Download this packet with all the information. You will need this information to complete your registration.
ONLINE REGISTRATION is now available at this link.
OR you can complete this Registration Form, and email or mail to the Registrar (see instructions in the Information Packet). This form is also available in Word Format.
| (electronic date or mail postmarked by) | Impact on Total Cost | |
| Early Registration | ends May 19, 2013 | 5% Discount |
| Regular Registration | ends June 29, 2013 | None |
| Late Registration | begins After June 29, 2013 | 10% Late Fee * |
* You also may be unable to get lodging on campus or register your children
For MORE INFORMATION, see Annual Session Menu above.
The Religious Society of Friends is one of the traditional peace churches. Since Friends believe that the way to achieve peace is through social justice, we have a strong emphasis on carrying our faith into action.
North Pacific Yearly Meeting is a regional organization consisting of individual congregations, called monthly meetings (because they hold meetings for the conduct of business once a month). NPYM is called a yearly meeting because it holds an annual session where Friends from throughout the Pacific Northwest gather to worship and conduct business together. Find the nearest Meeting.
NPYM has an active youth community, with opportunities for youth to socialize and participate in social service and political actions.
The Resources page lists various organizations of interest to members of the NPYM.
The organizational structure and guiding beliefs of Friends in NPYM are set forth in our book of Faith & Practice, which is currently undergoing revision. When we find unity on social issues, we write Minutes to record our stance.
North Pacific Yearly Meeting functions largely through the work of various committees. The Coordinating Committee supports and enriches the life of NPYM. It is the venue where Standing Committees and Monthly Meetings share about their work and inspiration. The Coordinating Committee identifies and links converging and emerging issues, and offers support to groups within NPYM. In addition, the Coordinating Committee provides support and oversight to other NPYM Committees.
George Fox and other Friends will again join us in worship at our Annual Session, July 17-21 2013. Margaret Fell will again provide spiritual nurture and accommodations in the manner of Friends. Our location is Forest Grove, Oregon hosted at Pacific University. This pleasant campus will give succor as we are challenged by the pressures of our material lives and in particular from firearms violence that springs from fear in our community.
So, what are we doing together in our Friendly and simple community? Well, living, playing, listening working together. Our theme is
"Not by my strength alone: laboring together beyond our comfort zone.”
Our Friend in Residence is actually our Friends Family in Residence: Becca Mohally Renk (originally of Sandpoint Monthly Meeting and former NYPM Junior Friend), husband Paul Mohally Renk (Cork Ireland Monthly Meeting) and daughters Eibhlin (7) and Orla (5). On behalf of all, Becca states it simply: “We have been called to work with the poor.”
Becca’s journey is at this link on npym.org, and their home and work center is the Jubilee House in Nicaragua (CDCA: Center for Development in Central America). They will help us explore the vine connecting Friends for 350 years across cultural, language and social lines, discovering that of God and human dignity in everyone. We have been, are, and will certainly be together as one in seeking the truth.
Other joys and challenges will stimulate our growing edge at Annual Session including:
Here now is the call to preparation for this Annual Session. We came to unity several years ago around doing our NPYM business at the AS. We need a clear, deep opening with the Divine for discernment of how we are led. Also, we have found that we do better as we prepare for the framing, facts and foundation for the issues before us. We are putting up on the NPYM website the background materials as time runs so that you have real time, all the time access to information critical to understanding the issues. Please use the hyperlinks as they are sent out.
We will put some of our business into what will be a Consent Agenda reflecting spiritually administrative decisions that need efficient, rapid discernment and adoption. Our Nominations Report and our NPYM budget are two such. We will arrange opportunities to gain more info about the details while at the Annual Session but we will move through these items rapidly. Also you may discuss them at your Monthly Meeting.
We said in NPYM we wanted to do more discernment of our business at the Annual Session and we discarded Steering Committee and formed our Coordinating Committee to help in bringing information. Not so paradoxically, we need discussion, dissection and forming preliminary assessments of issues prior to the Annual Session. This local discussion also is at the heart of our NPYM seasoning process for this reason: not all of us attend our Annual Session but we are all in this NPYM together.
This is the call to listen personally, and to schedule seasoning in your monthly meeting. This is a call to monthly meeting clerks and worship committees to hold this pre annual session seasoning in the Light. This is a call to assist your Meeting's Coordinating Committee member to schedule seasoning opportunities at your meeting in the 3 months before the Annual Session. From changes in the Faith and Practice to the various committees' recommendations above (and at http://www.npym.org/) there is some pretty good Quakerly stuff to feast on and prepare for final discernment at Forest Grove.
As in England in the 1650’s, we NPYM Friends have an experience and tradition of going out and coming back to be together again. In the early days of George Fox’s mission to the Northwest of England and supported by Margaret Fell's hospitality and bracing spiritual nurture, the Quaker ministers also known as “two-by's” went out. They carried an earnest revelation to proclaim the inner Christ, the Light, the Seed. These spiritual activist preachers, sent out two by two from Quaker central, as it were, sent back reports of their work to London. Those ensuing reports evolved over time into the State of Society reports, illuminating how spirit fared among local scattered groups of seekers of the Light. And they came back together from time to time to share their community.
Building on the Meeting for Worship in the 1680's to support Friends imprisoned for following Spirits light in the face of public intolerance and government intransigence, this worship around their sufferings developed into Britain Yearly Meeting’s organizing structure for ongoing discernment of Friend’s policy. This lives today as the Meeting for Sufferings survived and evolved after the Religious Tolerance Act of 1689 removed the public rebuke to Quakers. We too, in NPYM love and labor in oppressive stress of present government policies that engender fear that encourage violence and division around firearms use. Now, as before 1689, some Friends in conscience put themselves into position of sufferings from those policies.
We, in our own way now as ministers to and from our local communities, will converge in our own country's Northwest to reinvigorate and discern how our faith is put in action. May we support those Friends who minister on love and community without fear and may we support those who accept sufferings as a consequence of Spirit led actions.
See you in Forest Grove for singing, play, learning and joyous renewal.
Peace,
John Allcott
Presiding Clerk
North Pacific Yearly Meeting
March 26, 2013
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