Simpler Meetings: Starting With Fundamentals

The Fundamentals session is recommended to Friends who have not participated in the series before or those looking for a refresher. In this first session we set the scene and cover key ideas that are relevant to all the topics in the series.

We will consider why we may need to simplify how we organise our Quaker meetings. We will recognise there are many possibilities and variations already in use, and a lot more permission to do things differently than many of us think. We will imagine what a very simple Quaker meeting could be like. We will look at examples, discuss alternative approaches and share concerns and experiences. You will feel more confident to focus on what you have and find possible ways to simplify in your own context.

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 series, including this session, 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).

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.