Simpler Meetings: Meeting Without a Meeting House Revisited

Being a worshipping community can be so much simpler without a meeting house. Almost one in three British local meetings are like this. What can we learn from each other? What answers do these meetings offer to people who assume the only “proper” way to be a Quaker meeting is in a meeting house? In this session of the Simpler Meetings Series, we will share experiences of having tested ways of being a meeting without a meeting house.

We ask that you come ready to listen as well as share, offer insights as well as ask questions. You will feel more confident to find and try ways to run your small meeting more simply.

The Simpler Meetings Series 2025 allows for a communal space to learn and reflect about doing things differently that can help to re-energise your Quaker Meeting as a worshipful community. The Simpler Meetings series was originally launched in 2021 and is open to all. It explores how simplifying Quaker Meetings can “release Friends’ energy to follow our leading” (Britain Yearly Meeting 2023, Minute 17).
This Meeting without Meeting House – Revisited session builds on the course ‘Simpler Ways without a Meeting House’, giving you an additional opportunity to reflect, share, and hear from others about approaches, concerns and experiences. You will feel more confident to focus on what you have and find possible ways to simplify in your own context.

If you have not been to a Simpler Meetings session before, we encourage you to attend the ‘Starting’ sessions: 1,3,5 and 7. If you have already been to sessions in the past, and want to reflect, share your experiences of trying new approaches and hear from others, then the ‘Revisited’ sessions 2, 4 and 6 are for you.

The Simpler Meetings series for 2025 consists of the following sessions and throughout you can pick and choose to come to any or all of the 7 individually bookable sessions:
1. Starting With Fundamentals
2. Simpler Roles Revisited
3. Starting on Simpler Roles
4. Small Quaker Meetings Revisited
5. Starting on Small Quaker Meetings
6. Meeting Without a Meeting House Revisited
7. Starting on Meeting Without a Meeting House

Join Jonathan Carmichael, who worked on the Simpler Meetings Project for Britain Yearly Meeting in 2018-2021, Alistair Fuller, Quaker Life’s Team Lead for Community, and other experienced staff from Woodbrooke and Quakers in Britain for a lively mixture of ideas, a few challenges, group discussion and Q&A exploring one of modern Quakerism’s recurring issues.