The Monthly Meeting
is the basic unit of organization of the Religious Society of Friends.
Individuals hold membership in the
Monthly Meeting, and that is where the responsibility resides for
pastoral care, religious education, and worship.
The
members of Monthly Meetings also constitute Yearly and Quarterly
Meetings. A typical Yearly Meeting encompasses several
Quarterly Meetings, each of which includes a number of Monthly
Meetings. Pacific Yearly Meeting has two Quarterly Meetings:
College Park Quarterly Meeting and Southern California Quarterly
Meeting. It also includes several Monthly Meetings that are not part
of a Quarterly Meeting.†
The
names of these assemblies reflect how often they meet, not a hierarchy
of authority. The Monthly Meeting is at the core.
Quarterly and Yearly Meetings are organized to explore and realize
common purposes of Friends and the Monthly Meetings to which
they belong. The work of the Yearly Meeting is done largely in its
committees, and corporately at its annual gathering. Friends who
attend the gathering do not participate as instructed delegates,
but as a group of Friends whose views may well reflect the diverse
views
of the Yearly Meeting as a whole.
There
are over 80 Yearly Meetings across the globe. While many share joint
undertakings and communication among them is
treasured, there is no super organization of them all. At each
year’s
annual gathering, Pacific Yearly Meeting prepares an “Epistle
to
Friends Everywhere” for distribution, and reads excerpts
from the
many such Epistles it has received.
† Honolulu,
Big Island, Mexico City and Guatemala.