All Friends are welcome to gather at our annual meeting, which will be held online in July 2023. We hope that from 2024 it will again be held in different parts of Australia each year.
Yearly Meeting 2023
1-9 July 2023
Integrity, Voice and Right Relationship
Yearly Meeting will be accessible to Friends all around Australia as we gather on Zoom. Starting on Saturday 1st July, there will be two consecutive long weekends (Sat-Mon and Fri-Sun) with one or two formal sessions on several days, Friendly School, Meetings for Worship, Home Groups and more. In the middle three days there is more time to rest, gather locally together for outdoor activities, attend the Backhouse Lecture presented by Jon Watts, and select some online Share and Tells to explore.
For more information about YM23 please go HERE.
YM22 Epistles
YM22 Epistle to Friends Everywhere can be found here. The YM22 Children's & JYF Epistle can be found here.
Image above: Friends gathering for YM 2020 via zoom, Julie Webb
About Yearly Meeting
There are usually 200 to 400 people of all ages at the gathering, which lasts a week. It considers the business brought forward from Regional Meetings and the National Committees as well as hosting programming for children and other young people. There is also a spiritual development program called "Friendly School", and many other opportunities for Quakers to share their interests and concerns.
Everyone - Members, Attenders, Young Friends, Junior Young Friends and younger children - comes together at the closing Meeting for Worship on the final day of Yearly Meeting. The year epistles (letters composed as summaries of the Yearly Meeting experience) from the Yearly Meeting, Young Friends, Junior Young Friends and the younger children. These epistles reflect shared experiences, decisions made, friendships renewed, and times shared together. These epistles are then forwarded to a range of Yearly Meeting with whom we have some relationship.
Documents in Advance and Documents in Retrospect
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Before Yearly Meeting, Documents in Advance (DIA) are published in print form and online and available for Friends to read. These documents include reports on the work undertaken by the varying committees of the Society, and from these, issues arise which need a decision. Meetings are invited to discuss the issues raised, and the feedback from each Regional Meeting is collated and displayed to all Friends at Yearly Meeting. In this way, Friends who cannot be at Yearly Meeting can still participate in the decision-making.
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After Yearly Meeting, Documents in Retrospect (DIR) are published, again in print form and online. In this way, all Friends are kept informed about the issues that are being considered within the Society in Australia and decisions that may affect them.
For more information about Yearly Meeting in Australia, contact:
AYM Secretary
0423 308 550