All Together Worship at Annual Sessions

Friends are enthusiastically and with great hope invited to come together across the geography of our Yearly Meeting - spanning Pennsylvania, Delaware, southern New Jersey, and northern Maryland - on Sunday morning, July 31st. We will participate in a worship experiment by gathering "All Together" in a web of monthly meetings and individual Friends joining from home. The Zoom link will be provided for Friends to join:

from meeting houses where you're gathering in person
from home for those who join their meeting remotely.

Friends of ALL ages are invited as we create a quilt of Zoom screens that will bring us all together from our meetinghouses and homes in the biggest hybrid, multi-location worship we've tried yet! Read below for "tech nuts and bolts" and suggestions for supporting all ages to be in worship together.

NOTE: All Together Worship "Tech Check" for anyone interested in talking through how this will work from your meetinghouse: Monday, July 25, 7-8pm. Link to join:https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81519713632

A "Quilt" of Zoom Screens
Do you remember our Yearly Meeting Quilt? Here's a reminder of another time we created something together, sharing quilt squares with images from our meetings to create a shared image of our PYM community:

Now, imagine an onscreen "quilt" of Friends joining - from meetings and homes - on Zoom for All Together Worship!

Details and Logistics

9:45-10:30am is All Together Worship on Sunday, July 31. This time was chosen to bridge the various times local meetings have First Day worship. Whether your meeting usually meets at 10:00, 11:30, or a time in between, we hope you will make this change for one week of the year and join our time all together as PYM meetings.
The Zoom link for All Together Worship will be unique to Sunday morning. We will share that link during Sessions week with everyone who registers for Annual Sessions, and also with Clerks of local meetings. There will be a password.
Meeting clerks or other responsible "Zoom hosts" for meetings who have hybrid worship should share that link with Friends who normally join your worship from home.
As in any meeting on Zoom, Friends are welcome to keep their video turned off, and we ask that you not take screen shots to follow our practices for online gatherings where youth are attending.
How will vocal ministry work? Participants will be asked to raise their "electronic hand" on Zoom, and PYM Elders will call on people to minister. Discipline will be required of everyone, and expectations will be shared at the beginning of worship.
All Together Meeting for Worship will close at 10:30, followed by a break and the final session of Meeting for Business from 10:45am-12:30pm.

Building Bridges with All Ages
The Sessions theme this year calls us to connect across generations and broken foundations. Bridges bring people together, and can unify us across space and time and ages! The activities offered in the link below are for everyone -- adults, youth, children -- and are opportunities to connect in your meeting as well as something to support children in worship on July 31.
Click here to print out Bridge-building Activities for before and during All Together Worship
Intergenerational worship is for everyone -- all ages of adults, as well as younger Friends. Build bridges in your meeting community by inviting Friends to attend this special worship, including families with children. Whether they are Zooming from home, or join in your meeting's worship space, let's encourage creating comfortable spaces for children (like quilts on the floor in the meetinghouse) and provide quiet things for small hands to encourage stillness and listening inwardly during waiting worship (pipe cleaners and these coloring pages chosen for July 31 with crayons are great!).

"A great people to be gathered"
We are grateful for the vision of Quakers in Britain, who organized an "all-together worship" for their Yearly Meeting this May. At their gathering, 78 meetings joined from their meetinghouses and places of worship, and hundreds of individual Friends were part of their experiment from their homes. Kathleen Wooten (New England YM) wrote about her experience attending: "They were meetings of many sizes, gathered in various locations, all using their own single connection as a group to the wide body. As I scrolled down on my phone I saw group after group, sitting in expectant waiting."
All of us -- together -- are the current community of George Fox's vision on Pendle Hill in 1652, "the Lord let me see atop of the hill in what places he had a great people to be gathered." Please join on July 31!
Questions? Reach out to Director of Programs, Melinda Wenner Bradley, at mwennerbradley@pym.org.