The Port Townsend Worship Group meets for worship every First Day at 10AM at the Port Townsend Community Center and holds a meeting for worship for business once each month. Over the past year the group has grown from eight to ten each First Day to 18 to 20. The First Day School has grown from one youth to three youths and one preschooler. The third Friday of each month the group meets in homes for a potluck supper and an adult education discussion; most recently an FCNL board member presented the current work of the FCNL and its building restoration project. Every fourth First Day, there is an adult education forum after meeting for worship; for example, the Friends Bulletin essay "No Creed Is Not the Same As No Theology" by Robert Griswold was discussed; and Friends, who recently retired to Port Townsend, shared their experiences of being directors of the Quaker Hospitality Center in Kigali, Rwanda, from 1996-98.
With University Friends Meeting, the Worship Group celebrated the Religious Society of Friends membership of Lauren and David Erickson and junior membership of Emma Erickson. The Worship Group participated in the clearness process as well as the welcoming for the Erickson’s.
In August, Worship Group members, who were AFSC relief workers in Gaza, attended a special invitation consultation on the Middle East convened by the AFSC They reported to the Worship Group. After September 11, the Worship Group signed the AFSC "No More Victims" full- page ad in The New York Times, and the clerk had published the FCNL statement in the weekly newspaper The Leader.
Worship Group members participate in a weekly Tuesday peace vigil, holding the banner "Islam is Not the Enemy/War is Not the Answer."
The Worship Group worked with Bellingham Friends Meeting to plan jointly the spring 2002 Pacific Northwest Quarterly Meeting.
The Worship Group gave material and spiritual support to a member as she mounted a campaign to save two young Kosovar students from deportation so that they could continue their education at Peninsula Junior College. She stepped forward to be the guardian of the seventeen-year old student. They both now live with her.
The primary focus of the Worship Group over the past twelve months has been a careful discernment toward assuming the responsibility of being a Monthly Meeting. The process began with group discussions, which led to a threshing session and then a consensus to apply to University Friends Meeting for further clearness and support. At the request of University Friends Meeting, the Pacific Northwest Quarterly Meeting appointed in September 2001 a Visiting Committee to continue with Port Townsend Worship Group the discernment process. The Worship Group on three separate occasions hosted members of the Visiting Committee or the entire Visiting Committee. Now in April 2002 the Worship Group is looking forward to its recognition by Pacific Northwest Quarterly Meeting as Port Townsend Monthly Meeting.