Wednesday June 24, 2009
Building consensus
By Jim Taylor
Our organizations might be better off without Robert\’s Rules of Order.
Robert\’s is, of course, the American text on Parliamentary Procedure. It is not the Canadian authority – although many Canadian organizations wrongly cite it. The Canadian authority is Bourinot, the standard used by the House of Commons in Ottawa.
Nevertheless, both Bourinot and Roberts agree on some basic principles.
One is that there can be no discussion until a formal motion defines the issue.
Another is that each person may speak only once (except the mover, who may also close the debate).
At a gathering recently, a woman described the effect of these principles. “If you\’ve only got one chance to speak,” she said, “you tend to come out with all guns blazing to support your position. You have no idea yet how others will react, so you shoot down any opposition before it can come up.”
The tactic reminds me of old Wild West movies where the good guys drag in a Gatling gun to mow down the bad guys before they can return fire.
It\’s hardly a process for building consensus.
I can say this, having had – for one period of my life – a reputation for writing absolutely scathing memos to colleagues in another office. I\’ve seen some of them since then; I\’m appalled at the tone of my words.
But I know why I did it. Because I had only one chance to convince them. My colleagues would then make their decision without further input from me. Their decision would affect my reputation.
So it was all or nothing.
Meetings bog down
I\’ve often seen meetings where every speaker argued against an imagined opposition. When the actual vote came, everyone was in favour. The opposition was never there.
In e a group of friends, ideas are traded, pros and cons weighed, implications considered… A consensus emerges.
The aboriginal practice of a circle works well, too, if the group is not too large. Everyone gets a chance to speak; everyone listens. No one interrupts; no one dominates. If there\’s no consensus, you go around again.
But it can take a long time. So larger bodies tend to fall back on the rules of parliamentary procedure to expedite debate and discussion.
But there are other ways.
One church organization allows a speaker two minutes to present an idea. Any idea. It doesn\’t have to be a formal motion – the official decision could get shaped later.
After two minutes, the other delegates indicate shades of support:
- I love it, and I\’ll work for it.
- I agree.
- I can accept it.
- I disagree, but I won\’t block it.
- I disagree strongly, and I\’ll block it if I can.
If the mood seems generally favorable, further discussion takes place.
p; But if enough people oppose the proposal strongly enough to resist it with any tactics short of terrorism, the proponents may withdraw their proposal, or take time to make it more acceptable.
It\’s a much more practical process.
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Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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Your Turn
I had my tongue slightly in cheek while writing last week\’s column about Canadian icons. Perhaps with a similar motive, Katie Cox commented, “Jim, don\’t forget MES — Mountain Equipment Coop. Haven\’t you heard that American packpackers in Europe are identified by their Canadian flag on their packs but true Canadians are identified by their MEC logo?”
Steve Roney said that he felt impelled, as a serious Roman Catholic, to respond to Robert Smith\’s musing last week, “Is the rosary any different than the prayer wheel?”
“Yes, it is,” Steve replied. “The rosary is an aid to meditation, no more nor less. But the prayer wheel is, at first glance, something else — because it has always been acceptable to have prayer wheels merely turned by wind or water, without human presence. So no meditation is involved, at least in such cases. Their effect _seems_ more magical. Check out this site: http://www.dharma-haven.org/tibetan/digital-wheels.htm
“I could theorize on the theology behind this for Buddhists: the merit might be in making the prayer visible to ambient spirits; or the idea might be that, as the entire perceived world is a self-created illusion, so long as you are aware of having set up the prayer wheel and of its existence in your world, you are experiencing it.”
And Lloyd Lovatt sent along a comment about a column several weeks ago, in which I wondered if our ideas of heaven might reflect some wishful thinking about what we are and are becoming.
Lloyd wrote about a man named Harold in his first pastoral charge, “advanced in years and wounded and stiff from the toil of farming.” The congregation had finally purchased the hymnbook Voices United. In general the congregation liked the book.
“One Sunday we sang \’Bring Many Names\’ — and we struggled through it together. At the end of the service I caught sight of Harold moving up the side of the sanctuary to the front. \’Here it comes,\’ I thought, \’a kind but serious complaint about Mother God.\’
"\’Lloyd,\’ he said, looking into my eyes and looking his years, \’I just can\’t imagine an old, aching God.\’ I think we both laughed with tears in our eyes. In a way I think he was saying that he needed God to be a little younger and a little more flexible than he felt – more like the way he wished he was!”
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About My Paraphrases
Occasionally, I get frustrated by the Bible. Not usually by the message, which is timeless, but by the language and metaphor. Contemporary translations update the language, but not the metaphor, so the text still expects us to respond to images of deserts and tents, camels and droughts, kings and concubines. What we\’ve learned since the Bible was written — about psychology and evolution, about quantum physics and astronomy, computers and fossil fuels – is simply left out.
At such times, I start paraphrasing. I don\’t pretend that these paraphrases rely on new translations of original texts. They are, rather, my way of writing what I think the original writers might have said IF they lived today. Sometimes I stick close to the traditional versification; sometimes I take liberties.
My paraphrase of Paul\’s letter to the Romans attempts to put Paul\’s sometimes convoluted words — and argument — into a contemporary setting. If Paul were writing today, to the Christian church, I\’m not sure he\’d worry as much about the failure of the Jews to follow Christ as about the failure of Christians to follow Christ, so I have rephrased in those terms. I suspect he would also make use of quotations from the Gospels — which of course didn\’t exist when he wrote his letters — rather than using quotations from the only scriptures he had available, which we call the Old Testament.
About 200 people have requested the paraphrase of Romans, as an electronic file.
I now have two new paraphrases available, for Ecclesiastes and Job. Ecclesiastes sticks pretty much to the biblical flow of verses – though with, I hope, some sense of humour. Job cuts 42 chapters down to about three pages. I found the speeches in Job interminable; the only way I could make sense of the various characters\’ verbal meanderings was to turn them into television sound-bites.
I\’m making these available the same way as Romans – on the honor system. You send me an e-mail and request the file you want. I\’ll send it. If you like it, and want to keep it, you send me a cheque for $5 by snail mail. If you don\’t like it, simply erase it from your hard disk and send nothing.
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
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For a lighter look at life, faith, and the lectionary, I recommend my friend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it by sending a note to [email protected].
For other web links worth pursuing, try
- Charlene Fairchild\’s United Online site,
- David Keating\’s “SeemslikeGod” page
- The Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity home page
- Dan Strizek\’s Gathering Place for Creation Spirituality
- Alva Wood\’s satiric stories about small town attitudes and bumbling bureaucrats are not particularly religious, but good fun anyway; write [email protected] to get onto her mailing list.
- Jim Henderschedt\’s occasional e-zine, Fresh Water, subscribe by writing him, [email protected]
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