We are a small Quaker worship community in the Minneapolis-St Paul (Twin Cities) area in Minnesota. We are part of Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative), and as a worship group we are under the care of Bear Creek Monthly Meeting in Earlham, Iowa.
We worship at 1:30 p.m. Central Time on fourth Sundays of the month. Since spring of 2020, we have worshiped virtually over Zoom. Contact us for a link if you’d like to join us. We are widely scattered, from Northeast Minneapolis to Sioux Falls, SD to Dundas, MN, so even if/when we begin worshiping together in person again, we will probably continue to have an online option. Yearly Meeting events and holiday seasons sometimes interrupt our worship schedule, so it’s a good idea to contact us if you want to join us.
On first Sundays of the month, we join our “parent” meeting, Bear Creek, for consideration of the Yearly Meeting’s Advices and Queries, at 10:00 a.m. Central Time, followed by worship at 11 a.m.
Laughing Waters originated in 2002, and we became a preparative meeting under Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) in 2012. In the summer of 2022, we discerned that we were more properly a worship group. You can see more about our early history at an archived copy of our old website, which was replaced by this site in late 2022.
We welcome you to join us. Some people see “conservative” in our affiliation and think this reflects the conventional American category of social and political views, and we want to make clear that it does not: it reflects the desire to “conserve” traditional Quaker practices in the face of changes in many 19th-century meetings. Like most “Conservative” Friends, we are welcoming to people of all genders and sexualities, all ancestries, and all physical conditions, as they are and as they understand themselves to be. We are less welcoming to those who wish to argue against that welcome in God’s (or anyone else’s) name. In September 2019, we approved the following minute:
Laughing Waters Preparative Friends Meeting welcomes LGBTQ+ people. LGBTQ+ people can and do participate in our Meeting in every capacity. Members of the LGBTQ+ community are core members of our community, and have been since Laughing Waters was established. We work to create a space were everyone is safe to connect with that of God in themselves and others. We expect that everyone will treat others with care and respect and work to hold each other accountable to these standards.
We do not have a regular postal mail address. You can contact the worship group using this contact form:
We look forward to meeting you!