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Convention

Four-day worship event

Occurs annually at various locations in several countries.

Day of visitation

A (possibly defunct) doctrine that people are duty-bound to accept this religion on pain of eternal damnation, once they have ever encountered it.

When a person has come in contact with "The Truth," one is presumed responsible for the knowledge of the one true path to salvation, and is (or was) presumed condemnable for not accepting it.

Emblems

Sacraments

Bread and "wine" (grape juice,) representing the body and blood of Christ.

Field

Diocese

The friends

Members of the church, collectively

"The congregation," in standard American Christian terminology

Make one's choice  

Commit to the religion

The opportunity to make one's choice comes when the elder worker "tests the meeting."

Meeting

Worship gatherings

• Sunday morning meeting
• Gospel meeting (on Sunday afternoon.)
• Wednesday evening Bible study
• Union Sunday meeting (the first Sunday of the month.

Outsiders

Non-professing people (non-members)

Not to be used around outsiders.

Professing

Officially one of "the friends"

...Officially only in the sense that he or she has "made his/her choice"

Special meeting

Large annual local worship gathering

Not a meeting in the normal sense but in fact three [?] "meetings," or sittings, on one day.

Test a meeting

Ask if anybody wants to profess.

This would happen near to the end of a gospel meeting, for example. The senior or "elder" worker would ask that if anybody wants to give their lives to Christ, they could rise to their feet during the third or fourth verse of the song.

Testimony

[Difficult to translate]

Every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening meeting has a segment in which everybody who has professed takes a few moments to speak about a Bible passage and its significance to one's experiences.

Workers

Preachers

The workers are unpaid and theoretically committed to a life-time of service. They are assigned in pairs within a particular "field" , and re-assigned or not on a yearly basis.

• Male and female preachers are refered to as "brother" and "sister" workers.

The world

Society outside the church

Worldly

Not of the church

In the work

Active as a preacher