About the Ann Arbor Meeting

The Ann Arbor Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends began in 1935 as an informal worship group. It was formally organized as a local Monthly Meeting, with weekly Meetings for Worship, in 1937. Ann Arbor Meeting is part of the Green Pastures Quarterly Meeting and the Lake Erie Yearly Meeting, which in turn is a member of Friends General Conference.

The Meeting unites a considerable variety of religious thought and experience in common work, worship, and love. We do not require creedal or doctrinal statements from our members, believing that truth cannot be confined in a set statement, however well phrased. Truth must be expressed in the life of the Meeting, and in the lives of its individual members.

The work of the Ann Arbor Meeting, and all of the responsibility for the ministry of word and of deed, is shared by the members and attenders. There is no paid minister. Men and women alike may fill any position; individual gifts and interests are the determining factors. All Meeting activities are open to attenders as well as members, and attenders may serve on most committees and hold many of the offices of the Meeting.

The Meeting has a membership of 135 (as of June 2006). Typical attendance on a Sunday morning, counting both Meetings for Worship and First Day School, is about 150.

In 1955 the Meeting purchased a house at 1416 Hill Street, and in 1962 moved into the newly built Meetinghouse adjoining the original building. The property now includes the Meetinghouse, Quaker House, and the Michigan Area Office of the American Friends Service Committee, collectively known as Friends Center.

The Meeting feels a social responsibility, as well as financial necessity, to make productive use of its property. Individual rooms in the Meetinghouse and Quaker House are available on a regular or one-time basis to community groups whose activities are not incompatible with Quaker practice.