top floor of the Casa de los Amigos. In the Casa are also a Quaker library, rooms for group meetings and accommodation for overnight guests.

Mexico City Monthly Meeting holds membership in Pacific Yearly Meeting. Mexico City Meeting has been holding First Day and Mid-Week worship online since 2020 and this will be a permanent option.

Iglesia San Nicolas de los Garza Nuevo Leon
Address: Sierra San Luis Potosi No. 734, 60. Sector, Los Puentes, San Nicolas de los Garza, Nuevo Leon, México
Telephone: +52 83 53 08 29

Asociación Religiosa de las Iglesias Evangélicas de los Amigos en México ARIEA
Address: Asociación Religiosa de las Iglesias Evangélicas de los Amigos, Viveros de Tepexpan No. 22, Col. Viveros del Valle, Tlalnepantla, EDO. DE MÉXICO, Mexico
Telephone: +52 5 370 7096
Click to Email
Affiliation: Evangelical Friends International (EFCI)
Members: 135
Meetings: 15 churches; 5 missions
Established: 1993

Groups in Mexico City, Baja California, Nueva Rosita and Tlalnepantla have come together to form this new yearly meeting, Asociación Religiosa de las Iglesias Evangélicas de los Amigos, A.R., organized by Evangelical Friends Mission. It held its first sessions in July 1993 with Felipe Vazquez as Presidente.

Iglesia Nacional Evangélica “Los Amigos” del Perú - INELA-Perú
Clerk: TBC
Contact Person: TBC
Address: Av. Independencia No 1930, Cercado, Provincia y Departamento de Arequipa, Perú
Telephone: +51 54 767351
Click to Email
Affiliation: Independent
Worship Style: Evangelical
Members: Approx. 5000
Meetings: 50 churches
Established: 1961

Expansion of missionary work of Northwest Yearly Meeting into southeastern Peru in 1961 opened a ministry to the dense Aymara population of the Puno and Tacna departments. La Iglesia Nacional Evangélica “Los Amigos” (INELA) of Peru began as a group on 15th October 1961 in the community of Thiri-Juli, Peru. It was started by the first Peruvian to become a Friend, brother Maximo Benito Anahua. The first yearly meeting sessions were held over holy week, 1963, with approximately 100 people in attendance naming Maximo Benito Anahua as its first presidente (clerk).

At present, the work of INELA-Peru extends to four states of Peru: Puna, Tacna, Moquegua and Arequipa, with a total membership of around 5,000 distributed in 30 monthly meetings and 25 dependent groups. The Yearly Meeting is served by eleven pastors who have graduated from the Instituto Biblico Los Amigos, and by 30 pastors “through experience”.

Activities in the Yearly Meeting and Service Work: INELA-Peru is involved in four types of service which are carried out by the following committees under the direction of the church board of directors (Mesa Directiva). Comité de Evangelización organises the trimester gatherings and evangelisation and revival meetings, as well as work in new communities and villages for the building of new Friends’ groups and churches. Comité de Educación is involved with integrating the administration of the Bible Institute as well as with special courses for the training of pastors and other leaders. Comité de Acción Social works in the countryside with health and social welfare, both in Friends’ churches and non-church communities.

Comité Agropecuario works in Friends’ church communities toward improved cattle husbandry and agriculture.

Existing International relationships: INELA-Peru works directly with the Mission Board of Northwest Yearly Meeting in the United States which supports missionary families in Peru. The Church is affiliated with the FWCC World Office and the Section of the Americas office, and is in touch with various yearly meetings in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Clerk: Douglas Mertz
Contact Person: Douglas Mertz
Address: 11380 N Douglas Hwy, Juneau, AK 99801-7615, USA
Telephone: +1 907 586 3155
Click to Email
Website: http://alaskafriends.org
Affiliation: Friends General Conference (FGC)
Worship Style: Unprogrammed

Unprogrammed Friends in Alaska were drawn together by the peace testimony and by an interest in “international communities” in the early 1950s. From these efforts grew the Chena Ridge meeting in Fairbanks (1954), Caribou Creek Meeting (1954, since laid down) and Anchorage Meeting (1956). These formed the Alaska Yearly Meeting in 1957, becoming the Central Alaska Friends Conference in 1969 to avoid confusion with the Yearly Meeting of the Alaska Friends Church. At that time Friends sponsored an AFSC workcamp at the village of Beaver and helped begin the Alaska Native Land Claims movement and Tundra Times, the first statewide Native newspaper. Over-involvement of Friends in these activities, and with peace and social concerns during the early '60s, limited the life of the meetings for worship, but an influx of Friends from other areas, new adherents among pioneer Alaskans and reorganization as the Central Friends Conference brought renewed growth and an enriched spiritual life from the mid-'60s onward without limiting the peace and social concerns activities of Alaskan Friends. M A Dickerson deeded an eleven-acre wooded lakeside tract for a retreat center upon which Friends have built a meeting house and kitchen for their annual gathering. The Friends School opened by Fairbanks Friends in 1981 has now been laid down but the facility has become the local meeting house and a center for Friendly concerns there.

Individual Friends have become very involved in peace issues particularly as related to Central America, organizing state-wide activities in protest at our government’s policies, serving with Witness for Peace in those areas, and organizing nationwide activities in support of the embattled people of those countries. Other Friends are involved in volunteer fire services, consumer cooperatives, war tax resistance and forming local resource centers for peace concerns. A Friend in the state legislature introduced a bill for a “nuclear free arctic and sub-arctic”.

CAFC was represented at the FWCC Triennial in Mexico in 1985 for the first time and hoped to make representation at the Plenaries a regular occurrence as part of the effort to strengthen ties to Friends throughout the world. The Conference continues to have a particular concern maintaining contact with, and support for, individuals and small groups of isolated Friends scattered through the broad reaches of the Alaska sub-continent.

Contact Person: Larry Jones, Superintendent
Address: PO Box 687, Kotzebue, AK 99752, USA
Telephone: +1 907 442 3906
Click to Email
Website: http://www.akyearlymeeting.org/
Affiliation: Evangelical Friends Churches International (EFCI)

In Alaska, the first missionaries began to preach and teach the Gospel, to educate and to minister to physical needs. With the coming of modern civilization to Alaska, health and educational needs are now largely met through government agencies.

In 1970 Alaska Yearly Meeting was established and the primary work now being done by Friends Church Southwest Yearly Meeting personnel stationed there is in the area of leadership training. There is a Bible Training School.

The preaching and pastoral ministries are now the responsibility of Inupiaq Friends.

Clerk: Stephanie "Steph" Bean
Contact Person: Sarah Gillooly, General Secretary
Address: 17100 Quaker Lane, Sandy Spring, MD 20860, USA
Telephone:  +1 301 774 7663
Fax:  +1 301 774 7087
Click to email
Website: www.bym-rsf.org
Affiliation: Friends United Meeting, Friends General Conference
Worship Style: Programmed, Unprogrammed
Members: 3,672 adult members, 671 associate members, and approximately 2,157 regular attenders for a total community of 6,500
Meetings: 42 Monthly Meetings, 5 Preparative Meetings, and 4 Quarterly Meetings.
Affiliated Groups: 3 Worship Groups
Established: 1672 as Maryland YM (name changed in 1790,; split in 1828 into two separate yearly meetings, reunited in 1968)
Publications:Interchange three times a year, Firecircle annually, and the Yearbook (including the Manual of Procedure) annually
Schools: 10 - Friends Community School (College Park, MD); Friends Meeting School (Ijamsville, MD); Friends School of Baltimore (Baltimore, MD); Menallen Friends Preschool (Biglerville, PA); Sandy Spring Friends School (Sandy Spring, MD); School for Friends (Washington, DC); Sidwell Friends School (Washington, DC); State College Friends School (State College, PA); Tandem Friends School (Charlottesville, VA)
Retirement Facilities: Broadmead (Cockeysville, MD); Foxdale Village (State College, PA); Friends House (Sandy Spring, MD); Kendal at Lexington (Lexington, VA)
Standing Committees: Advancement and Outreach, Camping Program, Camp Property Management, Development, Educational Grants, Faith and Practice, Indian Affairs, Manual of Procedure, Ministry and Pastoral Care, Nominating, Peace and Social Concerns, Program, Religious Education, Search, Stewardship and Finance, Sue Thomas Turner Quaker Education Fund, Supervisory, Unity with Nature, and Youth Programs.

Baltimore Yearly Meeting dates from a General Meeting held at West River, Maryland, at the time of a visit by John Burnyeat from England. George Fox also arrived just in time to attend. The area of the Yearly Meeting now includes the State of Maryland (except portions east of the Chesapeake Bay), the District of Columbia, and parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia.

Central to the life and experience of the Yearly Meeting is the fellowship Friends share at the annual sessions held for six days on a college campus each summer.

Yearly Meeting committees include: Advancement and Outreach, Camp Property Management, Camping Program, Criminal and Restorative Justice, Educational Funding Resources, Faith and Practice Revision, Friends In Education, Indian Affairs, Ministry and Pastoral Care, Peace and Social Concerns, Religious Education, Stewardship and Finance, Unity with Nature, and Youth Programs.

Yearly Meeting programs include four summer camps for youth (Catoctin Quaker Camp, Opequon Quaker Camp, Shiloh Quaker Camp, and Teen Adventure Quaker Camp), Junior Young Friends (12-14), Young Friends (15-18), Young Adult Friends (18-30), Women’s Retreat, Spiritual Formation, and others developed by Meetings and committees.

Clerk: Joseph Cassady
Contact Person: Michael Williams, Superintendent
Address: PO Box 221, Westfield, IN 46074, USA
Telephone: +1 765 857 2347
Click to Email
Affiliation: Independent
Worship Style: Evangelical
Members: 285
Meetings: 3 quarterly, 11 monthly
Established: 1926
Publication: Friends Evangel (monthly)

Central Yearly Meeting was established by Friends from both Indiana and Western Yearly Meetings who were dissatisfied with the “modernism” of the Five Years Meeting. The separation occurred at Westfield, Indiana, in 1924. The Bible School there, formerly run by members of Western Yearly Meeting, became the nucleus of the new group. As missionary work is the chief emphasis, this Yearly Meeting has grown until it now contains three quarterly meetings in Indiana. Bolivia, South America, is the center of foreign missionary work. The members of Central Yearly Meeting are strictly evangelical and seek to be modest in their pattern of life.

Contact Person: Tom Crawford, Executive Director
Address: 5350 Broadmoor Circle NW, Canton, OH 44709, USA
Telephone: +1 330 493 1660
Click to Email
Website: www.efcer.org
Affiliation: Evangelical Friends Church - North America (EFC-NA)
Members: 8,000
Meetings: 95 churches
Established: 1812
Publication: The Facing Bench (quarterly)
Purpose: EFC-ER is a movement of connected churches intentionally working together to fulfill a common mission, vision, and core values, based on the person and redemptive message of Jesus Christ. The mission of EFC-ER is to equip churches to make disciples.

Formerly Ohio Yearly Meeting, Eastern Region Yearly Meeting is composed of 95 Friends Churches located in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Georgia, and Eastern Canada. Local churches are evangelical, pastoral, programmed, with top priority given to outreach – both at home and overseas. Varied ministries include church planting, lay renewal and training, youth ministries, retreats for both Quaker men and women, Christian education, community service, and missions projects.

Sunday school, children’s church, summer conferences, weekly Bible studies, camping and vacation Bible schools are all a vital part of the YM program.

Malone College, a four-year liberal arts college, is sponsored by EFC-ER. The College is fully accredited by the North Central Association and offers 22 fields of study to a student body currently numbering over 1,000 in Canton, Ohio.

Literature concerns find expression through Friends Book Store, located in Salem, Ohio, supervised by the Publications Board. The Facing Bench, the quarterly newspaper, and the Evangelical Friend (ten issues per year published by EFCI) are circulated to all member families.

Since 1887 foreign mission work has been a major thrust, first in Nanking and Luho located in Kiangsu Province, China. After the communist take-over in 1950, foreign missionaries have been absent, but a church has continued to grow and ministers not only to government and university people, but also to the working classes.

The India field was opened in 1896, and industrial training schools, dispensaries, a hospital and a continuous evangelism program have been maintained without interruption from the time the mission began, with an orphanage ministry, to this present day. Though small, the church in India became an independent yearly meeting (Bundelkhand) in 1962 and is entirely self-governing.

Friends’ missionaries in India entered heartily into cooperative leadership when the Evangelical Fellowship of India was formed in 1951. Union Biblical Seminary, now located in Pune, was established and trains leaders who are active throughout Asia and Africa. A remarkable ministry through the publishing of Christian literature has developed, which includes providing a fully-graded Sunday School curriculum (now in 26 languages), youth materials, commentaries, teacher training materials, and theological courses by extension.

In 1953 Friends began a mission in Chiayi, Taiwan, with a second center opened in 1957 and a third later in Taichung. Currently there are Friends churches in 35 centres with some 3,000 members over fifteen years of age, involving both Mainlanders and Taiwanese. In 1977 Taiwan Yearly Meeting was established with all offices filled with Chinese personnel.

In 1975 EFC-ER opened mission work in Hong Kong through the sending of a missionary couple to work in cooperation with the Oriental Missionary Society as teachers at United Christian College.

In cooperation with EFCI Yearly Meetings plus Iowa and Alaska as associate members, four mission projects are supported- Mexico, Philippines, Rwanda, and cooperative sponsorship of the Evangelical University in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

Cross-cultural projects in the US are not neglected. This is evidenced by the ministry to people of African descent through Akron Community Friends Church and to people of Chinese descent in northern Ohio, who meet at North Olmsted Friends Church in regular worship services and in Virginia Meeting at Hampton Friends.

We are not all we are going to be yet – by God’s Grace. But we are making progress. And we are excited about what God is doing, through us, to reach His World for Christ.

Contact Person: David Williams, General Superintendent
Address: 2018 Maple, Wichita, KS 67213, USA
Telephone: +1 316 267 0391
Click to Email
Website: www.efcmaym.org
Affiliation: Evangelical Friends Churches International (EFCI)
Members: 3000
Meetings: 65
Established: 1872
Affiliated Projects: Kibimba Hospital, Burundi, Africa

Contact Person:  Matthew Cork, General Superintendent
Address: PO Box 2079 Yorba Linda, CA 92885-1279
Telephone: +1 714-779-7662
Click to Email
Website: www.efcsouthwest.org
Affiliation: Evangelical Friends Churches International (EFCI)

Address:114 Trindale Road, Archdale, NC 27263 USA
Telephone: +1 336 875 8615
Fax: +1 336 292 1905
Contact person:: Brenda McKinney, Clerk
Click to Email
Website: www.friendschurchnc.org
Worship Style: Programmed

Clerk: Sara Scribner
Contact Person: Selma J Mesner
Address: 1840 W. University Ave, Wichita, KS 67213-3966
Click to Email
Website: www.greatplainsyearlymeeting.org
Affiliation: Friends United Meeting (FUM)
Worship Style: Programmed, Unprogrammed
Members: 611
Established: 1908 as Kansas YM, 2002 as Great Plains YM

Formerly Nebraska Yearly Meeting, Great Plains Yearly Meeting is composed of 6 monthly meetings scattered across Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado.

For many years, Nebraska Central College, located at Central City, Nebraska, was the traditional “home” of the Yearly Meeting. When it became impossible to continue, the College resources were merged with William Penn College at Oskaloosa, Iowa.

In 1957, a number of meetings were set off to form Rocky Mountain Yearly Meeting, which has since affiliated with Evangelical Friends Churches International. In recent years, the geographical center of the Yearly Meeting has gravitated to the Wichita, Kansas, area.

In spite of the distance from main Quaker centres, Great Plains Yearly Meeting maintains a lively interest in many Friends’ organizations and related activities. In recent years, the Yearly Meeting has been involved in farm crisis support work and in 1987 established the Friends Farm Loan Fund to aid Quaker farmers in the Midwest, with the help of a loan from Arch Street Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, given for this purpose.

Address: (office) 5615 S. Woodlawn Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Telephone: +1 773-288-3066
Click to Email
Website: www.ilym.org
Affiliation: Friends General Conference (FGC)
Worship Style: Unprogrammed
Members: 859
Meetings: 1 quarterly, 18 monthly, 1 preparative, 5 worship groups
Established: 1875
Publications: Among Friends, twice yearly.

Illinois Yearly Meeting was established under the care of Baltimore Yearly Meeting and held its first Annual Session near McNabb, Illinois in 1875. The meetinghouse, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is shared with Clear Creek Monthly Meeting. The meetinghouse is the center of a 12 acre rural campus which includes a campground, cabins, high school bunkhouse, and renovated farm house. Monthly meetings and worship groups are located in Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Two monthly meetings maintain dual affiliation with Western Yearly Meeting.

Clerk: Stephen L. Howell
Contact Person:  Doug Shoemaker (Superintendent)
Address: 715 N Wheeling Ave, Muncie, IN 47304, USA
Telephone: +1 800 292 5238, +1 765 284 6900
Fax: +1 765 284 8925
Click to Email
Website: www.iym.org
Affiliation: Friends United Meeting (FUM)
Worship Style: Programmed
Members: 2,292 (2017); 2,608 attendees (2017)
Meetings: 46 monthly meetings and four worship groups
Affiliated Groups: White’s Residential & Family Services and Quaker Haven Camp
Established: 1821
Publication: The Communicator
Reference Library: Friends Collection, Earlham Lilly Library in Richmond

Indiana Yearly Meeting has its beginning in the westward trek of Friends into the fertile Ohio Valley. The largest portion of the early Quaker settlers in this yearly meeting came from North Carolina, both for economic reasons and to move away from human slavery. Carolinian place names and Quaker surnames are still in great evidence in Indiana Yearly Meeting. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Indiana Yearly Meeting was the largest yearly meeting of Friends in the world. Eventually it set off four other yearly meetings: Western, Iowa, Kansas, and Wilmington.

By degrees, following the evangelical revival of the mid-nineteenth century, this Yearly Meeting began to employ ministers, so that all of the local congregations have full-time or part-time pastoral care. The same process of change which brought this type of ministry also brought music and the organized Bible School.

Indiana Yearly Meeting went through a long period of decline that lasted nearly a century. In recent years, membership has begun to increase and several new congregations have joined the yearly meeting. A renewed focus on church extension and missions partnerships is in evidence in the yearly meeting.

There is a united concern in this Yearly Meeting to present the message of Jesus Christ as held by Friends, seeking to be both “fully Christian and fully Quaker.” Indiana Yearly Meeting geographically now includes five states, with congregations in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Kentucky, with the remainder in Indiana. Richmond, Indiana, located in a southern point of the Yearly Meeting, was long the “seat” of Indiana Yearly Meeting and is still home to several Quaker organizations and other institutions with Quaker roots: Friends United Meeting Central Offices, Quaker Hill Conference Center, Earlham College, Earlham School of Religion, and Friends Fellowship Community, a retirement home.

Quaker Haven, a camp at Dewart Lake in northern Indiana, is maintained jointly by Indiana and Western Yearly Meetings. It holds numerous Indiana Yearly Meeting youth camps each summer, serving hundreds and spiritually impacting many lives. Indiana Yearly Meeting has maintained offices in Muncie, Indiana, near Ball State University, for over fifty years. Staff personnel at the Yearly Meeting Office include the General Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent, and office secretary. The bi-weekly publication, The Communicator, represents the ongoing work of the Yearly Meeting, For over 150 years, White’s Residential and Family Services, near Wabash, Indiana, has been a Quaker ministry to at-risk children and families. It has on-campus housing and a school, and offers social and spiritual development for ages 12-18. They also train and license Christian foster families, offer emergency overnight care, give home assistance to help families in crisis learn nurturing family skills, and provide permanent Christian homes for foster children available for adoption.

The Yearly Meeting’s work is carried out by eight major standing committees. These are: Christian Education, Communication and Publications, Evangelism and Outreach, Ministry and Oversight, Missions, and Christian Service, Stewardship and Finance, and Trustees. The Representative Council has executive powers when the Yearly Meeting is not in session.

Indiana Yearly Meeting’s statement of purpose is “creating environments that empower churches and individuals to be disciples of Jesus Christ and to make disciples of Jesus Christ.” This renewed focus on the core mission has energized new ministries and is leading to growth in Indiana Yearly Meeting.

Clerks: Valerie Ireland and Gale Toko-Ross
Contact Person: Valerie Ireland and Gale Toko-Ross
Address:c/o Mountain View Friends Meeting, 2280 S. Columbine St., Denver, CO 80210, +1 303 777 3799
Click to Email
Website: www.imym.org
Affiliation: Independent
Worship Style: Unprogrammed
Members: 1013 adults
Meetings: 4 regional, 17 monthly, 14 worship groups
Established: 1975

The Intermountain Yearly Meeting was established in 1975 by Friends from Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and neighboring areas who had met as a Fellowship for five preceding years.

Since its formation, IMYM has emphasized the monthly meetings as the primary place for the work of the Society of Friends. The role of the yearly meeting is seen as providing opportunities to enjoy spiritual growth, warm fellowship, and a network of communication and support throughout the wide geographical area. Yearly Meeting committees and working groups have been formed from time to time, in response to leadings that gain the support of the constituent meetings.

There are four regional meetings in IMYM: Arizona Half Yearly, Colorado General, New Mexico General and Utah Friends Fellowship, representing seventeen meetings and various (currently fourteen) worship groups. Mexico City Monthly Meeting is included in both IMYM adult fellowship and that of Pacific Yearly Meeting. In 1993 there were 1013 adult members, an increase of 59.3% since 1985. There are also a significant number of junior or associate members and a large number of regular attenders.

Yearly Meetings are held each June in a variety of sites within the larger geographical area. Primary officers are chosen in rotation from each of the regions in order to facilitate communication over the distances involved.

Clerk: Deborah Dakin
Contact Person: Deborah Dakin
Address: 206 2nd Avenue NW, Mt Vernon, IA 52314
Telephone: +1 319 310-5438 or 319 895-8133
Click to Email
Website: www.iymc.org
Affiliation: Conservative
Worship Style: Unprogrammed
Members: 574
Meetings: 13 monthly, 1 preparatory
School: Scattergood Friends School
Established: 1877

Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) is held at Scattergood Friends School near West Branch, Iowa. Midyear Meeting is held at Bear Creek Meeting near Earlham, IA.

The Yearly Meeting operates Scattergood Friends School. It is a small coeducational, college preparatory day and boarding high school with a deep concern for every individual. Students and staff share in the varied tasks of daily living, as well as in care of garden, orchard and farm. Community living involves young people and adults in a closely-knit program of study, physical work, recreation and worship.

Clerk:  John Rains
Contact Person: Mary Thury
Address:  PO Box 657, Oskaloosa, IA 52577, USA
Telephone: +1 641 673 9701
Click to Email
Website: www.iaym.org
Affiliation: Friends United Meeting (FUM)
Worship Style: Programmed
Members: 3328
Meetings: 37
Affiliated Groups: 2 Worship Groups, 1 Indian Mission at Mesquakie
Established: 1863
Publication: The Iowa Friend monthly except August
Other Centers Camp Quaker Heights; Tall Oaks Lodge (accommodation offered)

The Yearly Meeting continues to emphasize church planting and mission outreach. The first church was begun at Salem, Iowa, in 1835. In 1863 the Yearly Meeting was officially organized, being set off as Iowa Yearly Meeting by Indiana Yearly Meeting. There are three full-time employees that service the Yearly Meeting – the General Superintendent, a Camp Operations Administrator, and an Administrative Secretary.

Iowa Friends support the work of the Friends United Meeting with some meetings also supporting works through EFM. Also, the work at Mesquakie Friends Mission (near Tama, IA) is coming under the works of our Yearly Meeting.

Our Camp Quaker Heights continues to serve over 300 youth at our summer camps, and many other groups throughout the Yearly Meeting use the facility for various types of meetings. Within the last eight years the camp has built all new cabins as well as a new Lodge facility that features “hotel-style” rooms.

Clerk: Nancy Reeves
Contact Person: Nancy Reeves or LEYM Worker
Address:  Lake Erie Yearly Meeting, c/o Office Manager,  Ann Arbor Friends Meeting, 1420 Hill Street. Ann Arbor, MI 48104, USA
Telephone: +1 740 587-4767
Click to  Email or Click to Email
Website: www.leym.org
Affiliation: FGC
Worship style: Unprogrammed
Members: 617 (as of July 2017)
Meetings: 1 Quarterly Meeting, 19 Monthly Meetings, 8 Worship Groups
Established:  Association of Friends Meetings, 1939; Association and Yearly Meeting 1963; Yearly Meeting with Associated Meetings, 1969
Publications: LEYM Bulletin 3 times a year; Annual Records; Policies & Procedures manual (updated as necessary)

Lake Erie Yearly Meeting began in 1939 as an association of Friends Meetings in Ohio, Michigan, western Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. It became a Yearly Meeting within the Association in 1963, and changed to a Yearly Meeting with associate meetings in 1969. All associated Meetings are now part of the Yearly Meeting. The Annual Meeting – currently scheduled for late July – is for inspiration and fellowship, with business meeting for consideration of basic policies; committee reports and responses to concerns brought by committees; and the naming of officers, representatives to Friends’ organizations, and the standing committees. A Representative Meeting is held in the spring for committee meetings and to prepare the work of the Annual Meeting.

At present, the following standing committees are active: Advancement & Outreach, Arrangements & Site, Earthcare, Executive, Finance, Ministry & Nurture, Nominating, Peace & Justice, Program, Publications & Archives, and Youth & Children. These committees meet and consult throughout the year to carry on the work of the Yearly Meeting. Committees of concern are set up as the occasion arises, made up of those persons under the weight of that concern, and are laid down when their work is complete.

Committees and representatives to Friends’ organizations report to Annual Meeting and through the Bulletin and Annual Records. Electronic distribution of the Bulletin is the main means of distribution, supplemented by mailing hard copies to each Monthly Meeting. The Lake Erie Yearly Meeting Policies and Procedures manual is revised from time to time. Since 1985, all member Meetings have been invited to participate in an annual process of responding to a set of queries developed by the Ministry & Nurture Committee on concerns arising from the membership. Summaries of the responses are published in the Bulletin and/or the Annual Records.

The focus of the Yearly Meeting budget is on supporting member Meetings, youth and children of the Yearly Meeting, and individuals engaged in spiritual formation and other ministries. The Yearly Meeting supports Olney Friends School in Barnesville, Ohio. The Yearly Meeting does not donate directly to Friends’ organizations outside our region other than Friends General Conference. All member Meetings and Worship Groups, and individual Friends, are encouraged to make contributions to these organizations. LEYM values and interacts with the work of the local Meetings as well as national and worldwide Quaker organizations; accordingly, it has not developed an administrative structure requiring a paid staff except for a very part-time Yearly Meeting worker.

The one Quarterly Meeting within LEYM, Green Pastures, consists of seven Monthly Meetings and four Worship Groups in lower Michigan. GPQM has oversight of the Michigan Friends Center in Chelsea, Michigan, and financial and interactive relationships with the Michigan Area office of the American Friends Service Committee in Ypsilanti.

Clerk: David Edinger
Address: 503 S. Main St, New Castle, IN 47362 USA
Click to Email
Affiliation: Friends United Meeting

The New Association of Friends is a voluntary association of monthly meetings, churches and individuals that support worship, ministry and service through the cultivation of Christian faith in the Quaker tradition.

Our congregations can currently be found in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.

In 2013, 15 Quaker meetings (church congregations) departed as a group from the Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends, and these fifteen meetings joined together as the New Association of Friends.  A major reason for the formation of the New Association was that these meetings have a different conception of the way that authority should be exercised within an association of church congregations than the other meetings in Indiana Yearly Meeting do. The New Association recognizes both a legitimate role in the Association speaking for, and acting from, the combined membership, and also the freedom of the individual church congregations (meetings) and the validity of their prophetic voices, as described in Ephesians 5:21, where Christians are urged to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ Jesus.

New Association Friends are proud of their roots in Indiana Yearly Meeting, a church organization founded in 1821. In their earliest decades, many Indiana Yearly Meeting Friends were a strong part of the anti-slavery movement and other reform movements. Levi Coffin, known as “the President of the Underground Railroad” and a Quaker from Newport, Indiana (now Fountain City), was a member of Indiana Yearly Meeting. In succeeding decades, Indiana Yearly Meeting partook in many renewal and revival movements, from varying evangelical, holiness Christian, and modernist perspectives. All of these spiritual movements also affected the 15 meetings that formed the New Association of Friends. The New Association of Friends has no creedal statement to which its members must adhere. It identifies strongly as Quaker, and it is a member of the Friends United Meeting, an international association of Quakers made up of 30 yearly meetings around the world, and committed “to energize and equip Friends through the power of the Holy Spirit to gather people into fellowships where Jesus Christ is known, loved, and obeyed as Teacher and Lord.”

One meeting that was part of Indiana Yearly Meeting, West Richmond Friends Meeting, of Richmond, Indiana, approved in 2008 a welcoming and affirming minute that affirmed gay and lesbian persons, among many others. Other meetings in Indiana Yearly Meeting objected to this minute from West Richmond, feeling it to be contrary to a statement of the yearly meeting as approved in 1982, which had declared the practice of homosexuality to be sinful. As Indiana Yearly Meeting wrestled with this issue, and, in 2011, adopted a process of “reconfiguration,” many Friends felt that the way yearly meeting authority was exercised was a critical issue. Some felt that a monthly meeting like West Richmond should be free to utilize its prophetic voice to adopt a minute on an issue where other Friends do not necessarily agree. The 15 meetings that joined the New Association, set off in 2013 from Indiana Yearly Meeting as a result of this reconfiguration process, have united around the freedom of meetings like West Richmond to be prophetic in this manner, not around the content of West Richmond’s minute in itself. There is much more detail on this recent history in articles written by Stephen Angell in the online journal Quaker Theology, issues 18 to 24: http://quaker.org/quest/QT-Issue-list.html

New Association Friends have come up with a variety of pithy ways to describe themselves. Two such attempts follow:

We (New Association Friends) “are a bunch of Orthodox, Jesus-loving Christians who want to follow God’s will.” Margaret Fraser

“If we don’t live out the admonition to live in love, with each other and all those out there, than nothing else we do has any more meaning than a clanging bell or crashing cymbal. We are to become a people of love, forgiveness, and acceptance.” Joe Kelly  

Presiding Clerk: Bruce Neumann
Contact Person: Noah Merrill, YM Secretary
Address: 901 Pleasant Street, Worcester, MA 01602-1908, USA
Telephone: +1 508 754 6760
Click to Email
Website: www.neym.org
Affiliation: Friends United Meeting (FUM), Friends General Conference (FGC)
Worship Style: Programmed, Unprogrammed
Members: 3358
Meetings: 62 monthly, 7 preparative, 19 worship groups
Established: 1661
Publication: Email newsletter (monthly)

The first Quakers in North America came from Great Britain to New England in 1656. By 1658 meetings were established at Sandwich, Massachusetts and at Newport, Rhode Island. Massachusetts passed severe laws against the Quakers, but Rhode Island offered a haven to the persecuted. At Newport the first General Meeting was held in 1661.

Since that time meetings have been held annually, making New England the oldest yearly meeting in the world.

For 30 years (1888-1918), New England Friends administered Friends’ work in Ramallah, Palestine. The first Junior Yearly Meeting started in New England in 1930. In 1945, five groups of Friends – the two yearly meetings which resulted from the Gurney-Wilbur division of 1845, the Connecticut Valley Association of Friends and two independent monthly meetings in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island – united to form the present New England Yearly Meeting. Although the Yearly Meeting reflects the diversity of its background, Friends in New England continue to seek and to find a deeper, underlying unity in God’s Spirit.

The Yearly Meeting operates a summer camp near China Lake, Maine, the Moses Brown School (K-12) in Providence, Rhode Island, and a residence for older people, Thayer House, in Hingham, Massachusetts.

Developing a sister relationship with Cuba Yearly Meeting, encouraging visitation and travel in the ministry, facing issues of prejudice and poverty, supporting local meetings, confronting white supremacy, and dealing with climate change are major concerns of the Yearly Meeting.

Presiding Clerk: Jeffrey Aaron
Contact Person: Helen Garay Toppins, Associate Secretary
Address: 15 Rutherford Place, New York, NY 10003, USA
Telephone: +1 212 673 5750
Click to Email
Website: www.nyym.org
Affiliation: Friends United Meeting (FUM), Friends General Conference (FGC)
Worship Style: Programmed, Unprogrammed
Members: 4,270
Meetings: 5 quarterly, 1 half-yearly, 3 regional, 66 monthly, 2 executive, 2 preparative, 6 prison meetings
Established: 1695
Publication: Spark (five times a year)

In 1657 Governor Peter Stuyvesant of New Amsterdam began the persecutions intended to rid the Colony of Quakers. This led to the “Flushing Remonstrance” which resulted in the establishment of religious freedom in the New York area 26 years before the “Toleration Act” broadened the base of religious liberty in America.

Flushing Meeting House, NYYM’s oldest (still in use), was built in 1694; the following year New York Yearly Meeting was set off from New England Yearly Meeting and its first sessions were held in 1696.

New York suffered the separatism that tragically overran Quakerism in the nineteenth century. In 1827-28, monthly meetings broke up, often to build houses across the road from one another. Two yearly meetings were organized, one “Orthodox” and the other “Hicksite”. Slowly Friends came to recognize that common faith was stronger than difference, but it was a full century until they experimented with joint sessions, and 1955 before organic unity was restored. Now there is one New York Yearly Meeting, affiliated with both Friends General Conference and Friends United Meeting, encompassing a constantly enriching variety of tradition and practice and wide geographical membership, from a pastoral meeting in New York State, close to the Canadian border, to an unprogrammed meeting in Dover, New Jersey, close to Pennsylvania.

Update coming soon.

Clerk: Michelle Downey
Contact Person:  Michelle Downey
Address: PO Box 4591, Greensboro, NC 27404 USA
Click to Email
Website: www.ncymc.org
Affiliation: Conservative
Worship Style: Unprogrammed
Members: 400
Meetings: 9 monthly
Established: 1698 (separated 1904)

North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative) is an organizational body of the Religious Society of Friends in the southeastern United States. Our monthly meetings are located in North Carolina and Virginia and include both older meetings dating back to the 18th century and newer ones forming in the late 20th century.

A welcoming and affirming faith community, the term “conservative” refers to the practice of silent waiting worship and distinguishes the body from other branches of Friends in North Carolina who have adopted the pastoral system.

The yearly meeting began as North Carolina Yearly Meeting in 1698 but in 1904 began meeting as two separate bodies: NCYM affiliated with what is now Friends United Meeting and a smaller group forming NCYM(C). The life of the spirit continues to be the core of the meeting. There is a strong concern for seeking justice and Friends work toward that goal from within and without, locally, nationally and on an international level. This work includes support for education and peace work through Quaker organizations.  

Clerk: Dave Minden
Contact Person:  Dave Minden
Address: c/o Madison Friends Meeting, 1704 Roberts Ct, Madison, WI 53711
Telephone:  +1 608-256-2249 leave message for NYM
Click to Email
Website: www.northernyearlymeeting.org
Affiliation: Friends General Conference (FGC)
Worship Style: Unprogrammed
Members: Approx. 740 adults and 120 children (members and attenders)
Meetings: 31 monthly meetings and worship groups
Established: 1975

Northern Yearly Meeting (NYM) is comprised of monthly meetings, preparative meetings, and worship groups, mainly from Wisconsin and Minnesota, with some from upper Michigan, Iowa, North and South Dakota.

NYM meets in an annual session to worship in the manner of Friends, to practice corporate discernment under the guidance of the Spirit as we conduct our business, to celebrate and to share our lives and work as a community of Friends. NYM supports a strong children and youth program, as evidenced by the large numbers of families that participate in Annual Session each year and in youth retreats throughout the year. We also meet in spring and fall for Interim Sessions to strengthen community and continue to conduct business.  

Clerk: Jana Ostrom
Contact Person: Dorothy Day, Secretary
Address: 3539 NE Fremont, Portland, OR 97212, USA
Telephone: +1 503-519-5810
Click to Email
Website: www.npym.org
Affiliation: Independent
Worship Style: Unprogrammed
Members: 891 (in 2018)
Meetings: 23 Monthly Meetings and 1 Preparative Meeting
Affiliated Groups: 19 active Worship Groups, 3 Quarterly Meetings
Publications: Western Friend (jointly with Pacific and Intermountain YMs); NPYM Faith and Practice

North Pacific Yearly Meeting formed in 1973 when seven monthly meetings in Washington and Oregon separated from Pacific Yearly Meeting to form a new Yearly Meeting. Friends in the northwest corner of the United States had been feeling the stress of distance and were moved to set up their own Yearly Meeting to focus on fellowship and spiritual growth. Since then NPYM has expanded rapidly and finds itself excited and challenged to support monthly meetings, preparative meetings, worship groups, and isolated Friends in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and parts of Wyoming.

As part of our commitment across this large area we move our annual session every two years to different geographical areas of the yearly meeting.

NPYM and Pacific and Intermountain Yearly Meetings support the publication of Western Friend, a bimonthly periodical of works by West Coast, liberal Friends.

North Pacific Yearly Meeting is affiliated with American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), Friends Committee for National Legislation (FCNL), Friends Peace Teams (FPT), and Friends for Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Transgendered and Queer Concerns (FLGBTQC).

Over the years individual Friends from NPYM have served as clerk of the board of directors for AFSC and FCNL, and have been staff members of the World, Section of the Americas, and West coast offices of FWCC.

In 2006 NPYM hosted the annual gathering of Friends General Conference for its West Coast debut. We are slowly developing connections, friendships, and a working relationship with Northwest Yearly Meeting of Evangelical Friends Churches International, (EFCI) which shares our geographical area.

At the time of our formation a decision was made to minimize the business at our annual session so that this time together could be for fellowship and spiritual renewal. The business of the Yearly Meeting is carried out by the Steering Committee, made up of representatives of the monthly meetings. This committee meets three or four times a year to carry out the work of the yearly meeting between annual sessions and to oversee the work of our ongoing and ad hoc committees. The clerk of the Steering Committee, the Presiding Clerk, and the Associate Steering Committee Clerk form an Executive Committee that handles the Yearly Meeting business between Steering Committee meetings. Other than a part time secretary, all of the work of NPYM is done by volunteers.

In 2006 we began the process of vision and structure, to see where we have been, where we want to be, and how are we going to get there. This work continues. Our new Faith & Practice was approved in 2017.

Many of our monthly meetings have fewer than 50 members and face a constant challenge to provide high quality religious education for the next generation.

Our Junior Friends’ (high school) program has been active since the beginning of the yearly meeting. This group is for the most part self-directed and often plans a summer camp for themselves in addition to planning their gathering at the annual session. In 2007 they were planning an international service project. The Young Friends group (18-35) was slower to form but is now becoming a vital part of our Yearly Meeting. NPYM continues to seek ways to involve the youth in our yearly meeting.

As we grow into being part of the wider world of Friends we struggle with geographic distances, both from the traditional centers of Quakerism, and within our NPYM geographical area.

For the most part our budget is dependent on assessments from our members. To support new and small meetings we have kept these assessments low. Even with almost two thirds of our budget for travel we are unable to fully fund the work of our representatives to national and international Quaker Organizations.

We rely on our local meetings to be the backbone of the yearly meeting and to carry on the work of social involvement both locally and abroad.

Contact Person: Jim Le Shana, General Superintendent
Address: 200 N Meridian St., Newberg, OR 97132-2714, USA
Telephone: +1 503 538 9419
Fax: +1 503 538 9410
Click to Email
Website: www.nwfriends.org
Affiliation: Evangelical Friends Churches International (EFCI)
Members:  6,438
Meetings: 45 local churches, 4 extension churches, 8 Latino mission points, 12 mission points
Established: 1893
Publications: NWYM Connection (monthly)
Schools:  George Fox University; Portland Seminary; Friends Center; Greenleaf Friends Academy
Retirement Facility: Friendsview Retirement Community

Northwest Yearly Meeting (formerly Oregon Yearly Meeting) was established on the authority of Iowa Yearly Meeting, 1893. At the present time it includes meetings in three states (Idaho, Oregon and Washington).

Through the active work of missionaries from 1931 to 2002, evangelical yearly meetings were established in Bolivia (1973) called La Iglesia Nacional Los Amigos-Bolivia (INELA) and Peru (1997) called La Iglesia Nacional Los Amigos-Peru (INELA). Outreach to North Africa was begun in 2002 with two families serving there; and to Russia in 2003 with three workers in Elektrostal. There are also seven teachers serving in foreign countries. Young people are encouraged to get involved in short-term ministries in other countries.

Home missions include work among Hispanics in all three states, and among Indians in North Idaho. Support for Evangelical Friends Mission (EFM) in Wichita, Kansas, with missions around the world is also an important part of the outreach strategy of the Global Outreach Board.

Four well-equipped, year-round camping and conference centers are owned and maintained by Friends in the Yearly Meeting: Camp Tilikum in Newberg, Oregon; Twin Rocks in Rockaway Beach, Oregon; Quaker Hill at McCall, Idaho; and Quaker Cove in Anacortes, Washington.

Clerk: Philip W. Helms
Contact Persons: Bob & Loisanne Rockwell
Telephone: (740) 425-2013
Click to Email
Website: www.ohioyearlymeeting.org
Affiliation: Conservative
Worship Style: Unprogrammed
Members: 490
Meetings: 9 monthly, 3 quarterly
Established: 1813

Ohio Yearly Meeting was set up under the authority of Baltimore Yearly Meeting at Short Creek.  Mount Pleasant soon became its center, but due to a division in the Yearly Meeting, the Wilburite branch moved in 1878 to its present location at Stillwater, near Barnesville, Ohio.  Its meetings are in the eastern part of the State except for two in Pennsylvania, one in Virginia, and one in Michigan.

Ohio Yearly Meeting's ten unprogrammed meetings place special emphasis on Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour and on the Holy Spirit by which we may be guided.  We work for peace, love and Christian fellowship.  Much of the Yearly Meeting's interest is focused on Olney Friends School and the Walton Retirement Home.

A History of Ohio Yearly Meeting, The Eye of Faith by William P. Taber, Jr. chronicles the development of the yearly meeting.

Contact Person: Susan Lee Barton, Administrative Assistant
Address: 1117 South A Street, Richmond, IN 47374 USA
Click to Email
Website: https://www.ovym.org/
Affiliation: Friends General Conference (FGC); two monthly meetings dual affiliation with Friends United Meeting (FUM) and FGC.
Members: 492
Meetings: 16 MMs; 2 Quarterly
Established: 1821
Publications: Quaker Quill 3 times a year; 2020 Faith and Practice book, yearly meeting minutes, OVYM Directory

In the early nineteenth century many Friends migrated from North and South Carolina, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to Southwestern Ohio and Eastern Indiana. Friends in the area were active in the Underground Railroad, helping slaves to escape to Toledo and Detroit. The numerous meetings formed in those years, grouped into five quarterly meetings, established Indiana Yearly Meeting in 1821.

After the separation of 1827-28 this group was known as Indiana Yearly Meeting (Hicksite). The designation following its name (Hicksite) was changed to (Friends General Conference) around 1900. In 1976 the name was changed to Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting because having two Yearly Meetings named Indiana was confusing, and constituent meetings (all of which worship in the unprogrammed manner) are now located in Southwestern Ohio, Indiana, and northern Kentucky.

Work for peace and other social concerns is carried on by the monthly meetings. Work to nurture the life of the Spirit in the monthly meetings, including nurturing youth involvement, is carried on by yearly meeting committees and the quarterly meetings. Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting supports the work of a number of Friends’ organizations devoted to the implementation of Quaker testimonies.

Additional information may be found on our website and in the Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice book.

Presiding Clerk: Laura Magnani
Contact Person: Laura Magnani
Address: 17165 Via Toledo, San Lorenzo, CA 94580 USA
Click to Email
Website: www.pacificyearlymeeting.org
Affiliation: Friends General Conference
Worship Style: Unprogrammed
Established: 1947
Members: 1177
Meetings: 35 Monthly, about 18 Worship Groups
Publications: Western Friend (print magazine with additional content and resources online, published 6 times per year, jointly with North Pacific and Intermountain YMs)

The College Park Monthly Meeting formed during the 1880s in San José, California, under the leadership of Joel and Hannah Bean. Around that Meeting developed the College Park Association of Friends. In April 1931 through the initiative of Howard and Anna Brinton, a meeting was called of Friends from California, Oregon and Washington, and the Pacific Coast Association of Friends was founded.

Individual Friends from the Eastern unprogrammed tradition were slow to find each other in Southern California. Small groups came into being and disappeared, lacking a structure for communication among them. Orange Grove Meeting, in Pasadena, established in 1908, was unusual. It was under the care of unprogrammed (Hicksite) Iowa Conservative Yearly Meeting and was large enough to acquire land for a Meetinghouse and a school.

Soon Orange Grove Meeting took several of the emerging Meetings in Southern California under its care, nurturing them until they became Los Angeles (1942), La Jolla (1947), Santa Monica (1948), Claremont (1953), Inland Valley (1960), and other Monthly Meetings. Unprogrammed Meetings and Worship Groups in Southern California and southern Nevada today comprise the Southern California Quarterly Meeting (SCQM). Together with College Park Quarterly Meeting, Mexico City, and Hawaii they make up the present membership of Pacific Yearly Meeting.

Pacific Yearly Meeting presently consists of 35 monthly meetings, including Mexico City and Honolulu monthly meetings. The annual gatherings, usually held in summer, are designed to allow time for fellowship, education and spiritual renewal, as well as the conduct of Yearly Meeting business.

Pacific Yearly Meeting has active committees on Peace & Social Order (with concern for disarmament, reconciliation, social justice, human need), Latin American Concerns, and Unity with Nature, (with a concern for use of the earth’s resources and preservation of the environment). Pacific Yearly Meeting has two paid staff persons: a Youth Programs Coordinator and an Administrative Assistant.

As an expression of support for persons moved to act on a personal concern for ministry or service, a Fund for Concerns was established. Members may apply for support to this fund through their monthly meetings. It is administered by the Ministry Committee of Pacific Yearly Meeting.

Clerk: TBC
General Secretary: Christie Duncan-Tessmer
Contact Person: Mary Walsh, Executive Assistant to the General Secretary
Address: Friends Center, 1515 Cherry St., Philadelphia, PA 19102-1479, USA
Telephone: +1 215 241 7234
Click to Email
Website: www.pym.org
Affiliation: Friends General Conference (FGC)
Worship Style:  Unprogrammed
Publication: Faith in Practice Fall/Spring bi-annual newsletter; weekly emails on news and events.

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting traces its origins to the occasion when Friends on both sides of the Delaware River first came together for a General Meeting at Burlington, New Jersey, in 1681. This General Meeting was held each year alternately at Burlington and Philadelphia. From 1760, sessions were held only in Philadelphia.

The unfortunate Separation of 1827 resulted in two yearly meetings covering the same geographical area, but with separate memberships. With the passage of a century, however, a trend towards unity developed, which was augmented by common participation in organizations like the American Friends Service Committee. In 1955, the two yearly meetings happily reunited.

Continuing Sessions, which meets Fall and Spring, plus Annual Sessions (which meets in July) support the business of the Yearly Meeting in session. When Continuing or Annual Sessions are not being held, yearly meeting business is handled by one of three Councils: Nominating, Quaker Life, or Administrative. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting activities are carried out by Granting Groups, Collaboratives and Sprints. More information about the structure of the PYM can be found at www.pym.org.

In addition to the numerous Friends Schools under the care of monthly meetings, the Yearly Meeting has a caring relationship with two boarding schools, George School and Westtown School.

The location of the Yearly Meeting offices is in the Friends Center in Philadelphia which houses other Quaker groups including the American Friends Service Committee, FWCC Section of the Americas, Quaker Information Center, and Friends Council on Education. Each of these groups adds strength to the life of the Yearly Meeting. The Yearly Meeting’s Arch Street Meeting House provides meeting facilities for Friends and non-Friends, as well as tours and information on Quakerism and Quaker history to visitors to the historic district of Philadelphia. The Burlington Quaker Meeting House and Center for Conference, which is under the care of Burlington Quarter, offers day and overnight meeting and conference space in Burlington, New Jersey.

Pendle Hill, the Quaker study center located in Wallingford, PA, adds greatly to the life of the Yearly Meeting as do the reference centers nearby: Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College, located in Swarthmore, PA and the Quaker Collection at Haverford College, located in Haverford, PA.

Clerk: Jeff Brown
Recording Clerk: John Cardarelli
Website: www.piedmontfriendsfellowship.org
Affiliation: Friends General Conference (FGC)
Worship Style: Unprogrammed
Members: About 950
Established: 2015

Piedmont Friends Fellowship (PFF) is a collective of 19 Friends (Quaker) Meetings and Worship Groups in North Carolina and nearby areas that gathers for worship and fellowship in the spirit of Friends’ quarterly meetings. The Fellowship membership includes a sub-set of member meetings that have opted to join and participate in the Piedmont Friends Yearly Meeting (PFYM) and additionally includes meetings who are also members of the North Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM), North Caroline Yearly Meeting (Conservative), and meetings who are otherwise independent. All affiliated meetings participate in the activities of the Fellowship (PFF) including its annual retreat and business meeting held in the spring, while the PFYM member meetings hold some additional sessions in conjunction with the PFF spring retreat in order to conduct business traditionally associated with a Quaker yearly meeting.

PFF was founded in 1968 out of a need for meetings to come together and to address issues and share concerns in a wider Quaker forum. Annually, PFF develops one or two workshops, a weekend family retreat, and through its youth committee, retreats for middle and high-school age young Friends. At all of these gatherings, the underlying goal is to nurture the spirit within each of us as we share with new and old Friends.

Through its affiliation with Friends General Conference (FGC), many families and individual Friends in PFF enjoy attending the annual FGC national Gathering of Friends. PFF appoints representatives to the FGC Central Committee and numerous PFF members are engaged in the various programs and ministries of FGC.

Piedmont Friends Fellowship has welcomed into its membership Friends Meetings or organized Friends worship groups desirous of mutual support and fellowship as Quakers in North Carolina and adjacent areas. PFF respects the theological basis and worship practice of each individual meeting or worship group and, although open to Friendly and educational discussion, as an organization does not emphasize theological issues.

Piedmont Friends Fellowship has historically focused on the Quaker testimonies of Peace, Equality, Integrity, Simplicity, and Community. From this basis PFF meetings founded and have supported Quaker House of Fayetteville with a mission of service, witness, and peace building around our country’s military establishments in Fayetteville, NC and nearby.

PFF is an intentionally inclusive organization not only with respect to theology, but also with regard to race and sexual orientation as part of the historic testimony of equality. While individual Friends and PFF meetings may have some differing understandings and worship practices, PFF holds to unprogrammed worship at its gatherings seeking, through deep spiritual attention, to experience and respond to the Light Within.

The creation of Piedmont Friends Yearly Meeting evolved from the needs of some meetings within PFF that desired a yearly meeting affiliation as might be made available through PFF. Over six years of threshing and planning resulted in the establishment of PFYM which held its first annual sessions in March of 2015.

The Fellowship (PFF) and the yearly meeting (PFYM) are open to inquiries from any meeting or worship group desiring to explore a mutually supportive and beneficial relationship.

Presiding Clerk: Mary Heathman
Contact Person: Merle Clowe, Administrative Coordinator
Address: 2748 E. Pikes Peak Av., Colorado Springs, CO 80909
Telephone: +1 720 855 8727
Click to Email
Website: www.rmym.org
Affiliation: Evangelical Friends Churches International (EFCI)
Publication: Traveling Minute (quarterly), Yearly Meeting Minutes

The Rocky Mountain Yearly Meeting was set off by the Nebraska Yearly Meeting in 1957. The geographical area of the Yearly Meeting includes part of Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Arizona.

Four Navajo Friends Meetings are members of the Rocky Mountain YM.

The Yearly Meeting has a mountain camp, Quaker Ridge, hosts the Yearly Meeting sessions, youth camps and church retreats.

Co-Clerks: Cherice Bock and Sarah Katreen Hoggatt
Address: P.O. Box 508, Newberg, OR 97132
Telephone: +1 971 264-0689
Click to Email or
Click to Email (website issues)
Website: www.scymfriends.org
Publication: Bulletin (weekly)

Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends includes monthly meetings that were released by the Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends Church in June 2018. The geographical area of the Yearly Meeting includes part of Oregon and Washington. The Yearly Meeting supports Barclay Press.

Clerk: Almeta Smith
Contact Person: Almeta Smith
Address: 3802 Gardendale, Houston, TX 77027, USA
Telephone: +1 501 663 1439
Click to Email
Website: www.scym.org
Affiliation: Friends General Conference (FGC)
Worship Style: Unprogrammed
Publication: SCYM Newsletter (twice a year)

South Central Yearly Meeting grew out of Southwest Friends Conference which came into being in 1954 as a fellowship of unprogrammed meetings in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. Average attendance at Yearly Meeting is 120, with Friends coming as far as 600 miles for the annual gathering. The Yearly Meeting and its constituent meetings give strong support to the work of Friends World Committee for Consultation, American Friends Service Committee, Friends Committee on National Legislation and Friends General Conference.

Some meetings and many individual Friends have been quite active in the movement for racial integration and peace, Indian affairs and related fields of endeavour.

Some members give large amounts of their time to the work of the AFSC, FWCC and other Quaker organizations. Some members have studied at Quaker colleges and many have attended the large conferences of Friends General Conference and various Friends gatherings. Several have travelled in yearly meetings outside the United States. As a result, in spite of a geographical isolation from the main centers of Quakerism, there is a strong identification with Friends elsewhere and at the same time a real relationship with the communities in the area.

Clerk: Bill Carlie
Contact Person: Vicki Carlie, Secretary
Address: PO Box 4024, Winter Park, FL 32793. USA
Telephone: +1 407 739-4150
Click to Email
Website: www.seymquakers.org
Affiliation: Friends General Conference (FGC)
Worship Style: Unprogrammed
Members: 424
Meetings: 16
Affiliated Groups:  7 worship groups, 1 unaffiliated
Established: 1964
Publications: SEYM Faith and Practice; SEYM Operational Handbook, Procedures & Job; Descriptions; SEYM Newsletter; Michener Lecture booklet/pamphlet (annually); Walton Lecture booklet/pamphlet (annually)

Southeastern Yearly Meeting (SEYM) is unique in Quakerism with its founders having been members in three of the east coast’s Quaker traditions: FGC, FUM, and Conservative. Quakers in the southeastern USA have a long and colorful history.

Not only did George Fox travel past the then Spanish-claimed Florida and Georgia coastlines, but in 1696, Jonathan Dickinson, for whom the Florida State Park is named, landed and wrote his Journal describing (in seemingly rather unfriendly terms) his experiences with the locals.

Nearly 75 years later, the Quaker botanist William Bartram studied Florida flora. He is perhaps the first Friend to witness the fury of a Florida hurricane, c. 1773. He also wrote that in 1793, he visited a Friends Meeting near Wrightsborough, Georgia, that had formed c. 1755.

By 1807, these Friends, opposed to slavery, migrated to Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois.

From 1800 to 1900, the first influx of Florida Friends arrived from Indiana, Nebraska and Iowa, into Alachua County. Whitewater Meeting (1884-1897) near Archer was under the care of Richmond Monthly Meeting (IN). They built the first Florida meetinghouse. During the same time period, Lake Kerr Friends, having migrated from Michigan, Ohio, and London, GB, started the first Friends Elementary School. They sent their high school youth to Westtown Friends School near Philadelphia. The Big Freeze of 1892-1893 wiped out both of these Friends communities of orange grove owners.

Contemporary Quaker history commences in 1893 when the railroad transported the first Quaker farmers to Miami. The Quaker community there waxed and waned, finally becoming firmly established in 1948, and, under the care of FWCC, became a Monthly Meeting in 1950. Meanwhile, c. 1900, Friends had been moving to Orlando from the New Jersey and Philadelphia YMs and had established a preparative meeting under the care of Moorestown (NJ) Monthly Meeting. They became a Monthly Meeting in 1944 under the care of FWCC. In 1917, St. Petersburg Friends organized and have met regularly since. They, too, became a recognized Monthly Meeting under the care of FWCC and built Florida’s first continuously used meetinghouse. Due to very poor roads and no direct transportation, there was little contact among these early Florida Friends.

By 1950, encouraged by AFSC, the Southeastern Conference of the Religious Society of Friends was formed. The 1962 Conference recorded that “Seven Meetings of the Southeastern Friends Conference having indicated by official Minutes their desire to assume Yearly Meeting status, the Planning Committee recommends that these Meetings now consider themselves the Southeastern Yearly Meeting (of the Religious Society) of Friends…” These seven Monthly Meetings were: Augusta, GA, and Florida meetings: Gainesville, Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, Palm Beach, and St. Petersburg.

The first full Yearly Meeting was held 12 April 1963 near Avon Park, FL. J. Barnard Walton (Friends General Conference, 1915-1963) had been instrumental in shepherding the Conference from its inception in 1950 to this conclusion. In recognition of his support, it was decided to name the annual YM Saturday night lecture series, The Walton Lecture.

By 1970, SEYM decided to formally acknowledge the organizations that had supported its meetings: FGC, FUM and FWCC. Holiday weekends were selected for formal and informal gatherings to allow Friends from SEYM’s wide area to attend as many meetings as possible. Easter week was selected for Yearly Meeting and the Walton Lecture. Martin Luther King weekend was chosen for Winter Representative Meeting and the annual Michener Lecture. Thanksgiving weekend was chosen for the recreational Half Yearly Meeting (HYM) held in state parks (Oleno, Wekiva Springs).

SEYM Meetings continue to grow and wane as population centers evolve. At the turn of the 21st century, 25 Monthly Meetings and Worship Groups were affiliated with or had a relationship with SEYM.

Clerk: Barbara Esther
Contact Person:  Susan Phelan, Admin Assistant, 1702 Pratt Ave NE, Huntsville, AL 35801 USA
Telephone: +1 865 272 9621
Click to Email (Admin) Click to Email (Clerk)
Website: www.sayma.org
Affiliation: Friends General Conference (FGC)
Worship Style: Unprogrammed
Members: 1100
Meetings: 21
Affiliated Groups: 6
Established: 1970

Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting and Association (SAYMA) traces its roots to the Southern Appalachian Association of Friends, which began in 1959 when Friends from the areas around Knoxville, Tennessee; Celo, North Carolina; and Atlanta, Georgia, gathered in Crossville, Tennessee. In 1977, SAYMA affiliated with Friends General Conference.

SAYMA includes meeting and worship groups in eight states, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

Our name identifies the geographical center of our widespread monthly meetings. Since 1992, annual sessions have been held in early June at Warren Wilson College in Swananoa, NC. Between 200 and 300 adults, young people and children attend each year.

SAYMA has a very active program for teens, with a paid coordinator. We also have a part time administrative assistant. A committee is working to revise A Guide to Our Faith and Practice, last revised in 1998.

A Quaker School in Atlanta is under the care of the meeting there.

Clerk: Bill Wright
Contact Person: Bill Wright
Address: 13205 E Philadelphia St., Whittier, CA 90601, USA
Telephone: +1 562 698 9805
Click to Email
Website: www.firstfriendswhittier.org/warsf.html
Affiliation:  Friends United Meeting (FUM)
Worship Style:  Programmed

Clerk: Sarabeth Marcinko
Contact People: General Superintendent, Shawn McConaughey
Address: PO Box 70, Plainfield, IN 46168, USA
Telephone: +1 317 839 2789
Click to Email
Website: www.westernyearlymeeting.org
Affiliation: Friends United Meeting (FUM)
Worship Style: Mostly Programmed; some non-pastoral; some unprogrammed
Meetings: 35
Established: 1858
Publication: Western Work (ten times a year)

Western Yearly Meeting, encompassing 35 monthly meetings in western Indiana and eastern Illinois, was set off from Indiana Yearly Meeting in 1857 and held its first Yearly Meeting in Plainfield, Indiana in 1858. Yearly Meeting sessions are held on the same spot they were in 1858, now meeting in the historic Yearly Meeting House built in 1913.

The Yearly Meeting has its annual sessions in mid to late summer. Administrative Council, made up of the clerks of the Yearly Meeting, chairpersons of the programming and other boards, USFWI and Quaker Men and representatives of the local Meetings, carries on the business of Yearly Meeting out of session. It meets in November and March, usually being hosted by one of the local meetings. The work of the Yearly Meeting is carried out by five programming boards: Christian Education, Christian Ministries and Evangelism, Christian Social Concerns, Christian Outreach and Board on Meeting Development and Nurture, which meet three times a year. The work of these boards and other activities are coordinated by the Executive Committee, which also meets regularly.

Property held by the Yearly Meeting includes a 12-acre campus containing the Yearly Meeting house, a staff home, and a large wooded yard.

Western owns, with Indiana Yearly Meeting, Quaker Haven Camp on Dewart Lake, near Syracuse in northern Indiana, which meets not only by age groupings in the summer, but has a fall and a winter get-together for youth.

Western is involved in wider relationships primarily through its affiliations with Friends United Meeting, being one of the founding and main supporting members of that organization. Western Yearly Meeting is on the governing boards of Earlham College and Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, IN.  Western is also actively involved in the work of Friends World Committee for Consultation, Right Sharing of World Resources, American Friends Service Committee, Associated Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Indiana Friends Committee on Legislation, United Society of Friends Women International, Quaker Men International, and Friends Disaster Service.  Every Meeting is also involved in its own local peace and social concerns.

Clerk: Jennilou Grotevant
Contact Person: Katie Ubry Terrell
Address: Pyle Center Box 1194, Wilmington, OH 45177, USA
Office Location: Room 6 Kelly Center, Wilmington College Campus
Telephone: +1 937 382 2491
Click to Email
Website:  www.wilmingtonyearlymeeting.org
Affiliation: Friends United Meeting (FUM)
Worship Style: Programmed
Members: 600
Meetings: 16
Established: 1892
Publication: The Wilmington Friend (Quarterly)

The Ordinance of 1787, which made Ohio country free from slavery and guaranteed freedom of worship, attracted thousands of Quakers to this territory. The first Quaker Meeting in what is now the area included in Wilmington Yearly Meeting (WYM) was the Miami Meeting in Waynesville in the early 1800s. Quaker meetings appeared quickly in Warren, Clinton, Highland and Greene Counties.

Quakers in this area were first part of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, and then Ohio Yearly Meeting (1813-1820) and Indiana Yearly Meeting (1821-1892). Under authority of Indiana Yearly Meeting, Southwest Ohio Friends gathered in a tent on the Wilmington College campus, Seventh-day, 8tn Month, 20, 1892 for the first session of Wilmington Yearly Meeting.

Quakers began settling in East Tennessee in 1780. Friendsville Quarterly Meeting was transferred from North Carolina Yearly Meeting to Wilmington Yearly Meeting in 1897. The oldest Monthly Meeting in WYM is Lost Creek established in 1797 in Friendsville Quarterly Meeting in Tennessee.

First mention of a program for children at WYM was in the 1900 minutes. In 1908 a roll call of Sunday Schools in the YM showed 418 members present at YM from 37 schools. Since 1923, when the first Young Friends camp was held in the Yearly Meeting, camping has been an important part of the program for youths. Young Friends from meetings in Friendsville Quarterly Meeting in Tennessee held theirown camp nearer their home meetings.

The book, Quaker Migration to Southwest Ohio, by C. Clayton Terrell (1967) has excellent information about Wilmington Yearly Meeting.

Friends purchased at public auction Franklin College in 1870 thus starting Wilmington College which has a continuing effective educational ministry. In 1982 the Yearly Meeting established a vital ministry on Wilmington campus supporting a part-time Campus Minister. Quaker Knoll Youth Camp was added in 1949 and has become a great asset for camping and retreat programs.

Active Boards of the Yearly Meeting carry forward the objectives of the Yearly Meeting: Christian Concerns for Peace and Society; Christian Outreach; Christian Educational Concerns; Property; Evangelism Church Extension and Pastoral Care.

Wilmington Yearly Meeting works through Friends United Meeting in nurturing a world-wide Christian ministry. The Yearly Meeting also supports National Friends Committee on Legislation, Associated Committee for Indian Affairs, American Friends Service Committee, Friends World Committee for Consultation, the Ohio Council of Churches, and Bolivia Link.