Welcome to the website of the Oklahoma City Meeting
We are the oldest unprogrammed Friends Meeting in Oklahoma and are in a season of renewal. As part of that renewal we are developing this website. The following is offered as an introduction and invitation to enter into Friendly dialog. Thanks for visiting our website.
Quakers practice a religion of experience, a contemporary, simple, and radical faith. Quakers are also called Friends.
Quakers believe . . .
Every person is known by God and can know God in a direct relationship.
The Quaker faith has deep Christian roots. Many Quakers consider themselves Christians, and some do not. Many Quakers find meaning and value in the teachings of many faiths.
Quakers strive to live lives that are guided by a direct encounter with the Divine, more than by teachings about the Divine. Quaker terms for the Holy include God, the Seed, the Light Within, and the Inward Teacher, among others.
Testimonies are ways that Quakers have found to express our experience of the Divine in our lives. Some of the best recognized testimonies include simplicity, integrity, equality, community, and peace. Quaker worship...
Quakers gather in the silence and wait expectantly to come into the presence of the Divine and to be guided by the still, small voice by which God speaks to us from within. During the silence anyone—child, woman, or man—may feel moved to offer a simple spoken message (vocal ministry) that is inspired by this holy encounter. Following the message, the silence resumes. A period of worship may include several messages or none.
Quakers include . . .
There are Quakers of all ages, religious backgrounds, races and ethnicities, education, sexual orientations, gender identities, abilities, and classes. You can find Quakers on all of the world’s continents. Approximately one-third live in the United States and Canada.
http://www.fgcquaker.org/explore/quaker-way
Unprogrammed Meeting For Worship
The Quaker style of worship is characterized by silence as we gather in expectant waiting, active in an inner search for God’s guidance. At first, the silence may seem strange. Do not worry about this, but return again and again to the still center of your being, where God’s presence may be experienced. This silent waiting is also an outward sharing. We join together as a community in our unspoken search and experience. Persons who feel led to do so voice their prayers, thoughts and beliefs. These messages are received as expressions of God’s presence among us. Sometimes this expression takes the form of a spoken message, other times as a song or a chant or as vocal prayer.
James Naylor Quote
There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God.
Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world’s joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.