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Welcome to Baltimore Yearly Meeting!

Baltimore Yearly Meeting nurtures a vibrant Quaker community across the Mid-Atlantic. BYM unites Friends from 50 Quaker meetings and worship groups throughout Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. 

Together at BYM Friends we

Strengthen Local Meetings

The monthly meeting is the beating heart of everything we do. At its core, the yearly meeting is an association of Quaker monthly meetings and other local worshipping communities coming together to support one another. We share a common Faith & Practice - and we share our skills, gifts, spiritual leadings, and resources across local worshipping communities. 

Grow in Spirit & Community

Quakers believe that there is “that of God” in every person—an Inner Light that is loving and honest and can lead us to truth and justice. As BYM Friends we gather for Meetings for Worship four times each year to discern the Leadings of the Spirit and to conduct our community business and three more times throughout the year for spiritual formation retreats. 

Nurture Youth

BYM has a special commitment to the spiritual, social, and emotional thriving of all young people. Our camps and youth retreats are vibrant, diverse, youth-centered communities. BYM scholarships and grants provide material support to children, families, and child-serving organizations, and the Religious Education Committee connects meetings to resources for nurturing youth.

Connect & Serve as Friends

Working together is an extension of our worship into the practical life of Quakerism. Working together benefits both the wider community and those Friends who participate. We serve together on Committtes, gather for service projects and social witness, and are part of the worldwide body of Quakers - connected to 14 organizations and hundreds of thousands of Friends around the world.

Religious Education Retreat

Saturday, February 23, 2019
10:30 am3:30 pm
Frederick Friends Meeting (Frederick, MD)

Please join us for a day focused on Teaching Friends across the Generations: A Day for Sharing our Wisdom and Inspiring One Another held at Frederick Meeting House, February 23 from 10-3:30pm, with a snow date of April 13th. The morning will focus on what we have found most meaningful and successful in our individual Meetings. We will share with each other our most successful lessons and programmatic approaches and have time to hear from a couple of our elder teachers. In the afternoon we will brainstorm ideas about some common challenges we face, (e.g., unpredictable attendance, honoring differences in children while keeping the group together, shrinking and inconsistent attendance, establishing a nurturing and constructive environment for teachers/teacher recruitment.) We will close, by exploring and developing an idea which emerged from our RE discussion/listening groups: Learning Boxes for Teaching Across the Generations. This would involve developing “Learning Boxes” or resource packets which would contain lesson plans, book recommendations, etc. for each age group-from preschool to adult RE. Each Learning Box would focus on one particular theme or topic, such as simplicity or compassion. All members of the Meeting would concurrently study some aspect of the same theme, giving an opportunity for increased intergenerational cohesion and interaction. For this retreat to be most productive, we need you. If you can’t make it, please recruit someone from your Meeting to attend. For information or to register, please contact Ellen Arginteanu, at ellenandjules@protonmail.com or 814-206-6712.