Indianapolis First Friends Meeting sits on Kessler Boulevard East Drive on the north side of Indianapolis, in a quiet meetinghouse that has anchored this Quaker community since 1956. The meeting calls itself "Compassionate, Christian, Quaker," a three-word summary of what the people here try to practice. Members and attenders gather to wait in the silence, to listen for what Quakers call the Inward Teacher, and to carry what they hear out into the city around them. The community is known locally for its one-acre Meditational Woods, an unusually active creation care team, a thirty-year stamp project that has raised tens of thousands of dollars for women-led businesses overseas, and a college scholarship program for African American students that has awarded over $1.2 million since the mid-1940s.
Two Centuries on the Same Soil
Quaker families began moving into the village of Indianapolis in the 1820s. In 1834 they began holding informal meetings for worship in family homes, and in 1836 an "indulged" meeting was granted by Fairfield Meeting. For nearly twenty years the Friends met "in the house of the Lutherans" while they negotiated with their parent meeting. In 1855 they requested and received permission to establish a Preparative Meeting, which was placed under the care of Bridgeport Monthly Meeting four years later. In 1865, with a total membership of 147, Indianapolis Preparative Meeting was raised to the status of a Monthly Meeting.
That same year the Friends built their first meetinghouse on a parcel bounded by Fort Wayne, Delaware, and St. Clair Streets. One story of the building served as a school for children and the other as a house for worship. In 1895 the meeting moved to a second home at Thirteenth and Alabama, where an educational unit and a larger dining room and kitchen were added in 1923. The present meetinghouse at 3030 East Kessler Boulevard was completed in December 1956 and remains the gathering place for the meeting today.
Along the way, members of First Friends left marks on the city and the state. Sarah Smith, a Friend, was appointed Superintendent of the Indiana Women's Prison and Girls' Reformatory when it opened in 1869. Sarah Morrison, the first woman admitted to Indiana University as a student in 1867, became a member of First Friends in 1875 and threw herself into the women's suffrage movement. Barnabas Hobbs served as Indiana's first State Superintendent of Public Instruction (1868 to 1871) and as the first president of Earlham College. Levi Rees was appointed as the first salaried pastor of Indianapolis Monthly Meeting in 1888, and seventeen pastors have served the meeting since then.
The Practice of Waiting Worship
First Friends is unusual among Quaker meetings in that it offers both kinds of Quaker worship under one roof: unprogrammed "waiting worship" in the manner of the early Friends, and a semi-programmed pastoral service with hymns, scripture reading, choral music, and a sermon. The two forms share the same conviction that God can be met directly in the gathered silence, and that the Living Christ is truly present without the need for outward rites.
Waiting worship is held on Sunday morning at nine in the Parlor, on Monday at noon, and on Wednesday at seven in the evening. On Monday and Wednesday the meeting is offered by Zoom as well as in person. Worshippers settle into a silent, expectant hour, and as the Holy Spirit urges, anyone may speak out of the silence, sharing what early Friends called the teaching of the Inward Light. Mondays often close at one in the afternoon with fifteen minutes of conversation over bag lunches. The Monday service on the Sunday following the message of 8-9-26 titled "I Go to the Sea" was relocated for a season to the home of two members during restroom renovations.
The semi-programmed service begins at 10:15 on Sunday morning in the Meetingroom. A typical Sunday follows a familiar arc: opening hymn, welcome and centering meditation, prayer, choral anthem or special music, a children's message after which the children may leave for their own worship, scripture reading, morning message, a period of waiting worship in the manner of Friends, a closing hymn, and benediction. The meetingroom is intentionally plain, with no religious symbols, because Quakers believe that the Living Christ is already present and that outward signs are unnecessary. Nursery care is offered for infants and toddlers, and Children's Worship is provided for children from age three through fifth grade. Visitors are not expected to introduce themselves; they may simply take a seat and fill out an attendance sheet if they wish.
The Meetingroom, the Parlor, and the Meditational Woods
The 1956 meetinghouse is a single-story building on the east side of Kessler Boulevard. The Meetingroom, which seats three hundred for Sunday worship, has cushioned pew seating, overhead lighting, a stage with choir seating, a pipe organ, a Steinway grand piano, microphones and speakers, and a balcony with extra seating and access to a baby changing table. The Fellowship Hall, with a capacity of one hundred, is equipped for receptions and includes a stage, tables and chairs, and a kitchen. The Parlor, a smaller room with a capacity of thirty-five, features cushioned couch and chair seating, curtained windows, chandeliers, and a small adjoining kitchen. Each space is also available to rent for weddings, receptions, and other gatherings.
Just east of the meetinghouse sits a tract of land that has become one of the most distinctive features of First Friends. The Meditational Woods is a one-acre urban sanctuary of more than two hundred and fifty native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers, with a meandering path, a recirculating fountain in a central Meditational Circle, large engraved stones, and a granite Peace Pole. The woods were dedicated in June 2002 after years of planning led by former pastor Stan Banker, who had watched the empty lot being mowed week after week from his office window. The committee was chaired by Mary Blackburn, with landscape architect Tim Shaw drawing up the plan. Members donated trees, benches, and plants to honor loved ones; teens have built and rebuilt the paths through Eagle Scout projects; and an exposure-aggregate pathway funded by the Hadley family makes the woods accessible to visitors who use mobility aids. More than a hundred species of birds are recorded in the woods each year, including woodpeckers, chickadees, wrens, and occasional merlins and red-shouldered hawks. The woods are open to anyone who wants to step out of the meeting, gather in silence, and feel the presence of God in creation.
Singing in the Silence
Music is a vital part of the semi-programmed service and of the wider life of the meeting. The choir rehearses every Sunday morning during the nine o'clock hour and sings most Sundays, presenting anthems and special music. Each year the choir and other members prepare a Christmas Vespers program that is described as inspiring and Spirit-led. The meeting also maintains an active handbell choir that performs periodically, and during the summer months members and attenders are encouraged to sign up to share their talents during Meeting for Worship. The First Friends Organ Fund supports the ongoing care and repair of the meeting's pipe organ, an instrument the meeting notes is increasingly rare and worth preserving for the deep musical heritage it carries into the present.
Children, Youth, and the Quaker Affirmation
Christian education at First Friends is built on the conviction that Christ is the Inward Teacher and that, in community, Friends help one another learn. There are no creeds to memorize. Children are welcomed into the worship service, and a children's message is offered most Sundays at the front of the Meetingroom. After the message, children preschool through fifth grade are invited to leave for their own Children's Worship, which includes an interactive Bible story with props, music, and a craft or activity. Children two and under may stay in the nursery down the hall from the Meetingroom. All childcare is free and no registration is required.
On Sunday mornings at nine, between September and September, adults gather for the Seeking Friends book study led by Pastor Bob Henry, with titles ranging from "Do I Stay Christian?" by Brian McLaren and "What is the Bible?" by Rob Bell to "Our Life is Love: The Quaker Spiritual Journey" by Marcelle Martin. At the same hour, the choir rehearses for the morning service. Young Friends Youth Fellowship welcomes youth in grades six through twelve for games, conversation about current events, service projects, and the kind of fellowship that young Quakers often struggle to find elsewhere.
In an effort to guide young people in their Quaker faith, similar to confirmation or bar and bat mitzvah preparation in other traditions, the meeting created the Quaker Affirmation Curriculum. Designed primarily for middle and high school students but useful for Friends of any age, the ten-month program takes students through Quaker history, the testimonies, methods of discernment, Quaker theology, Quaker artists and changemakers, and their own developing beliefs. Student and teacher manuals and presentation materials are available as a free download, and donations to support the project are welcome.
Creation Care as Calling
Creation Care is one of the most visible expressions of stewardship at First Friends. The Creation Care team, led by Mary Blackburn and supported by a wider network of volunteers, treats care for the earth as a direct expression of Quaker faith. The team's work reaches beyond the meeting's own woods into the wider world. Volunteers have hosted composting workshops with the Purdue Extension, organized riverwatch training, led discussions on landscaping with native plants, attended climate rallies at the Indiana Statehouse, and tracked legislation on community solar, wetlands, and the retirement of coal-fired power plants. The team has been an active partner with the Hoosier Environmental Council, Faith in Place, Quaker Earthcare Witness, and other organizations, and frequently shares Katharine Hayhoe's Talking Climate newsletter with the meeting.
Inside the meeting's own grounds, the team cares for the Meditational Woods, the Butterfly Garden, a pollinator garden, and a pilot prairie planted near the entrance to the woods. Work mornings are held several times a year to remove invasive species such as Amur honeysuckle, euonymus, and young mulberries, to clear paths, and to plant native species that support birds, insects, and other wildlife. The team also hosts an annual Souper Bowl lunch of plant-based soup, bread, and salad before the Super Bowl, framing the shift toward more plant-based meals as both a health choice and an act of love for God's creation.
The Stamp Team and the Wider World
First Friends is the host of one of the longest-running stamp projects of its kind in the country. The $tamping for Dollar$ team collects used and new postage stamps, postcards, albums, and entire envelopes from people around the world. Volunteers trim, sort, and sell the stamps to collectors and dealers, and the proceeds are sent to Right Sharing of World Resources (RSWR), an independent Quaker nonprofit that makes grants to women-led micro-enterprise projects in Guatemala, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and India. The program has been operating for thirty years, ten of them at First Friends, and has raised more than seventy thousand dollars for RSWR over its lifetime. The team welcomes new volunteers, and stamps can be mailed in or dropped in the box marked "RSWR Stamps" at the Donation Station in Fellowship Hall.
First Friends also keeps close ties to a much wider network of Quaker and Quaker-adjacent organizations. Locally it supports Constructing Our Future, the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center, the Mid-North Food Pantry, and the Peace Learning Center. Across Indiana it backs Changing Footprints, the Earlham School of Religion, the Indiana Friends Committee on Legislation, and Quaker Haven Camp. Nationally it stands with the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Friends Disaster Service, Quaker Voluntary Service, and the Friends General Conference. Internationally it partners with the American Friends Service Committee, the Belize Friends School, the Friends of East Africa Foundation, Friends United Meeting, Friends World Committee for Consultation, Quaker Earthcare Witness, the Ramallah Friends School, the United Society of Friends Women International, and a plantain farm collaboration in La Democracia, Belize.
The Friends Education Fund Scholarship
Long before today's creation care and stamp programs, First Friends was entrusted with another long-running ministry. After the Civil War, members of the meeting established an orphanage in Indianapolis for African American children, one of only a handful of such institutions in the state. Among those whose assets eventually funded the work was John Williams, a formerly enslaved man who had become a successful farmer and blacksmith in 1860s Washington County, Indiana. In his will he directed that his assets be used to educate "poor Negro children," and after his death those assets were transferred by the courts to the Friends orphanage.
By the 1920s the need for the orphanage had declined, and the property was sold. The funds were placed under an autonomous board of First Friends members and became the Friends Education Fund, a college scholarship program for African American students that has been giving awards since the mid-1940s. The fund has now provided more than $1.2 million in scholarships to approximately 1,906 students. Recent awards have been in the range of $1,500 per year, and applications open each year for the following fall semester.
Caring for One Another
First Friends builds much of its community life around the everyday practice of caring for one another. The Praying Friends group holds prayer requests in confidence and lifts them up faithfully week after week. The Circle of Care provides ongoing contact with shut-ins, supports families with special needs, and responds at times of acute or chronic illness, disability, end-of-life preparation, and death. The Meal Ministry has been providing meals to members and attenders experiencing new babies, deaths, illness, surgeries, and other challenging situations for most of the meeting's history; since 2009 the current coordinators have arranged hundreds of meals for more than one hundred families. Volunteers can sign up to provide as little as one or two meals a year, and store-bought food, restaurant gift cards, and delivery are all welcome.
Friendly Visitors stay in touch with Friends who can no longer attend Meeting for Worship in person. Prayer shawls, calls, cards, and quiet visits are all part of the rhythm. The meeting also partners with the IU Congregational Care Network to connect trained First Friends volunteers by weekly phone call with IU patients living with chronic illness.
The Shalom Zone
For several years, First Friends has been part of an interfaith cluster of six congregations known as the Shalom Zone, alongside Allisonville Christian Church, Cross and Crown Lutheran Church, Epworth United Methodist Church, and St. Pius X Catholic Church. The Shalom Zone's mission is "Led by God's Light, Ecumenically Building the Kingdom of God, One Need at a Time." Together these congregations host an annual electronics recycling event with Recycle Force, organize wheelchair ramp builds through the nonprofit Servants At Work (SAWs), pack Buddy Bag free lunches for children at Allisonville Elementary School during school breaks, sponsor a community garage sale that benefits School on Wheels, show a season of eco-films with visiting speakers, and gather for a Thanksgiving ecumenical worship service each year.
On its own, First Friends also contributes to a wider Witness and Service witness. Members can volunteer at the Mid-North Food Pantry on the first and third Wednesdays of each month, mentor youth through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Indiana, support Second Helpings, Harbor Light Hospice, Easterseals Crossroads, and other community organizations. Special funds such as the Howard Taylor Outreach Fund, the Urgent Aid Fund for disaster relief, and the Meal Ministry fund give the meeting ways to respond quickly when needs arise locally, regionally, and around the world.
The Linda Lee Spiritual Retreat
Each year First Friends hosts the Linda Lee Spiritual Retreat, an affordable day of spiritual exploration in memory of Linda Caldwell Lee, a poet and writer whose deep mystical experiences led her to travel the country in a big white van named Moby, interviewing other people about their spiritual lives. She published a book called Mystics, Me and Moby and four collections of poetry before returning to Indianapolis and becoming an active member of First Friends. She passed on in June 2021, and her longtime partner Ed Morris helped found the retreat in her memory.
The retreat is managed by Pastors Bob Henry and Beth Henricks and volunteer Ed Morris under the care of the Ministry and Counsel Committee. The intention is to give seekers an opportunity to enrich their spiritual lives using a fairly broad definition of "spiritual" and allowing for experiences and learnings from a variety of spiritual traditions as well as examinations of the Quaker faith.
Small Groups, Soul Sisters, and a Table for Books
Beyond Sunday morning, the meeting gathers in many smaller circles. Soul Sisters meets for an autumn luncheon each year at the home of the pastor. The Woo Woo Sisters, a handful of women mostly from First Friends, meet the second and fourth Thursday evenings in the Parlor for spiritual growth, alternating between a Lectio Divina format and a Chalice Circle format. Threshing Together for Men, now in its tenth year, gathers men from the meeting for an evening of conversation and finger foods at a different home each time. Oak Leaf: Meeting for Reading gathers in the Parlor on the last Tuesday of each month at seven in the evening to discuss a chosen book; the conversation is also offered over Zoom. Both regular pitch-in potluck lunches after Sunday worship and occasional pie nights have become a way to extend fellowship beyond the close of the service.
Most Wednesdays in the fall and winter find First Friends in study. The ILLUMINATE Friends Bible Study meets on Thursday evenings at 7:30 by Zoom for a thirteen-week exploration of a book of the Bible; the 2026 fall series walks through Psalms: Entering God's Presence. New members and seekers are invited to attend, and newcomers are warmly welcomed into any of these gatherings.
Quaker Testimonies, in Their Own Words
First Friends describes itself as Christian and Quaker without apology, and at the same time it welcomes seekers, doubters, and people of every background into its life. The meeting holds that Christ can be found in the life, teachings, example, and spirit of Jesus, that silent and open worship before God is itself the reality of Christ present with the gathering, and that baptism and communion are primarily inward and spiritual realities rather than outward rites. The time of silence in the middle of the Sunday morning service, typically fifteen to twenty minutes, is often identified as "communion in the manner of Friends." There is no litmus test for membership other than a sincere desire to embody and live faithfully in the spirit and teachings of Jesus.
Many people recognize the Quaker testimonies as SPICES: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship. First Friends describes simplicity as going to the heart of the matter; peace as renouncing war and violence and nurturing love and respect for others; integrity as being authentic and consistent so that one's life speaks in truth; community as drawing wisdom from a gathered community and being both nurtured and nurturing; equality as finding that of God in every person; and stewardship as taking all that is given and caring for it wisely, saving, sharing, and conserving.
The meeting's recent witness has included formal minutes approved without objection at its Monthly Meeting for Business, including statements on the war in Iran and on ICE, expressing the meeting's ongoing commitment to the Quaker testimonies of peace, justice, and care for vulnerable people.
Visiting First Friends
First Friends welcomes anyone who walks through the door. The community notes that more than sixty percent of those who now consider First Friends their spiritual home first arrived at a Quaker meeting as a visitor; most were not raised in the Friends tradition but found their way to Quakerism as adults. Dress is whatever a visitor feels most comfortable wearing; some come in shorts and flip-flops, others in ties or dresses. Visitors are not expected to introduce themselves, and an offering is taken but not expected of guests. Handicap and guest parking is available on the east side of the building, and the main parking is on the north side. For the 10:15 service, both the north and east doors are open and greeters are there to welcome visitors. Outside worship hours, visitors can use the east door by the mailbox and ring the bell if the door is locked. Office hours are Monday through Thursday from 10:00 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon.
Music, sermons, and a Light Reflections series are available on the meeting's YouTube channel for those who wish to worship from a distance. Giving can be made online, by text message to 317-768-0303, by automatic bank transfer, or by mailing a check to the meetinghouse. The Friend to Friend weekly newsletter is the best way to keep up with upcoming events, volunteer opportunities, and community updates.
Indianapolis First Friends Meeting is, at its heart, what its members have always called it: a place where God is heard and people are served.