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The Lost Art of Congregational Discernment

By Author unknown.

One of the defining characteristics of Baptist life is that we gather together to find the mind of Christ as a congregation. Our forbears were often persecuted for demanding their right to independent assembly, unencumbered by set prayers, or the intervention of bishops and other authorities. They felt that God had a specific word for the gathered group of believers in a specific context: “Whoever has ears; let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Revelation 3.15). They risked imprisonment, torture and death for the right to have a church meeting. Nowadays one almost has to torture people to go to a church meeting! What has changed?

A changed situation

As churches grow larger and more complex, it becomes impossible to bring everything to the church meeting, so most decisions are made at leadership level - whether staff or deacons or elders or church council. Only the major decisions concerning property, senior staffing and significant policy or programme changes tend to be brought to the main church meeting. Church members feel fairly removed from the process and stop coming. Leaders start organising church meetings less frequently “because no-one comes” and gradually one of the main characteristics of Baptist life is lost.

Does this matter? Is the demise of the church meeting a pragmatic response to changed times? If church members are content to devolve responsibility for church life to a small group of leaders, then isn’t everyone happy? I want to argue that our ecclesiology is dependent upon the people of God discerning the will of God together, and, when we allow this to be done vicariously, we are losing a key plank in the spiritual formation of a Christian community.

What are some of the factors that have contributed to this demise?

Usually the leaders have had plenty of time to work the issue through and the only job left for the congregation is to rubber stamp the proposals. This makes the process a little meaningless for the congregation and quite boring for everybody. I have often heard leaders say that the congregational members are not mature enough to discern God’s will, and hence they as spiritual leaders need to do this for them. I wonder how this view sits with Paul’s description of the Church as the body of Christ (see 1 Corinthians)?

Another common mistake made by leadership teams is that they present their carefully crafted proposals and give the congregation 5-10 minutes to process the information and make a decision. There is a wise maxim that states “surprised people tend to behave badly”. When presented with an apparent fait accompli, church members can quite understandably feel disenfranchised and forced into making decisions that they have been ill-equipped to make. The bad feeling that this creates can further alienate church members from attending church meetings.

Added to this, the process of organising church meetings tends to depend on an inherited model based on Robert’s rules. US Major Henry Martyn Robert drew on his experience in the army and on parliamentary procedure to produce some guidelines for running church meetings. These were first published in 1876, and I believe have contributed to the demise of any significant spiritual impact in our church meetings. I cannot see that the military or the parliament are good models for discerning the mind of Christ. What Robert’s Rules have done is to reduce the gathering of believers to a business meeting that runs on confrontational lines and gives precedence to the articulate, the bully and the drone. Edward de Bono in a recent press lecture[1] in Australia, commented that it fascinates him how many US senate members are lawyers. He remarked that the whole legal system of debate - of proposal and counter proposal - is wholly un-creative, because it does not allow for any third option to arise. It does not encourage collaboration to find a more lateral or creative way through. You do not suggest anything which might be deemed to give your opponent an advantage. He therefore concludes that the process of government thus becomes singularly stuck and unproductive. I want to argue that this happens in church meetings that are run along the lines of Robert’s Rules. They become pedestrian, predictable in who will speak, and encourage people to promote their own preferences rather than listen to God’s voice.

Is there an alternative approach?

We have been experimenting with a number of ideas as a way of reclaiming the church meeting as the place for communal discernment. We recognise that a large church cannot bring all the details of its life to the whole church, but we believe that the whole church needs to be involved in casting the vision - the big picture - for the community at least once a year and refining it at other points in the year.

Some churches hold a lunchtime forum, gathering all the ideas and insights people have to share, but with no decisions to be made. This is good, but the emphasis in these open forums is often on individual preferences and hobby horses.

We have tried to counter this with a fourteen day set of daily reflections on different aspects of church life. Each member is invited to covenant to do these on their own and the booklet is designed to include note-taking pages to record what each person might have heard or felt as they go through the studies. An important aspect of this process is that of shedding some of our own filters and prejudices so that we can hear God speak.[2]  We then hold a Listening Day, when around tables we listen to the key ideas that have emerged. Are there any common themes? Can we sense God speaking to us in one or more areas? The time is punctuated with silences for weighing what has been heard and discerning that special quality of divine touch. We originally devised this booklet for churches seeking to discern with their pastor whether or not it was time to move on, but we then developed the process for a more general ‘Renewing the Vision’ process. A visioning group is charged with collecting all the ideas from the Listening Day and tabulating them. The results are circulated and again the congregation is encouraged to sit with the ideas for a couple of weeks and listen for God’s voice. At the next gathering, some key themes are distilled and tasks are allocated to do more work and discovery in these areas. The leadership then oversees the enfleshing and activating of the ideas.

This has been shown to develop a strong sense of ownership of the direction and vision of the church. However we have noted that it does not necessarily generate new possibilities in vision. People find it very difficult in churches to imagine anything other than more of the same. For this we have devised a preliminary six week course designed to get people out of their comfort zones and engaged with new ideas and experiences. In small groups we offer a menu of experiences, from watching a DVD, to worshipping in a very different context, to meeting at the art gallery and reflecting on a few pre-chosen exhibits, to doing a Bible study in a local café, to attending a poetry reading or greyhound race to experience a different sub-culture. Each activity has some questions for reflection, and we find that, at the end of this process, people are far more able to hear God inviting them to consider new ideas in worship, community or service.

This is still a work in progress, and it would be good to generate discussion as to how we can recover this lost art and promote gatherings that are more genuinely open to hearing God together.

[1] National Press Club Address. ABC May 5th 2005

[2] Discerning God’s Will Together - a spiritual Practice for the Church. Danny E Morris and Charles M. Olsen, 1997, Upper Room Books, Nashville