John 12:20–36 

We read John 12:20–36 as Greeks ask to see Jesus, and we follow the thread through language, glory, obedience, and the summons to walk in the light. A humble king, a troubled prayer, and a heavenly voice reframe power, time, and true life.

• Greeks approach through Philip and Andrew
• Donkey imagery and humility of the king
• Hora, kairos, and the meaning of “hour”
• Kurios, phoné, and translation choices
• Seed dying, psuché versus zōē aiōnios
• Strong call to follow and obey
• Heavenly voice, thunder, and discernment
• Light versus darkness and urgent belief
• Messiah expectations and suffering redeemer
• Quaker practice of convincement and repentance

A complete list of our podcasts, organized into topics, is available on our website.

To learn more about Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), please visit ohioyearlymeeting.org.

Those interested in exploring the distinctives of Conservative Friends waiting worship should consider checking out our many Zoom Online Worship opportunities during the week here. All are welcome!

We also have several Zoom study groups. Check out the Online Study and Discussion Groups on our website.

Advices read in these podcasts can be found on page 29 in our Book Of Discipline.

We welcome feedback on this and any of our other podcast episodes. Contact us through our website.

John 12:1–19 

We read John 12 with an eye for meaning, moving from Mary’s costly anointing to a king on a donkey and the tension between literal history and spiritual truth. We sit with hard questions about Judas, poverty, symbolism, and what counts as essential belief.

• Why John’s timeline differs from the synoptics
• Anointing at Bethany as humility, burial, and honor
• Judas, the common purse, and ethics of the poor
• Diakonos as service rather than slavery
• Litra as possible burial measure and its weight
• Plotting against Lazarus as reaction to living proof
• Triumphal entry and Zechariah’s humble king
• Early Friends, James Naylor, and costly witness
• Remembering after glory as theology of insight
• Discerning essentials: resurrection, birth, and belief
• Physical–spiritual continuum and modern lenses

A complete list of our podcasts, organized into topics, is available on our website.

To learn more about Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), please visit ohioyearlymeeting.org.

Those interested in exploring the distinctives of Conservative Friends waiting worship should consider checking out our many Zoom Online Worship opportunities during the week here. All are welcome!

We also have several Zoom study groups. Check out the Online Study and Discussion Groups on our website.

Advices read in these podcasts can be found on page 29 in our Book Of Discipline.

We welcome feedback on this and any of our other podcast episodes. Contact us through our website.

Four vivid portraits of conservative Quaker ministry show how conviction, plainness, and silent worship shaped a people under pressure from modern life. We trace their outreach, leadership, and struggles with change as Ohio Friends carry inner continuity toward 1917.

• Elwood Conrad’s solemn preaching on salvation and conscience
• James Henderson’s home meetings, missions work, and presidential visits
• Cyrus Cooper’s rigorous plainness, opposition, and intuitive friendships
• Carl Patterson’s gentle leadership, clerking, and magnetic presence
• Quietism’s strengths and limits within a changing economy
• The hedge of plainness fading while inner bonds endure
• Education, eldering, and the cost of fear of change
• Readiness for war-time testing and reconstruction

A complete list of our podcasts, organized into topics, is available on our website.

To learn more about Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), please visit ohioyearlymeeting.org.

Those interested in exploring the distinctives of Conservative Friends waiting worship should consider checking out our many Zoom Online Worship opportunities during the week here. All are welcome!

We also have several Zoom study groups. Check out the Online Study and Discussion Groups on our website.

Advices read in these podcasts can be found on page 29 in our Book Of Discipline.

We welcome feedback on this and any of our other podcast episodes. Contact us through our website.

We trace the tension between strict preservation and bold outreach among Ohio Friends from 1874 to 1917. Asa Branson’s authority, Hannah Stratton’s journeys, and the Fowlers’ service reveal how discipline, humility, and risk shaped a quieter but wider ministry.

• Asa Branson’s plainspoken authority and resistance to sociability and standard time
• Deference to elders creating distance from youth and leadership roles tied to plain dress
• Reports of renewed ministry and young Friends entrusted with gifts
• Hannah Stratton’s humility, release to travel, and contested reception in Britain
• John and Esther Fowler’s service for children in Ohio and Cairo
• influence of an unprogrammed meeting in Japan on local Friends
• The move from preservation toward outreach without abandoning core testimonies

A complete list of our podcasts, organized into topics, is available on our website.

To learn more about Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), please visit ohioyearlymeeting.org.

Those interested in exploring the distinctives of Conservative Friends waiting worship should consider checking out our many Zoom Online Worship opportunities during the week here. All are welcome!

We also have several Zoom study groups. Check out the Online Study and Discussion Groups on our website.

Advices read in these podcasts can be found on page 29 in our Book Of Discipline.

We welcome feedback on this and any of our other podcast episodes. Contact us through our website.

We trace the character of Ohio Yearly Meeting’s “Golden Age” ministry, where quietist discipline met public witness in prisons, schools and streets. Stories of Anne Branson, Elwood Dean and Daniel Mott reveal the cost of obedience, the power of silence and the risks of over-editing holiness.

• Quietism shaping tone, restraint and obedience
• Prophetic sensitivity alongside activist outreach
• Anne Branson’s severe integrity and tender counsel
• Elwood Dean’s musical preaching and human warmth
• Daniel Mott’s prayerful gentleness and nearness of eternity
• Decline of ministers after 1890 and likely causes
• A call to keep speech brief, weighty and alive

A complete list of our podcasts, organized into topics, is available on our website.

To learn more about Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), please visit ohioyearlymeeting.org.

Those interested in exploring the distinctives of Conservative Friends waiting worship should consider checking out our many Zoom Online Worship opportunities during the week here. All are welcome!

We also have several Zoom study groups. Check out the Online Study and Discussion Groups on our website.

Advices read in these podcasts can be found on page 29 in our Book Of Discipline.

We welcome feedback on this and any of our other podcast episodes. Contact us through our website.

John 11:38–57 

We study this part of John with clear attention to Greek terms that reshape belief as trust and signs as pointers beyond miracles. Lazarus’s raising, the council’s response, and the approach to Passover reveal how language, liberation, and wholehearted faith meet in practice.

• Belief as trust and confidence, not mere assent
• Christos as title Anointed, not a surname
• Names like Yeshua, Iakobos, Ioudas shifting across testaments
• Lazarus raised, unbind him as liberation motif
• Jesus deeply moved, nuance of Greek verbs
• signs pointing beyond miracles to God’s glory
• Council fear, Caiaphas’s unintended prophecy
• Children of God, adoption and unity
• Passover approaching, Jesus’s withdrawal to Ephraim

A complete list of our podcasts, organized into topics, is available on our website.

To learn more about Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), please visit ohioyearlymeeting.org.

Those interested in exploring the distinctives of Conservative Friends waiting worship should consider checking out our many Zoom Online Worship opportunities during the week here. All are welcome!

We also have several Zoom study groups. Check out the Online Study and Discussion Groups on our website.

Advices read in these podcasts can be found on page 29 in our Book Of Discipline.

We welcome feedback on this and any of our other podcast episodes. Contact us through our website.

John 11:1-37

We read John 11 with attention to language, source questions, and the inward Light, moving from Lazarus’s death to Jesus’s tears and the claim “I am the resurrection and the life.” We contrast Martha’s presumption with Mary’s surrender, and explore how glory means God’s manifest presence, not spectacle.

• ethical framing against gambling and exploitation
• John 11 context, Bethany near Jerusalem
• name meanings and linguistic notes in Greek and Hebrew
• “glory” as manifested presence of God
• light “in” a person vs external light
• sleep vs death and Johannine misunderstanding motif
• “I am the resurrection and the life” and zoe vs bios
• Martha’s doctrine vs Mary’s inward posture
• Johannine community, late dating, and source theories
• Jesus’s emotions, “deeply moved,” “troubled,” and “Jesus wept”
• early heresies: Docetism and the full humanity of Christ
• Quaker emphasis on inward life, peace beyond understanding

A complete list of our podcasts, organized into topics, is available on our website.

To learn more about Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), please visit ohioyearlymeeting.org.

Those interested in exploring the distinctives of Conservative Friends waiting worship should consider checking out our many Zoom Online Worship opportunities during the week here. All are welcome!

We also have several Zoom study groups. Check out the Online Study and Discussion Groups on our website.

Advices read in these podcasts can be found on page 29 in our Book Of Discipline.

We welcome feedback on this and any of our other podcast episodes. Contact us through our website.

We trace how Ohio Wilburite Friends built a “guarded education,” from printed minutes and women’s records to a brick-by-brick boarding school culture that survived fire, standardized primary schools, and balanced conviction with modernization. A story of plain speech, strict standards, aid associations, and a networked push for quality.

• women’s minutes printed and epistles included alongside men’s
• boarding school built at Barnesville with local bricks and pride
• guarded culture of plain dress, thee and thou, strict discipline
• bans on baseball and careful curation of reading material
• high academics with limited salaries and leadership turnover
• aid associations and alumni organizing to raise funds and standards
• tuition increases and building upgrades amid cultural unease
• 1910 fire, rapid rebuilding, improved safety and infrastructure
• primary schools revived, subsidized, and gradually standardized
• custom readers published to align texts with Quaker testimonies
• education associations set courses, exams, and reporting norms
• cross-yearly meeting cooperation to supervise and improve schools

A complete list of our podcasts, organized into topics, is available on our website.

To learn more about Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), please visit ohioyearlymeeting.org.

Those interested in exploring the distinctives of Conservative Friends waiting worship should consider checking out our many Zoom Online Worship opportunities during the week here. All are welcome!

We also have several Zoom study groups. Check out the Online Study and Discussion Groups on our website.

Advices read in these podcasts can be found on page 29 in our Book Of Discipline.

We welcome feedback on this and any of our other podcast episodes. Contact us through our website.

John 10:1-42 

We read John 10 with attention to the gate, the Good Shepherd, and what it means to recognize a voice that leads to life. Greek insights on “amen amen,” voice and calling, and zoe versus bios deepen a conversation about obedience, abundance, and union with the Father.

• historical context of shepherding and danger in the fields
• the gate as a real threshold for discernment and salvation
• voice recognition versus noise and false guides
• good shepherd versus hired hand and motive under pressure
• free will, temptation, Gethsemane, and chosen obedience
• other sheep, one flock, universality without relativism
• feast of dedication and the claim “The Father and I are one”
• works as witness when belief feels hard
• eternal life as zoe, the life of the ages, now
• kingdom as divine state, not territory
• practical prayer: making space to listen and follow

A complete list of our podcasts, organized into topics, is available on our website.

To learn more about Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), please visit ohioyearlymeeting.org.

Those interested in exploring the distinctives of Conservative Friends waiting worship should consider checking out our many Zoom Online Worship opportunities during the week here. All are welcome!

We also have several Zoom study groups. Check out the Online Study and Discussion Groups on our website.

Advices read in these podcasts can be found on page 29 in our Book Of Discipline.

We welcome feedback on this and any of our other podcast episodes. Contact us through our website.

A turning point in 1874 becomes a season of rebuilding, wider correspondence, and confident witness among conservative Friends, culminating in shared fundamentals and a stronger print and school culture. We trace how harmony, service, and publishing shaped a subculture that held firm as modern pressures rose.

• relocation to Barnesville and renewed harmony
• conservative separations forming new yearly meetings
• circle of correspondence and tendered epistles
• Philadelphia ties in funds, visitors and publications
• tract associations, libraries and home reading
• Indian concerns and service at Tunesassa
• expanding memorials, journals and peace pamphlets
• 1911–1913 synopsis of conservative principles
• the Great War’s pressure on a rural subculture

A complete list of our podcasts, organized into topics, is available on our website.

To learn more about Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), please visit ohioyearlymeeting.org.

Those interested in exploring the distinctives of Conservative Friends waiting worship should consider checking out our many Zoom Online Worship opportunities during the week here. All are welcome!

We also have several Zoom study groups. Check out the Online Study and Discussion Groups on our website.

Advices read in these podcasts can be found on page 29 in our Book Of Discipline.

We welcome feedback on this and any of our other podcast episodes. Contact us through our website.