Each year since 1985, LEYM’s Ministry & Nurture Committee has prepared a query, often with suggested readings, for monthly meetings and worship groups to consider together. The queries from 2001 onward appear below, newest first. For the most recent query and how to respond, see LEYM Queries & Advices.

Jump to: 2024 · 2023 · 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2015 · 2010 · 2005 · 2001

The queries from 2001 to 2019 in one document (PDF)

2024–2025

• How do I actively get to know my neighbors?
• How do we as a Meeting seek opportunities of interaction with communities unlike ourselves?

Nine meetings responded. Read Ministry & Nurture’s summary of the responses in the 2025 Annual Records.

2023

As Ministry & Nurture came to consider the topic for this year’s query, the committee was also looking at feedback it had received about the value of the queries it sends to meetings each year. After much additional feedback and discernment, it became clear that the Quaker practice of using queries would itself be the subject of the 2023 query. (PDF)

• How can queries enrich the spiritual life of your meeting?
• How does creating and using a query help you or your meeting to discern a way forward as you go about your personal life or the business and activities of your meeting?

2022

• In what ways has our Meeting been affected by the turmoil of the world around us?
• How might I use my own gifts from Spirit in responding to these new realities?

Suggested quotes and readings (PDF)

From Britain Yearly Meeting, Quaker Faith & Practice (1995), 26.69:

“There is no easy optimism in the Quaker view of life. (George) Fox had no illusions about sin; but he asks us deal with it in a new way. . . We are to use the little we have to make it more. We are to attend the small Seed and to help it grow.” — Edgar B. Castle, 1961

“Give over thine own willing, give over thy own running, give over thy desiring to know or be anything, and sink down to the seed which God sows in thee . . . .” — Isaac Penington

Bible passages:

• John 14:1 – “Do not let your heart be troubled. Trust in God, trust in me.”
• John 14:27 – “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
• John 16:33 – “I have told you these things, as that, in me, you may have peace. In this world, you will have troubles. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

From Britain Yearly Meeting’s Advices & Queries, 28:

Responding to divine guidance, try to discern the right time to undertake or relinquish responsibilities without undue pride or guilt. Attend to what love requires of you, which may not be great busyness.

Friends may also want to explore Chapter 23 of Britain’s Quaker Faith & Practice. For those who wish to go deeper, the committee suggested Marty Grundy’s A Call to Friends: Faithful Living in Desperate Times (see the Friends Journal review).

2021

The 2021 query grew from a careful reading of the previous year’s State of the Meeting reports and attentive listening to the interests and concerns of Friends in gatherings across LEYM. There was a hunger for more connection to Spirit, to know one another on a deeper level, and to put faith into action. The two questions invite a response first as an individual and then as a meeting.

• In what ways do I experience a sense of spirit in my life?
• What is the role of the meeting in nourishing depth of spirit among us?

Quotes to supplement the 2021 query

“If you belong to the population of the Kingdom of God, you are a practitioner because you are producing understanding and love in your daily life. That makes the Kingdom of God continue to be the Kingdom of God. If the population of the Kingdom does not practice understanding and love, they lose the Kingdom in two seconds because the essence of the Kingdom is understanding and love.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, December 31, 2005, Lower Hamlet, Plum Village

“Do we live our lives in the awareness of the presence of God so that all things take their rightful place?” — Pacific Yearly Meeting, Faith and Practice, first query on Simplicity

“We have seen that, in its early years, the Quaker movement was a utopian community that vigorously challenged the dominant norms and values of English society. A glimpse of heaven transformed their lives, and brought them into the vanguard of the Lamb’s War. They found themselves caught up in a spiritual struggle to establish heaven on earth.” — Stuart Masters, “The First Quaker Communities,” Friends Journal, June–July 2021

2020

Ministry & Nurture did not write its own query this year. Instead it asked Friends to use the six queries near the end of the epistle sent by the Friends of Color of Friends General Conference after their 2020 pre-Gathering. Meetings and worship groups were asked to read the epistle before meeting to discuss the queries, and to approach them as they wished: some concentrating on one or two, others discussing all of them. Read the epistle on the FGC website.

2019

The world we live in can leave many of us with broken hearts. We turn to one another in our meetings, in worship and in friendship. Let us rest in the Light. What are we finding there?

2018

As we face ongoing degradation of our planet and the general lack of political will to address this, we ask: What are the connections we experience between earthcare and our traditional Quaker concerns for peace and justice? How do we use spiritual guidance to respond with a sense of abundance and hope?

2017

• How might we support each other as we find peaceful and persistent responses to actions that exclude and judge?
• In what ways do we, as Quakers, hold ourselves and the Other in the Light when our disagreements seem insurmountable?
• How do we find common ground as we listen to those with whom we disagree?

2016

Meetings have a welcoming message, whether they know it or not. What is yours?

2015

For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you made me welcome; I was naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me. — Matthew 25:35–36, Jerusalem Bible

How might our meeting support individuals and the meeting as a whole in working to increase racial justice within our world? In what ways do we as a Meeting recognize white privilege in our own Meeting? What tools and practices do we use to foster awareness of our personal and corporate biases?

2014

Friends find their essential unity in their profound and exhilarating belief in the pervasive presence of God and in the continuing responsibility of each person and worshipping group to seek the leading of the Spirit in all things. — Faith and Practice of New England Yearly Meeting, 1986

How has our practice of expectant waiting in worship invited the Divine to guide our meeting’s actions? In what ways do our actions in the world as a meeting enrich and transform the spiritual life of the body?

2013

How is Spirit present in building our community? What contributes to loving connections within our meeting? Is our meeting a place of safety in which Friends feel they can be heard? In what ways do we come together, opening ourselves to God’s love, grace, and forgiveness? Do we pause and feel blessed by the Divine? Can we find ways to continue to faithfully engage each other, even in the midst of conflict? When connections appear to be impaired, what Quaker resources might be used to prepare us for listening to God?

2012

• Has our Meeting sought the guidance of the Spirit about the future life of our Meeting?
• What changes do we need to consider? Do we regard children and youth as being integral to the spiritual life of the Meeting? How may we offer support to families in our Meeting?
• How might we, as a Meeting, use a process of discernment to find a path into the next couple of decades?

2011

• Given the physical and spiritual state of our Meeting, what are our reflections on this information?
• What does a Spirit led Meeting look and feel like?
• What hinders us from following the spirit?
• What is the Spirit leading us to do?

2010

Friends traditionally have used queries to deepen spiritual lives, confront difficult questions, and encourage corporate and individual self examination.

• How does your monthly meeting use queries?
• How do you as an individual use queries?
• Do the proposed LEYM Advices and Queries support these uses? How are they useful? How are they not? How can they be improved upon?
• Has one or more of these proposed LEYM Advices and Queries profoundly affected you or your meeting?

2009

• What experiences have you had of wonder and awe?
• What experiences have you had of the Light or the Divine?
• What helps you open yourself to these experiences and what gets in the way?
• What practices do you have to deepen these experiences?
• How do we support each other in this awareness?
• How do we support our children in their spiritual journeys?

2008

• Are we open to the Other?
• What keeps me/us from connecting with those who are different from me/us?
• What fears cloud my/our vision of the Light in all beings?
• How can I listen with my heart, willing to be vulnerable?
• How are we teaching our children that God’s love includes all?

2007: On Simplicity

• Do we keep our lives uncluttered by things and activities?
• What conditions of our lives overwhelm us?
• How may our habits and addictions be caused by things such as media, social expectations, or personal shortcomings?
• Do we accept commitments beyond our strength and light?
• How can we center our lives each day in awareness of the Light so that all things take their rightful place?

Read responses from six meetings to the 2007 Query on Simplicity.

2006: On Discernment

1. What do I understand “divine guidance” and “discernment” to mean?
2. How do I experience divine guidance and discernment in my life and in our life as a Meeting?
3. What are we, as Friends, being called to do or to be in the world at this time?

2005

• In what ways has the Living Presence awakened my faith and turned me around?
• As a Meeting how do we support each other in being faithful?

Read the responses: Being Turned and Being Faithful: What Our Meetings Say (PDF)

2004: On Earthcare

The text of this query is not available.

2003

1. What moves me to live with integrity? When do I have difficulty in witnessing to truth? What gets in the way or blocks my being able to be faithful to this testimony?
2. How does our Meeting live in the life and the power to find wholeness, where we are responsible to one another and to our broader community?

2002: Our Peace Testimony

1. How do I live “in the virtue of that life and power that [takes] away the occasion of all wars?”
2. How do I and my Meeting community witness to the peace testimony and work to build institutions of peace?
3. Do I consider that paying for war is a form of participation in war? What are our alternatives to paying for war?
4. How do I maintain my testimony to peace when a mood of war and violence prevails in the land?

2001

• What are the essentials in Quakerism with which all members need to agree?
• Which deep elements in our tradition are crucial to remember?
• What are the responsibilities of being a Meeting member?
• How do we encourage and support regular attenders to consider becoming members?

↑ Back to LEYM Queries & Advices

Updated September 2026.