Where Two or More are Gathered...

Paul Moore, organizing pastor at the Chain of Lakes Church in Blaine, wrote an accurate account of the Presbytery meeting I attended the other night. It was the first Presbytery meeting I’ve been to in awhile. On several occasions throughout the meeting, the gathered body made references to trying to include more people in their 20s and 30s, but I was hard pressed to envision a room full of 20 and 30 year olds abiding the length and structure of a meeting that lasted nearly six hours not including the pre-Presbytery event.

It’s not that 20 and 30 year olds don’t care or aren’t willing to devote time and energy to something. It would be a mistake to attribute that sentiment to a group of folks who have already bucked the generational trend to leave the church altogether. But, six hours of sitting in a pew listening to reports doesn’t work for us. Based on the number of people still at the meeting at 9:30pm on Tuesday night, it’s not working for a lot of other people as well.

If we are going to get 20 and 30 year olds to agree to be Commissioners at our Presbytery meetings we are going to need to make changes in two distinct but interconnected areas, the first of which is in our individual churches, a topic for another post. The second, is the structure of the Presbytery meeting.

The Presbytery meeting was clearly unbalanced, favoring the work of the committees at the expense of the commissioner. The meeting progressed with committee after committee offering their report and bringing forth action items that were then debated, sometimes unnecessarily, in front of a group of people who had more or less at stake in the discussion. Commissioners were passive witnesses for most of the meeting except during times of debate.

Clearly this imbalance needs to be addressed. By giving too much weight to the needs of our committees we are actually undermining their work. I know this because I was there at 9:30pm when a message about a critical per capita issue was raised and too few commissioners were still around to receive it.

If our Presbytery meetings are going to be welcoming to 20 and 30 year olds (and perhaps even the rest of us) they must be conducted in a way that focuses less on reporting and more on action items. Debate is fine, but discussion that could have been conducted prior to the meeting will drive these folks crazy.

I recently met with a woman in her early 30s, Lisa, who is on our technology committee. At a prior meeting the committee had decided on a course of action that included transferring our Facebook population (over 200 people) from a personal group (mine, thank you very much) to an official Fan Page. The task was assigned to Lisa and she asked if I would be willing to help her. So, I agreed to meet her at her job for lunch.

At this meeting we didn’t start with a pencil and paper, drafting a plan, listing the elements that we would need to gather in order to make a great Facebook Fan page. Nope. As soon as I sat down, Lisa opened her browser and started an account. She grabbed an image off our website for our photo and started adding information about the church. From my iPhone, I called our administrative assistant to ask her to send Lisa images and information via email so we could add them to our page. In one hour we not only had an idea about what we wanted to do, we had an actual Facebook Fan page. 

This next generation is action oriented. If we are going to attract younger commissioners, we need to place more emphasis on the commissioner experience. How do commissioners receive critical updates? How do we organize ourselves to allow the great work of our committees to be heard and understood by everyone? How can we prove to folks that there is energy and imagination in our work? How are we going to recognize the Spirit moving within our organization in order to fearlessly follow it?

This is where I would start.

4:00pm  Committee Booths

5:00pm  Worship

5:30pm  Break bread (ie, dinner)

6:30pm  Action Items

7:30-8:00pm  Closing prayer

For the first hour of the meeting, I would allow committees to disseminate their reports, to the gathered community of commissioners, from tables or booths. Commissioners could peruse the booths at their own pace making sure to visit the committees that interest them the most. They would ask their questions of the committees prior to the meeting and share their insights and concerns directly with committee members who could then take those insights back to their committees. Committees might even decide to change course BEFORE bringing forth any action items that evening. At the end of the hour, the booths close.

“Decently and in order” does not have to mean linear. This hour long booth structure would cut out the passive elements of the evening and provide a process that is far more interactive, for everyone! Commissioners who spend 5 minutes at every booth could peruse 12 committees in 1 hour! Five minutes is a lot of time to get your questions answered and hear another’s perspective on any given issue, which brings me to my next point.

A booth structure would force committees to prepare a clear message. If you have only a few seconds to capture a commissioner’s attention and five minutes at most to discuss relevant issues, how would you present your information? How would you grab commissioner attention in the first place? What would you eliminate from your speech in order for the most critical information to be understood?

Yes, this would require that everyone come to the meeting prepared. Committee reports would become increasingly important, not less, because we would need to have access to the information that cannot be addressed at the meeting. Committees would have to create a plan in advance to capture the imagination of the commissioner. We should aspire to such a level.

Everyone at the meeting on Tuesday night, could have (should have?) read the faith statements from the candidates for ordination prior to the meeting. With a booth structure, commissioners could have posed their questions to the candidates personally. If they didn’t like a candidate’s answer, they would have had time to talk with the candidate (decently, of course) about it. We all like to be heard, but not everything we say needs to be heard by everyone.

A booth structure would allow for the free exchange of ideas and perspectives in the shortest amount of time by those who are most invested in an issue.

Next up would be worship. The elements of worship are all there at a Presbytery meeting…us gathered together in Christ’s name. So let’s gather, let’s proclaim the word, let’s respond to the word, and then let’s break bread together by sharing a meal. (One note: How great would it have been to hear the General Assembly report over dinner instead for an hour after worship at 8pm?) I realize that this recommendation messes with other people’s experience of worship, but it's my blog so I get to at least share my perspective.

The order of the evening is critical to me. We are ready to debate and vote on action items only after we have broken bread together. So after dinner, each committee that has an action item would come forward and present that item, providing their reasons for wanting to bring it to the gathered body. Perhaps representatives from these committees would articulate the different opinions that they learned about earlier in the evening when they were talking with other commissioners. It would be amazing to participate in an organization that freely acknowledged and honored our differences before the discussion even began!

Rather than listening to the candidates for ordination read their faith statements and half a dozen people ask their questions of each candidate, the candidates could have responded to what they heard and talked about earlier that night, giving us all a preview of their leadership style and ability to truly listen. Rather than taking up precious time jogging to the front for a cursory “attagirl” from the Presbytery, I could have had an entire hour to answer questions and get congratulations from folks who are following my journey. Rather than pushing back a new church development issue (Church Growth!) until 9:45pm or postponing Mission and Witness altogether (Really!? Mission and Witness? What is more important folks?), we could have heard from their passionate leaders. Perhaps their passion could be our passion too.

I’m not upset. I’m one of those 30-somethings that found the church as an adult. There is something about it that works for me. But I come with no historical baggage. I do not need things to be done a certain way in order to find God. I find God in the reasons. Can anyone truly make a case for why our last meeting required us to sit in a pew for six hours? Isn’t it time to try something new?