Visiting Friends and Your Quaker Community

“It is impossible for me to overestimate the importance of the visits of Friends in the ministry to our meeting in the days of my youth. It made all things new and wonderful to the little boy who could predict almost infallibly what our own members would do and say. But a new voice, a new vision, a new personality, made all the difference and woke him up to the rich meaning of his Quaker inheritance.” 

Visiting Friends practice the old Quaker traditions of intervisitation and traveling ministry. Apart from the hopeful ministry of Quaker advocacy and living faith into action that Visiting Friends can bring to your community, intervisitation itself is a form of ministry that weaves individual and communal threads into the rich, Spirit-filled tapestry of the Religious Society of Friends. 

What Visiting Friends Can Offer Your Community 

Through Visiting Friends virtual and in-person travel to monthly meetings, Friends churches, and other Quaker communities, FCNL volunteers join in meeting for worship, share messages, hear leadings and concerns, and provide spiritual and practical support to knit together Friends’ witness and FCNL’s advocacy for the world we seek.  

Below are some of the ministries Visiting Friends can bring to your community. Request a Visiting Friend to lead a program or contact us at Quakers@fcnl.org to learn more.  

Visiting Friends: Stories of Faith in Action (60 minutes)   

Quakers have a centuries-long history of intervisitation—seeking fellowship and deepening ties with Friends by way of personal human-to-human connection and relationships.

Rooted in this practice, FCNL volunteer Visiting Friends travel in the ministry to bring messages, presentations, and workshops about the core components of FCNL’s work through personal stories that nurture and energize Friends. Visiting Friends share, listen, build community, and invite Friends to take Spirit-led action in meaningful ways.