Church Politics: Operating on Autodrive
Democracy (for Your Convenience)
Remember when things actually happened at political conventions and networks bragged about “gavel to gavel” coverage.
Today the political events are well-orchestrated ads. The platform is handed to us on a silver plate. The rousing speeches are timed to fit one hour of commercial TV: 10 Eastern, 9 Central, 8 Mountain and 7 Pacific. Hawaii and Alaska, fend for yourselves!
It makes us voters feel less involved. Apathy dilutes our political consciences until something stirs a movement like the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street.
Church government is running parallel to politics of the neat and tidy. Annual regional assemblies once included open discussion and debate on issues. Motions regularly came from the floor. Attending an Assembly was a chance to make a difference.
Today, the Assemblies are orchestrated to achieve desired results. Worship takes a good bit of the business time. Reports are upbeat. Complicated issues are allotted as little as 20 minutes for presentation, discussion is timed and limited and debate doesn’t exist at all.
Decisions, based on little exploration, become binding.
The effort to include as many as possible in church politics sounds noble. In effect, it has welcomed voters who have no background to make church decisions and there is less attempt to prepare them for the responsibility. They are welcomed partly because they can be used.
The vetting of church leaders is done rather privately. Who are the people elected to Synod Council? Names are presented to voters with scant bios. They are never really known to the people they represent. Their knowledge of the full church is often only what they’ve been told by synod leadership or the pastor they know best, all of whom have a vested interests. A good third of the votes attending a Church Assembly have a vested interest in the votes. Pastors rely on their relationships with church leaders for their jobs.
There are few qualifications for lay delegates outside of membership. Guidelines are a list of “political correctness” that defies logic. Congregations must send one man and one woman. There is an allowance for youth representatives and some congregations are allotted additional votes because they speak a different language or represent a racial or ethnic minority. Beyond this, delegates can have a lot of experience in church or practically none!
Now what if a congregation has mostly women (not uncommon), mostly old (not uncommon) and the men at church have no interest in taking off work for a synod assembly (not uncommon). That church will be underrepresented. The stated goal of hierarchy — to be inclusive — is actually excluding the voice of many congregations.
There is a lot going wrong in church government today. The power structure likes it that way. This begins as a desire for efficiency. But efficiency soon becomes expediency: How can church leaders get people to vote a predetermined way in the quickest fashion—while appearing to be inclusive?
The result: people feel like obstacles, not children of God who serve and need to be served and who represent even more people who are counting on very few to make decisions in the interest of the Gospel . . . not the interests of professional leaders or the largest congregations.