Worship at North Seattle Friends Church continues to meet in person and over Zoom. Contact us for more information.

About North Seattle Friends Church


Find Out More About Us

North Seattle Friends Minute on Racism and Police Brutality

North Seattle Friends Meeting is devastated by the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and others by law enforcement officers and vigilantes. We, as followers of Jesus Christ, affirm that there is that of God in everyone. The recent killings, as much as those of the past, fly in the face of that sacred truth. We stand with the Black Lives Matter movement against the racist system that creates this violence and protects its perpetrators. We cannot, with our Quaker testimony of peace, stand idle and remain neutral in the face of this state-sponsored violence. We will actively address the racism within ourselves, our meeting, and the wider community. This statement is merely a first step to commit us to action and growth.

Approved at Meeting for Business on October 4, 2020 — North Seattle Friends Church

We Are Loudly Silent, Assertively Contemplative, Humbly Prophetic

We are a Quaker Church located in North Seattle. We are a community of people gathered to Listen to God and follow God’s Leadings. We love Jesus! We are all ministers and seek to support each other in our ministries. We welcome all who desire to join us in this God adventure as we Listen to God and liberate each other to live into our place in the world!

We seek to be a welcoming and inclusive community that encourages people to better love God, love others, and love ourselves. To love ourselves is to embrace our unique, God-given identity and gifts, given to us for our own sake and as a potential blessing to others. We strive to be a safe space that gathers all people of diverse backgrounds and perspectives to worship and minister together in unity and in the Quaker tradition.  We are led by the Spirit to recognize full participation of LGBTQ+ persons in all aspects of the life of North Seattle Friends Church.

We honor the diverse spiritual journeys people are on, including their own deeply personal understandings of faithfulness. We advocate for healthy relationships and will support them. Membership in our meeting is open to all people who want to join us in our Christ-centered Quaker journey and practice of group discernment.

We believe that diversity enriches our community. We encourage our members to speak their voice with confidence but listen to others with humility. We support each person’s faith journey and walk together as we seek the Light of Christ in our lives.

Sunday Meeting for Worship


Please Join Us

Programmed Meeting for Worship, Sundays @ 10:30 a.m.

As Quakers we gather in Meeting for Worship, expecting the Living God to speak directly to each one of us. All elements of Meeting for Worship are infused with a Quaker perspective.

Friends acknowledge the power of proclamation into the world. Sound is perpetual—therefore we sing God’s love and truth into the world.

Each person can have a direct and unique experience of God. We learn about the love of God by hearing the way God is working in each others’ lives. In God stories we are creating a safe place where every person can share what is real in his/her life.

The center of worship is Open Worship. The intent of open worship is to create the spaciousness of silence so that each person can hear for his/her own self. Often times we “hear”/sense God quite clearly during this time. The question we then ask is: is this message for me alone, for another time/situation, or am I to share it with the group?

Pastoral Friends usually have a message during the worship service. But this is not the centerpiece of our gathered meeting. It is one of the ways that the Spirit teaches and guides—but the sermon is as much under the immediate leadership of the Holy Spirit as is sharing in Open Worship. The message is open ended with the expectation that God will continue to illumine individuals and the group around the topic. All messages—from open worship and the sermon—are to be held in listening expectation as we leave our time together.

Meeting for Worship concludes at the Leading of the Spirit. We simply wait together until it seems that we are released to move out of our gathered space.  While the time varies, it is usually sometime around 11:30 or 11:45 a.m. At the end of worship is the beginning of service and ministry.

Spoken Messages in Meeting for Worship

Previous messages from Meetings for Worship are available here.

Newcomers


You Are Welcome Here

Do you have a yearning for God and a keen sense of spirituality, yet you can’t quite find a fit with traditional churches? Do you have a relationship with God that brings you peace, but you don’t know how to be part of church-as-you-know it? Over 350 years ago, Friends shed the trappings of their traditional church. They knew that the heart of Christianity was a direct, experiential relationship with Jesus. If a person had this relationship, they didn’t need anything else. If a person didn’t have it, nothing else would satisfy. It started a movement in which people gathered to know God together—and waited to hear from God directly. This began the custom of waiting in Silence for ministry to emerge rather than depending upon clergy to do the God-work. More than just changing worship, it changed the way Friends conducted business together. In fact, it changed a lot of things, leading us to beliefs of equality among all people, peacemaking, simplicity, and social justice.

North Seattle Friends Church just might be what you have been looking for in a church. Join us for the God-adventure.

Ministries


Our Witness and Care for Each Other and the World

North Seattle Friends Church is a group of people caravanning together. We seek to be present in the world and to the next thing that is ours to do. As we journey together, we find that ministries emerge among us and begin to take shape. Generally those emerging ministries begin in one person and find resonance in others. As a people, we want to liberate the ministries as they rise.

Currently we have a wide variety of ministries in our community, which range from ministries of accompaniment to teaching to service to witness. While a few of those ministries are centered within the context of our Meeting, many are dispersed throughout the wider community as we are liberated to do ministry within our own context.

Several years ago, we discovered the truth that as we are liberated in our callings and ministries, we are all ministers of North Seattle Friends Church. An orthodontist realized that when she offers pro bono orthodontic work, it is her ministry and that she does that as a Minister of North Seattle Friends Church. The idea took deep resonance within our community and we began to own that we all do ministry in the name of the larger community.

Likewise, we discovered that we accompany each other in those ministries, even when we are not physically present. It is not uncommon for someone to tell us where we are all going in the next week as one person prepares to travel in the ministry. We all recognize that our spirits will accompany the one traveling in ministry and in that sense we all go together. This accompaniment is powerful in that we recognize that we also accompany one another on difficult journeys. Knowing that others are with us in spirit makes a huge difference.

For those who are part of North Seattle Friends and would like the support of the Meeting, you are encouraged to submit a proposal for an emerging ministry to which you feel called. Administry will consider your proposal with you and come alongside to see how it might unfold among us. When your proposal is received, Administry will begin to discern way forward. You will be part of the discernment process as we all Listen to God’s Leading for us at North Seattle Friends. We love to see emerging ministries take root among us.

Connect with Us


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Phone: (206) 525-8800
Email: office@northseattlefriends.org
Address: 17900 Linden Ave N., Shoreline, WA 98133
Office Hours: Please call to schedule a time