What should I do if I want to become a member of the Society?
- Firstly, attend Meeting for Worship and any of the other meetings, your local business meetings, Area Meetings as frequently as possible.
- Read Chapter 11 of Quaker Faith & Practice, on the table at meeting and also online at http://qfp.quaker.org.uk
- Read Quaker Life leaflet ‘Membership Principles’ available to download at www.quaker.org.uk/tender-hand.  This leaflet summarizes the key points in Chapter 11 on routes into membership, and the significance of Membership to the Friend and to the Meeting.
- Speak to Friends in your meeting about applying for membership.  It is very important for a Friend considering membership to be supported by an Elder or Overseer and/or another person in the meeting who is significant to you.
- Consider doing the course Becoming Friends either with a Friend in your meeting, or online at https://www.woodbrooke.org.uk/learn/resources/becoming-friends/
- North Scotland Area Meeting has produced a leaflet for attenders considering membership. You can download it using the link below:
These are only suggestions, they are not compulsory to applying for membership. There are other ways, eg participating in study or discussion groups.
Once you feel the time is right, and maybe after discussion with a local Friend, you can write a letter to the Clerk of Area Meeting explaining why you want to be a Member of the Society of Friends.
What does applying for Membership actually mean?
Becoming a member is part of our continuing spiritual journey. Sometimes, but not always, it is prompted by a personal event or experience, marriage, birth, illness or bereavement.
Membership brings elements of responsibility & commitment, but it is also about joy & celebration, and is for those who feel at home within the Quaker community.
It is also a statement to yourself, your Local and Area meeting and the world, that you accept at least the fundamental elements of being a Quaker, divine guidance, corporate worship and the right ordering of our Business meetings.
There is no creed to assert, however the first chapter of Quaker Faith & Practice, Advices & Queries, is a challenge & inspiration for us as we journey through our personal lives.
At the end of the Introduction to Advices & Queries, the following postscript to an epistle written by a meeting of elders held at Balby in 1656:
Dearly beloved Friends, these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by, but that all, with the measure of light which is pure & holy, may be guided; and so in the light walking and abiding, these may be fulfilled in the Spirit, not from the letter, for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth light.
Penny Selbie, Aberdeen Local Meeting