College Park Quarterly Meeting (CPQM) is a quarterly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in northern California and northern Nevada (list).
News
The 257th Session of College Park Quarterly Meeting will be held at Ben Lomond Quaker Center on Fourth Month (April) 25 – 27, 2025. Please join us in-person or virtually by registering here!
Theme
The theme for our gathering is: What does it mean to be a Friend of the Truth?
The earlier name for our society, the Friends of Truth, as discussed in this Friends Journal article, reflected early Quakers’ experience of being “laid low” by their direct experience of the divine and opened to the truth of God’s love rather than as an intellectual understanding of the divine.
Together, we will explore what Friend William Penn meant when he said: “True godliness doesn’t turn us out of the world, but enables us to live better in it, and excites our endeavors to mend it.”
How does being a “Friend of Truth” excite our endeavors to mend ourselves, our communities, and our world?
Schedule
On Friday, we’ll start with dinner and gather for a theme-related activity.
On Saturday, we’ll have time for:
- Bible study
- Unprogrammed worship
- Reports from committees, Friends organizations, recent regional gatherings, and monthly meetings
- Discernment on possible changes to our gathering format
- Worship sharing
- Interest groups
- Intergenerational activities
- Music and Fellowship
On Sunday, we’ll hear additional committee reports and close the gathering with worship, followed by lunch and clean-up, with an expected departure of 2:00 pm.
There will be parallel and sometimes unified programs for children and teens throughout the weekend. Those programs typically include opportunities to enjoy the beauty of Quaker Center, arts & crafts, service, and to use Quaker process to make collective decisions.
We look forward to seeing you there and/or via Zoom! Register for quarterly meeting here.
The Fall meeting of College Park Quarterly Meeting is planned for Ben Lomond Quaker Center the weekend of October 17-19, 2025.
Useful forms:
- CPQM Tuition Assistance
- CPQM Teen Program Handbook
- Teen Program Packing List
- Minor Medical and Consent to Participate Form
We encourage all Friends to join us for the business of the quarterly meeting. The main purposes of the College Park Quarterly Meeting are to strengthen the life and fellowship of Monthly Meetings and other Friends groups in the northern portions of California and Nevada, to offer increased opportunities for worshiping together, and to consider spiritual and worldly matters of local or broader concern.
About Friends, Monthly/Quarterly/Yearly Meetings
Wikipedia has information about Quakerism. The following brief introduction is intended to simply explain College Park Quarterly Meeting’s context in the Society of Friends.
There are unprogrammed and programmed Friends meetings for worship. Unprogrammed Friends meetings gather in silence for worship, and programmed meetings usually have a pastor and have worship similar to Protestant services. Local meetings, which have weekly meetings for worship, are called monthly meetings because they hold a meeting for the purpose of business once a month. They are organized by geographic region into larger quarterly meetings, which are organized into yet-larger yearly meetings. CPQM is a gathering of unprogrammed monthly meetings in northern California and northern Nevada (list of meetings). It is a part of Pacific Yearly Meeting (PYM).
Another quarterly meeting in PYM is the Southern California Quarterly Meeting, which includes meetings and worship groups in southern California and southern Nevada. Pacific Yearly Meeting also includes meetings in Hawaii and Mexico that are not part of a quarterly meeting.
The yearly meetings for programmed meetings in this area are Evangelical Friends Church Southwest and Western Association of the Religious Society of Friends, which includes churches in Berkeley, Whittier, and Bakersfield, California.
CPQM Meetings and Worship Groups
Institutions
Quarterly Meetings also create institutions to serve the wider world of Friends and their communities. College Park Quarterly Meeting was involved in establishing:
- Sierra Friends Center, Nevada City, CA.
- Ben Lomond Quaker Center, Ben Lomond, CA.
- Friends House, Santa Rosa, CA.
Friends Publications
Links
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