Fall Sessions 2025

Sessions Committee is pleased to invite you to join NYYM Friends for Fall Sessions 2025, to be held Online Only, December 5-7, 2025. Fall Sessions gives us the opportunity for worship together, attend to business and learn from each other. This year our evening programs will focus on the final part of our 2025 Theme: Dare to Hope! Dare to Heal! Dare to Witness!  We will hear from NYYM Young Adult Friends as they tell us of ways they Dare to Witness and from Meetings or individuals whose witness can inspire us all. Details and presenters are not yet finalized.

We will begin on Friday evening with a welcome and program. On Saturday morning, worship will ground us before beginning our first meeting for worship with attention to business. If you would like, stay to see friends during lunch at the Online Meetinghouse*. The second opportunity to attend to business will be on Saturday afternoon.   We can socialize during dinner at the Online Meetinghouse before ending with a program where other Friends tell us about their witness.

We will conclude Fall Sessions on Sunday with Online Worship, open to individuals in their homes, and to meetings in their meetinghouses or nearby meetinghouses. Stay tuned for more details about this first-time event.  We will conclude with our last meeting for worship with attention to business on Sunday afternoon, 3 - 5pm.  

We hope that you will plan to join us. Registration will open in early November. Our requested registration contribution of $100 will help cover the cost of the technology and the people who will make it possible for us to be together throughout the year.  

I look forward to joining you in worship, business, learning and fellowship.  

— Anne Collins, Clerk of NYYM Sessions Committee

Friday Plenary: Young Adults and the Root of Witness

George Fox wrote, “Speak and do that[…]so your conversations, lives, practices, and tongues may preach to all people, and answer the good, just, and righteous principle of God in them all.” The call to let our lives, practices, and tongues "preach to all people" inspires many young adult Friends to witness to justice and mercy. In this plenary, young adult Friends will share about what it's like for them to witness as Quakers in a time of great division, and invite you to consider what it means to answer the good in all people as you let your life speak.

Friday’s panel participants:

• Beth Kelly, NYYM Children, Youth and Young Adult Community Director, Moderator
• Alex Schank (Montclair Meeting) engages Quaker communities in organizing for peace and justice in Palestine/Israel. He convenes Witness Coordinating Committee's working group on the topic.
• Gessie Perez (Westbury Meeting) advocates for social support programs and disability rights. She participated in FCNL's Spring Lobby Weekend in 2025 to speak for preserving Medicaid and SNAP benefits.
• Jess Hobbs Pifer (Brooklyn Meeting) holds many concerns, including for immigrant rights and justice. She is one of the organizers of the Quaker Walk to Washington in spring 2025.

Saturday Plenary: Dare to Witness

There will be two parts to this plenary:

• Jens and Spee Braun will share their reflections on their recent trip to Palestine and Israel.
• Brian Blackmore, Director of Quaker Engagement of American Friends Service Committee, will speak about Quaker witness for equal rights for gay people in the USA

ALL-YEARLY MEETING WORSHIP on Sunday, Dec. 7, 10:30 am

New York Yearly Meeting invites all our local meetings to try a joint worship experiment by collectively joining a meeting for worship on Zoom on First Day, December 7, from 10:30 am to noon. Imagine your Zoom screen filled with gathered Friends from throughout the Yearly Meeting at their meeting houses as well as individuals from their homes! More details here.

Please let Sessions Committee know if your meeting is considering participating in this joint meeting for worship by completing this Google form. You will need to designate a Zoom Contact Person.

If you have chosen to join the All Yearly Meeting worship, please review this Instruction Sheet. Note there will be a Practice Session for all meeting participants on Sunday, November 23, 2025, at 12:45 p.m. Have your Zoom Host and a few members participate to regulate sound and video. Zoom Link for this practice session will be sent closer to the date.

2025 Fall Online Sessions Schedule 

Friday, Dec. 5 - Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025

Dare to Hope! Dare to Heal! Dare to Witness!

*If Tech and Social host volunteers are available. To volunteer, write to [email protected] 

Registration

Registration is completely online. If you are unable to register online, please ask someone you know to assist you, or call the NYYM office at 212-673-5750. Volunteers are ready, willing, and able to provide online registration assistance.

Register now using the Online Registration Form.