Unprogrammed silent worship is the distinctive practice of the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers, in which a congregation gathers and worships together in silence, without any prearranged order of service, sermon, liturgy, hymns or presiding minister. Friends sit together in stillness, waiting expectantly upon God, in the conviction that Christ or the divine Light is present to teach the gathered meeting directly and inwardly, without the mediation of clergy or set forms. Out of the silence, any worshipper, woman or man, without distinction of office, who feels moved by the Spirit may rise to speak, offering a brief "vocal ministry" of words, prayer or song, after which the silence resumes; a meeting may pass with much such ministry or with none at all, in unbroken quiet.
The practice grew from the radical conviction of the movement's seventeenth-century founders that God speaks directly to every person through the "inner light," so that the outward apparatus of priest, sacrament and prescribed worship is unnecessary and may even hinder the immediate encounter with the divine. The silent meeting embodies this belief in its purest form, treating the gathered stillness itself as the ground of worship and the whole company as a "priesthood of all believers" among whom any may be led to minister. Not all Quakers today worship in this way, a large portion, especially in Africa and the Americas, hold programmed services with pastors and singing, but unprogrammed silent worship remains the historic and defining Quaker form, and one of the most radical simplifications of Christian worship, dispensing with nearly everything external in favour of the shared, expectant silence.