Getting ready for changes to Yearly Meeting sessions
With changes on the way for our Yearly Meeting, Keith Braithwaite shares an update on the work of the Agenda Planning Committee.
Quakers in Britain meet regularly as a whole community to worship together, discern our way forward, and enjoy each other's company. We have done this since at least 1668, mostly annually, sometimes more often – and during that time we have occasionally changed the pattern of our meetings to meet the changing needs of Friends. We are now approaching another of these changes as Yearly Meeting in 2024 decided to move to a yearly meeting with several sessions throughout the year.
Since June 2025 the Agenda Planning Committee (APC) appointed by Yearly Meeting (YM) have been thinking about how to plan the agenda for the new style of YM session.
We're guided by some words of Edward Burrough: in our YM sessions we are "not to spend time with needless, unnecessary and fruitless discourses; but to proceed in the wisdom of God".
Every Friend has many kinds of belonging to our Society and many dimensions to their life so we're going to try to make our agenda process responsive to as wide a range of those as we can. The APC will of course receive minutes from area meetings. Concerns that are specific to the devolved nations on the island of Great Britain will come from Quakers in Scotland, and Crynwyr Cymru – Quakers in Wales. Concerns specific to the interests of younger Friends will come from Young Friends General Meeting. And we'll receive minutes from central committees and Britain Yearly Meeting Trustees, reflecting the concerns of the executive structures of our Society.
Involving as many people as possible
At our meeting in November the APC are going to consider which other groups of Friends, representing other kinds of particular interest in our Society, will also be able to send us minutes.
We want the new agenda process to be transparent, open, and inclusive, even more so than the processes used now for the single annual YM session and for Sufferings. The valuable experience of the Meeting for Sufferings Arrangements Group will help us with this. We'll try to explain the process clearly and simply so that everyone in our Society can understand it. So far, we think that staff will manage a central email inbox for minutes, and will work with whichever group sent the minute to clarify the concern and prepare notes for the APC to consider. The APC will then discern how to deal with each minute we get. We'll try to publish minutes received and how they are being handled as early as we can.
Looking forward to 2026
We're already thinking about an agenda for July 2026, the first new-style YM session. We aim to have as much time as we can for worship in general, supported by our elders, and for prayerful discernment of concerns, facilitated by our clerks. We want Friends to gain a better understanding of our meetings for worship for business through their attendance at YM sessions, to take back to their local and area meetings. We want to minimise the time spent on the "required business" of running our Society while still providing effective oversight of the central committees and their work.
In addition, each of the Yearly Meeting sessions will have a lot of activities to help build community across our Society, organised by our special interest groups, the Quaker Recognised Bodies, Woodbrooke, central committees, and most importantly: you!
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