Organization of the Society of Friends

The largest traditional organizational structure for Friends was the yearly meeting, composed of several quarterly meetings. This structure still exists almost everywhere in Friends today. Usually, the term "yearly meeting" is used in two different ways. The same term is used for the organization itself, which often today will have an office and staff, and for its annual business sessions. In a few cases today, the organization no longer uses yearly meeting in its name. There are also a few cases where the organization holds general meetings for business more frequently than once a year. The meeting times and places of yearly meetings are published in a Calendar of Yearly Meetings, available both in print and in an online version.

Associations of Yearly Meetings

Most North American yearly meetings suffered a schism in 1827-28, resulting in "Orthodox" and "Hicksite" branches of the Society of Friends. (See the Background section of Realignment Among North American Friends? for more information.) The yearly meetings of each branch did not engage in any official communicatins with those of the other branch.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the yearly meetings of each branch increasingly worked together on common areas of concern, such as missions and the development of Christian education materials. More and more often, representatives of different yearly meetings would meet together. This move towards working together resulted in the creation of the Friends General Conference in 1900 for the Hicksite branch and the Five Years Meeting of Friends (later renamed Friends United Meeting) in 1902 for the Orthodox branch. Evangelical Friends began joint work much later, and are now organized as Evangelical Friends International. The three "Beanite" yearly meetings have a joint publication and other joint activities, but no formal association.

These associations were all formed in North America. However, due to missions activity, the Orthodox and Evangelical associations now include member yearly meetings from other parts of the world. In each of them, the North American membership is a minority of the total membership. Yearly meetings outside of North America not resulting from mission work of those two branches (as well as a few North American yearly meetings) are not part of associations of this kind.

Friends World Committee for Consultation

In the twentieth century, serious efforts began to bring together Friends across international boundaries and theological differences for consultation. World conferences began to be held periodically

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