BYM Support Services for Meetings and Worship Groups

Baltimore Yearly Meeting Provides a Wide Variety of Support Services for local Meetings and worship groups. Contact us and let us know how BYM can help!

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• Communications, Outreach, and Administrative Services Support for Meetings
• Financial Assistance for Meetings and Meeting Members
• First Day School and Youth Resources for Meetings
• Pastoral Care for Local Meetings
• Visiting among Friends strengthens and educates our Meetings and members
• BYM Faith and Practice
• Witness and Social Justice Resources
• Quaker Service Organizations
• Quaker Meetings Records - Deposited at Friends Historical Library (Swarthmore College) and Quaker & Special Collections (Haverford College)
• Quaker Meetings and Meeting Records - Swarthmore Friends Historical Library

• Publicity for Meeting Events both within the Yearly Meeting and the wider Quaker community through the BYM website, social media, monthly electronic announcements, and the BYM Interchange newsletter. Email the BYM office.
• A page on the Yearly Meeting web site for your Meeting that can also redirect queries to your Meeting’s web site.
• Outreach Resources are available at the BYM website for a wide variety of outreach activities to help your local Meeting grow and flourish through the BYM Advancement and Outreach Committee.
• The Grow Our Meetings Toolkit from Friends General Conference offers guidance and tools for Friends that want to deepen their own spiritual life, welcome new life into their meetings, consider what it’s like to be new in a meeting, and do outreach. Some BYM Friends have had training in facilitating the exercises in the toolkit.
• Training and Spiritual Nurturing of Meeting Clerks, Committee Clerks, and others preparing to serve their local Meeting are available at workshops, retreats, and at Annual Session.
• “Best Practices” sharing sessions between Meetings to see what’s new and what works, at Annual Session and other times.
• Insurance Policy Discount for Meetings. Call the BYM office for details.
• Fundraising Consultations with local Meetings to improve Meeting fundraising. Call the BYM office. Also see resources available from the Yearly Meeting Development program.

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• BYM Meeting House Fund – Provides loans for emergency repairs to any Monthly Meeting-owned Meeting House. To apply, contact the Yearly Meeting Office.
• Annual Session Assistance – Helps the cost of attending the Baltimore Yearly Meeting Annual Session affordable. Financial assistance is available for first-time attenders, families, and Young Adult Friends. Financial assistance may be in the form of matching funds, work grants, and specially discounted tent site accommodations. See the Spring Interchange for full information.
• Educational Grants for under-graduate, post-secondary education are available from Baltimore Yearly Meeting to Meeting members and attenders demonstrating need. See the Educational Grants section for full details.
• Camp Scholarships are available for campers from Baltimore Yearly Meeting. In addition, BYM also provides work grants for parents or others. This aid is dispersed on the basis of declared need. Applications are accepted each year starting in January. Contact Jane Megginson, Camp Program Manager, for more information.
• Miles White Beneficial Society funds are available for books and tracts, Friends educational institutions and programs for the young, and for undergraduate college scholarships. The deadline for applications is in March. Contact the Baltimore Yearly Meeting Office for details.

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• Support for your Meeting’s Religious Education (RE) Committee, including curriculum resources with help from the BYM Religious Education Committee.
• “Innovative and Best Practices” sharing and training sessions for your Meeting RE volunteers at Annual Session and at weekend retreats.
• Programming throughout the school year for your Meeting’s middle and high school youth (Young Friends and Junior Young Friends). Youth Programs’ weekend sessions help provide meaningful connections with other Quaker youth, especially for Meetings which have few attenders in this age group. Contact BYM Youth Programs Manager here.
• Retreats for Parents to help equip them to address the challenges of Quaker parenting in a materially focused world. See the Youth Programs Committee page for details.
• Summer Camps provide access for the youth of your Meeting, from age 9 through rising 11th graders, to the summer camps owned, staffed, and operated by Baltimore Yearly Meeting at four locations in Maryland and Virginia. Hiking, working, creative projects and worship in community all help kids discover richer relationships and their own inner resources. Go to the BYM Camps for full details.
• Junior Yearly Meeting’s week-long residential program at Annual Session for your Meeting’s children, from infancy through middle school. Go to the Yearly Meeting's Annual Session section for information or see the Spring issue of the Interchange.
• Young Friends’ week-long residential program at the August Annual Session for your Meeting’s High School students. Go to the Yearly Meeting's Annual Session section for information or see the Spring issue of the Interchange.
• Adult Religious Education Curriculum, materials, and speakers are available. Check with the BYM office for more details. For curriculum materials, click here.
• The Build It! A Toolkit for Nurturing Intergenerational Spiritual Community from Friends General Conference. It is designed to strengthen and nurture ties among generations in our meetings, worship groups, churches and in our larger Religious Society of Friends, and contribute to meetings’ efforts to identify and cultivate emerging leaders. It is both spiritually enriching and fun.

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• BYM’s Ministry and Pastoral Care Committee consults with Meetings about innovative and best practices.
• Rustic Retreats – Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s Catoctin and Shiloh Quaker Camps are available for rent by Meetings for retreat spaces or community-building activities at reasonable rates in the spring and fall. For full information, including available dates, rates, and reservation requests, click here.
• Annual Spiritual Formation Retreats, sponsored by Baltimore Yearly Meeting, are weekend-long retreats that mark either the beginning or end of a nine-month Spiritual Formation program implemented at your Local Meeting. For more information, click here.
• Annual Women’s Retreat, sponsored by Baltimore Yearly Meeting is a weekend-long retreat which provides special spiritual and community focus for women in your Meeting. For more information, click here.
• Baltimore Yearly Meeting Annual Session is a gathering of Friends from all parts of the Yearly Meeting Community for speakers, collaboration, workshops and fun. See the Annual Session section of the website for current details.
• Networking Opportunities with Friends serving in corresponding roles in other local Meetings as scheduled, including at Annual Session.

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Visiting among Friends strengthens and educates our Meetings and members

• Visiting Meetings page on this website.
• Some visits, are simply for “the Ministry of Presence,” so that we may know each other well. Contact BYM’s Intervisitation Working Group for more information.
• Other visits may focus on an aspect of Yearly and local Meeting life, Quaker faith and practice, or a current committee focus. This support could include providing a listening ear, holding the local Meeting in prayer, sharing readings, providing referrals, and connecting local Friends with similar experiences. Contact the BYM office.

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Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s volume of Faith and Practice is an illuminating written witness and guide to the lived faith of Quakers in the middle-Atlantic region for more than 340 years. Periodically, BYM members work together on revising it to reflect current Quaker practice and our growing understanding of our Quaker Faith.

The 1988 Faith and Practice is available for free online and in a hardbound book.

• Read the online Faith and Practice
• Order Faith and Practice for Your Meeting

The BYM Faith and Practice Revision Committee is working on revisions using with the 2013 Draft Faith and Practice.

• Visit the Faith and Practice Revision Committee page
• Order 2013 draft Faith and Practice for Your Meeting

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The Yearly Meeting provides several standing committees and working groups focused on particular areas of concern, including fostering peace and nonviolence, dismantling systems of oppression, and living more lightly upon the earth. If your Meeting seeks support with this work, please contact any of the following:

• Indian Affairs Committee
• Peace and Social Concerns Committee
• Unity with Nature Committee
• Working Group on Racism
• Working Group on Right Relationship with Animals

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Quaker service organizations have valuable experience in many areas of concern to Friends. To see if they have resources that can help your Meeting’s work, contact any of the BYM-appointed representatives to the following organizations, or go to:

• American Friends Service Committee – Active service projects promoting peace and justice in the US and around the world.
• Friends Committee on National Legislation – A Quaker lobby in the public interest in Washington, DC.
• Friends General Conference - Nurturing, deepening, and educating Friends' communities across North America.
• Friends United Meeting – Peace and community development work with Friends Meetings, Churches and Community Programs in North and Central America, Africa and the Middle East.
• Friends World Committee for Consultation - a world—wide network of support for Friends Meetings and churches.
• Right Sharing of World Resources – Micro-enterprise projects for women in India, Africa and elsewhere.

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