Monthly meeting

In the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), a monthly meeting or area meeting[1] is the basic governing
body, a congregation which holds regular meetings for business for Quakers in a given area. The monthly
meeting is responsible for the administration of its congregants, including membership and marriages, and for
the meeting's property. A monthly meeting can be a grouping of multiple smaller meetings, usually called
preparative meetings, coming together for administrative purposes, while for others it is a single institution. In
most countries, multiple monthly meetings form a quarterly meeting, which in turn form yearly meetings.[2]
Programmed Quakers may refer to their congregation as a church.[2]

Contents
Management
Notes
See also
External links

Management
Among Quakers, affairs are managed at a particular kind of meeting for worship, called a meeting for
business, where all members are invited to attend. Decisions are made as a form of worship, where each
individual sits in contemplative silence until moved to speak on a subject.[3] At these meetings, Quakers
attempt to reach unity on a subject, in a form of religious consensus decision-making, to find "the sense of the
meeting".[2][4] A monthly meeting is so called because it traditionally holds these meetings once a month,
separate from the normal weekly meeting for worship.

Each meeting usually nominates members to serve in certain volunteer positions to facilitate administration,
including:[1]

a clerk and assistant clerk or clerks

a treasurer
a registering officer
a nominations committee
a body of trustees
a custodian of records or a committee for the purpose

A monthly meeting is usually associated with a particular place of worship; in many cases, the associated
meeting house has a distinctive style of architecture and interior design, to represent the Quaker testimony of
Simplicity.[5] Some meeting houses in the United States are among the earliest remaining religious structures in
the country, and the oldest meeting house is likely the Third Haven Meeting House in Talbot County,
Maryland, built between 1682 and 1684.[6]

Notes
 1. "Area meetings and local meetings" (https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/chapter/4/). Quaker Faith and
Practice: The book of Christian discipline of the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of
Friends (Quakers) in Britain (Fifth ed.). Britain Yearly Meeting. 2014.
2. "FAQs about Quakers" (https://www.fgcquaker.org/discover/faqs-about-quakers). Friends
General Conference. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
3. Hamm, Thomas D. (2002). "The Divergent Paths of Iowa Quakers in the Nineteenth Century" (h
ttps://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10564&context=annals-of-iowa). The Annals of
Iowa. 61 (2): 125–150. doi:10.17077/0003-4827.10564 (https://doi.org/10.17077%2F0003-482
7.10564). Retrieved 19 April 2019.
4. Molina-Markham, Elizabeth (2014). "Finding the "Sense of the Meeting": Decision Making
Through Silence Among Quakers". Western Journal of Communication. 78 (2): 155–174.
doi:10.1080/10570314.2013.809474 (https://doi.org/10.1080%2F10570314.2013.809474).
5. Homan, Roger (2007). "The Aesthetics of Friends' Meeting Houses" (https://digitalcommons.ge
orgefox.edu/quakerstudies/vol11/iss1/7/). Quaker Studies. 11 (1): 115–128. Retrieved 19 April
2019.
6. Esperdy, Gabrielle; Kingsley, Karen, eds. (2012). "Old Third Haven Meeting House" (https://sah
-archipedia.org/buildings/MD-01-041-0019). SAH Archipedia. Society of Architectural
Historians. Retrieved 19 April 2019.

See also
Friends World Committee for Consultation

External links
QuakerMaps (http://www.quakermaps.com/): a resource for finding monthly meetings from
across the spectrum of Quakerism, powered by Google Maps.
Quakerfinder (http://www.quakerfinder.org/): a resource for finding FGC monthly meetings in the
United States.
Find a Quaker Meeting in England, Wales or Scotland (https://web.archive.org/web/200712112
33518/http://www.quaker.org.uk/Templates/FAM_search.asp?NodeID=94228).

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This page was last edited on 28 April 2020, at 07:27 (UTC).

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