How do people find our meetings, and how do we welcome them when they come? This page gathers resources for monthly meetings and worship groups on outreach, welcoming newcomers, and growing together in spirit and community. It is maintained with LEYM’s Advancement & Outreach Committee.

• How Advancement & Outreach can help
• Recorded conversations among LEYM meetings
• Welcoming newcomers
• Growing and sustaining your meeting
• Explaining Quaker practice

How Advancement & Outreach Can Help

The Advancement & Outreach Committee supports meetings and worship groups in attracting and welcoming new members and attenders. The committee:

• visits meetings and worship groups, in person or by Zoom, together with Ministry & Nurture, to share news of LEYM and to listen for what each group needs. Priority goes to very small groups and those that haven’t been in touch with LEYM recently. Since 2025, this visiting has been supported by LEYM’s Traveling Ministries Fund;
• hosts online conversations on questions many meetings share, with Friends from several meetings on each panel (see the recordings below);
• shares resources and feedback on your meeting’s outreach, when asked;
• helps worship groups and meetings with changes in status: a monthly meeting taking a worship group under its care, a worship group preparing to become a monthly meeting, or a meeting considering becoming a worship group. See Policies & Procedures, sections I.B–C, in the Policies & Procedures Manual.

Would your meeting welcome a visit, or is there a topic you’d like to explore with other meetings? Contact the committee’s co-clerks through the Contact Information page. For help with your meeting’s website or online presence, see Your meeting online.

Recorded Conversations Among LEYM Meetings

Videos from Advancement & Outreach and Ministry & Nurture, on this site and on LEYM’s YouTube channel. Several of the sessions use a format your meeting could adapt for its own adult education.

• Get to Know LEYM Meetings (2026). An interactive map of short, informal videos from meetings across LEYM about the life of their meeting, gathered by Advancement & Outreach for the 2026 Annual Meeting.
• Meet Lake Erie Yearly Meeting (April 2026, 13 min.). A short overview of LEYM’s activities and offerings, good for newcomers and for meetings less connected to the yearly meeting.
• Spiritual Deepening and Vital Community: A Two-Way Street (February 2026). Friends from Athens, Broadmead, and Red Cedar on how spirituality and community affect each other.
• Families with Children in Our Family of Friends (2025). Athens, Ann Arbor, and Broadmead on including families in worship and community.
• Hybrid Meetings: How Have They Affected Us? (2025). Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, and Oberlin on technology, hybrid business meetings, and integrating online newcomers.
• Fitting Space to Spirit (2024). North Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Detroit on owning, renting, sharing, or building a meeting space.

Welcoming Newcomers

From LEYM

• Inreach and Outreach Review: a list of suggestions for strengthening your meeting or worship group and making it more open and welcoming (2017, DOC).
• To Those Attending Our Meeting for the First Time: a welcome you can use as is or adapt (2017, DOCX).
• What Do Quakers Say? Business cards: ready to print, with room for your meeting’s information on the back. Never out of date.

From Other Friends

• Newcomer Cards from Friends General Conference: six free cards to print on cardstock (You Are Welcome Here, Quaker Worship, What Do Quakers Believe, Quakers and Prayer, How Quaker Meetings Work, and Quaker Testimonies). Printed copies are also sold by the FGC bookstore, QuakerBooks.
• Welcoming and Integrating Newcomers, part of FGC’s Grow Our Meetings toolkit.
• What Makes a Welcoming Meeting, a graphic by Johanna Jackson focused on youth inclusion, and Inclusion 101, a 2020 audio workshop. Both come from an extensive listening project among Friends.
• Age Inclusion resources from Emily Provance, including her booklet on Multiage Inclusion (PDF).

Growing and Sustaining Your Meeting

• Outreach resources from Friends General Conference, organized around growing our spirits, our presence, and our Quaker community.
• Inreach, from FGC’s Grow Our Meetings toolkit: deepening the spiritual life of the meeting as the ground of outreach.
• Creating a Strong Web Presence (FGC): options from a simple page to a full website, and what matters most for newcomers.
• Reach Out and Welcome from New England Yearly Meeting: materials on multi-age community, social media, and families.
• Build It! A Toolkit for Nurturing Intergenerational Spiritual Community from FGC’s Youth Ministries Program: activities, games, and advice for all ages, including the skit “A Short History of Quakerism in 10 Easy Points” (for sale, PDF or print).
• Quaker Communications & Outreach: many good ideas on communications and hospitality, though not updated since 2020.

Explaining Quaker Practice

Short introductions written for Lake Erie Yearly Meeting, suitable to share with newcomers (2006, PDF):

• Quaker Worship
• How Quakers Conduct Business
• Beliefs in Action

See also Welcome to Meeting for Worship (PDF, 2025) from Ministry & Nurture, and About Quakers.

Updated September 2026.