Making it through a church meeting... part 1.

“Welcome, please take a seat, shall we start?”

Two minutes later in walks a bedraggled Mrs Hawkins (it is clearly raining outside).

Three minutes after that Mr Huddlestone strides in (he’s had difficulty finding a parking spot).

“Right, we were just looking at the minutes of last meeting”.

Mr Huddlestone rummages through his bag for several minutes, “I’ve got them in here somewhere.”

Pause.

“Shall we wait for you?”

“Yes, here they are.” He pulls out a some of paper. “Hang on no, this is last night’s takeaway order. Bear with me”. He delves once more into his bag. “This must be it.” He places several pieces of paper on the table.

You peer over, they seem to have outlines of submarines on them, with the word CONFIDENTIAL written in big writing across the entire page.

“I’m not sure those are the minutes”, you point out. “Church minutes aren’t bound by the Official Secrets Act.”

“What? Oh sorry, work documents, pretend you didn’t see them.” He looks around a little anxious as if expecting MI5 to burst through the door at any moment.

“Here have a new copy,” you hand him out a fresh set of notes.

“As I was saying…”

“Sorry, couldn’t find the shed keys…” Rose Mulberry announces as she bustles through the door, “Had to search the whole house for them.”

“Did you find them eventually?” David Smith asks her.

“Oh yes, they were in the shed door.”

“Why did you need them, what had you left in the shed?” David is clearly very interested in sheds.

“Nothing, I just couldn’t find the keys.”

Eventually everything settles and you start the meeting. 10 minutes in and there is a loud bang as yet another latecomer comes hurriedly through the door.

“Sorry I am late everyone”. It is Douglas. Of course it is Douglas, who else would arrive 20 minutes into a meeting with such dramatic effect. “Completely forgot we were meeting. Was just watching last night’s episode of Love Island and the wife says, ‘shouldn’t you be somewhere?’ Though for a moment she was suggesting I enter the villa”.

Before you can respond, Rose chips in. “Who went out? Was it Charlene? Such a cat.”

“I don’t know, I didn’t get to see the end, did I?”

At this point you decide to step in, “Can we PLEASE get back to the agenda.” There are 17 items to discuss tonight and worryingly we are only on number 3.

“Could you just recap what I’ve missed please?” Douglas asks and before you tell him ‘no – it will teach you to be late’, Mrs Hawkins begins a painstaking ball by ball commentary of the last 20 minutes, which lasts nearly as long.

I don’t know about you, but my experiences of church leadership meetings can at times make you want to pull your hair out, strand by strand. The first thing is timing. Why do clocks work differently in churches to everywhere else in the known world. When my son was growing up, he had a lovely book about trains. On one page it explained that in order for the railways to work they had to standardise their clocks, which is why, wherever you go in the country, we all have the same time… except for church meetings. Start the meeting at 7pm and some people will inevitably feel this means they should arrive at 7:10, 7:20 or even 7:30. Then they are likely to declare they have to leave by 9:00 on the dot. As if it’s your fault that you are still on the welcome, despite having done it five times already. If I led meetings like this at work nothing would ever get done.

Timing however is not the only problem. If your meetings are anything like the ones I have experienced over the years, decision making is a close second.

“So, we are all agreed then, we go with the light blue?” You eventually declare after what has been a rather long and laborious discussion. Suddenly the room is filled with a whole host of voices (sadly not a heavenly host).

“I thought we had opted for the purple.”

“No, that would clash with the green, I still like the burnt orange.”

“I don’t think we should burn anything in church,” pause with a worried look “except for incense.”

“Not environmentally friendly.”

“Better than setting the whole church on fire.”

“We could build a new one with the insurance money.”

“A new what?”

“Church, with a coffee bar, little gift shop and hot tub.”

This is starting to get out of control, you are all for free discussion, but you decide enough is enough. “We are not burning anything! We ‘had’ all agreed to paint the front wall light blue.”

“Do you think Jesus would like blue? I see him more of a teal or mauve fan.”

“Why would Jesus care what colour we have on our wall?” You attempt to hide your frustration.

“WWJD, you are always telling us to do what Jesus would do, I don’t recall him telling his disciples to use blue paint.”

“Maybe it should be WCWJD?” someone says unhelpfully.

Pause, whilst everyone tries to work out this new acronym.

“What COLOUR Would Jesus Decide.”

Feeling your life slowly slipping away… “So what colour would you like?” Ten minutes later you all agree again… that light blue is the best.

This is the problem when a committee makes decisions or doesn’t. As you sit there you wish the church was more of a dictatorship, a benign dictatorship, you aren’t advocating draconian sanctions or bringing back corporal punishment (well not yet anyway). But still with a dictatorship you could make a decision and that would be that. After all you know that by next week, someone will have changed their mind and bought a number of neon sample paint pots from B&Q.

Colour decided… eventually you move onto the next issue. Well you try to anyway.

“Now if you recall we agreed to have a collection for the local food bank this month, we just need to confirm the date.”

“Is it green?” Dougals chips in.

“I think they are quite environmentally friendly, I know they don’t waste food”.

“No not green, I mean green green.” He replies.

“They do have a green leaf on their logo…”

“Yes but should it be green?”

“Well most leaves are.”

Looks unconvinced. “I just think it will look better than the light blue”.

At this point you realise that Douglas is, as always, an agenda item behind everyone else. Trying not to let the burning frustration show, you gently let him know that the conversation has moved on. He seems a little surprised.

“I thought we would want to make a final decision on the wall colour tonight!”

This is the point you remember your faith and pray as hard as you can for patience… a lot of patience. However, you still have over half the meeting left!

To Be Continued…