I wish I had the time to do a research project on building healthy decision making processes in church life. It seems to me that a fundamental question is how we use patterns of democracy in decision making. People often pray for the involvement of the Holy Spirit or for God’s guidance at church meetings and I often find myself wondering what they mean by such sentiments. God’s vote does beat anyone else’s, after all.
There was a time when I would very rarely have asked a church group to vote in order to come to a decision. However, my tolerance for interminable meetings is lower now than it once was. It seems to me more important to allow everyone to have their say and then take a decision that a group will stick to rather than trying helplessly to persuade everyone to agree that a course of action is correct.
decision making
An American businessman faced with the same interminable meetings took away the chairs and made everyone stand.Certainly focussed the mind.
Buildings and Vestries
Ah yes. I remember similar frustration when I sat on vestry. Trying to get consensus was like trying to herd mice. It’s just as well the Holy Spirit was guiding our decisions (allegedly) as I was having very unkind thoughts involving brother and sister vestry members and baseball bats.
I think a degree of autocracy is needed. Along with rigging any vote in favour of the decision you want prior to a meeting. It’s not that I’m Machiavellian, it’s just life is too short.
By the way, when are we going to Ronseal/oil the rather weatherbeaten south door of the cathedral? And the west door for that matter. I offered to do it gratis but was told there would be problems as it’s a listed building