Category: Consensus

The story of a first time Discernment Group facilitator

Consensus discernment processes have many parts. Discernment Groups are one very important strategy for discernment. However groups need leaders – facilitators.

The WCRC, an international ecumenical gathering meets every seven years. About 1,000 delegates attend from over 350 churches. They come from diverse church and social cultures. The meetings operate in four official and two other languages.  To run its Discernment Groups the meeting used 18 facilitators.

First time users of consensus discernment

This is the second post where we share with you the experiences of some people who were in Leipzig. Many participants who are sharing in these blogs experienced consensus discernment for the first time. We trust that they will be an encouragement to you. They speak about the value of, and possibilities for, consensus discernment. We hope that you will share their stories widely.

Rev Dr Gonda is Associate Professor in Missiology and Ecumenical Studies at Debrecen Reformed Theological University.  The General Council meeting held six sessions for Discernment Groups. Laszlo, a first time facilitator for this methodology, led one of these groups for their six sessions.

His reflections include that this methodology

  • helps the church to be true to its character
  • encourages us to listen to each other but also to listen for what the Spirit is saying to the churches through one another
  • avoids the trap of winners and losers
  • allows Christians to express what it believes about the church – we are one
  • encourages Christ like behavior

I invite you to spend a couple of minutes listening to Laszlo share about his experience in his own words.

Rev Dr Laszlo Gonda

Satisfied with How Your Church Makes Decisions?

How do you like to make decisions?

Imagine that you are in a church meeting facing a very important decision.  Got one in mind?  Perhaps you are considering adding staff, starting a new ministry, or even leaving the denomination.

Would you rather:

  1. Be personally involved in making the decision? OR Let a few key leaders decide the matter for you?
  2. Have a detailed, written proposal on the issue with clear consequences? OR Trust that details will get worked out later by someone?
  3. Have time to ask questions and talk with others to shape the best decision? OR Prefer to have a straight up and down vote and get it over with?
  4. Like to know the timetable to implement the decision and how the decision will impact others? OR “Wing it” and figure it out later?
  5. Take time to discern the will of God for your faith community? OR Finish the business meeting quickly and end the angst?

What are the options?

Did you answer “yes” the majority of the first choices? If so, the odds are high that you are not satisfied with a parliamentary style of making decisions. Unfortunately, that’s the only method most churches use to make decisions. Yet most people long for a better way. There is one!

A parliamentary style of making decisions comes from government processes. It was never designed to reflect the interests and practices of a faith community. Therefore, it does not immerse itself in the ‘means of grace’ like prayer, study and conferencing. It is a business model that tends to focus on the inital proposal brought before a group.

Problems with a parliamentary way of business

This approach:

  • limits information to 3 “speeches” for and against a motion
  • over simplifies issues by creating an artificial binary choice between “yes” and “no”
  • creates winners and losers by forcing the majority view on the minority
  • can be confusing when people try to amend or substitute motions
  • usually does not spend time in study, or small groups interaction
  • is not concerned about implementing the decision – just making it

Yes, this process can work when the situation warrants a simple, quick decision like the paint color in the Fellowship Hall, but it is not highly participatory or engaging except for the final vote. However, on important issues it is less than effective and can actually cause harm.

Benefits of a consensus approach

A consensus-based approach to making decisions is designed especially for a faith community. So it includes prayer, study and discussion. Also it is respectful of different viewpoints and considers creative options.

Further, it:

  • can involve the entire community and hear diverse viewpoints
  • lessens conflict by sharing information and practicing respectful listening
  • surfaces creative options for consideration and seeks common ground before a vote
  • “perfects” a proposal so it speaks for the whole community
  • allows people to ask questions and get clarification on complex matters
  • moves naturally to a decision point when people have felt heard

To learn more about the differences between a parliamentary model of making decisions and a faith-based model, I invite you to read our book:  The Church Guide For Making Decisions Together.  It details a consensus-based approach to use when making decisions.

I encourage you to move toward a consensus-based model to strengthen your faith community. This approach will allow it to deal well with hard challenges. Be the faith community God intends you to be.  Live out of your values. Use a decision-making process that expresses the Christian values of attending to God, respecting the people Christ has called into a community of discernment, is Spirit led and leads to discernment.

Leave your comments below to let us know what process you use to make decisions and how well it is working for you.  We welcome your feedback!

 

The forgotten history of consensus decision-making

 

 The old saying is “there is nothing new under the sun”. This is true for consensus decision-making. Consensus decision-making involves either the process of growing agreement across a group, or unanimity. So dominant is the majority rules approach that its forgotten that consensus decision-making is far older than what passes for democracy.

In this post we dive into but a few pages of the forgotten history of consensus.

Indigenous communities

A great number of examples can be provided. Please share some that you know in the comments section at the end of the post.

The example I share is the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (also known as the Iroquois League) in north-east America. It is made up of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. Their decision-making required consensus (unanimity). So they undertook processes in their meetings that included hearing every voice and ensuring that all points of view were taken seriously.

This confederacy existed for centuries before the Europeans arrived. You can read more about them here.

Traders and Merchants

The Hanseatic League was “an economic alliance of trading cities and their merchant guilds. The League dominated trade along the coast of Northern Europe. It stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland from the Late Middle Ages (c. 13th–17th centuries).” Wikipedia

The Hanseatic League never required unanimity for action. Those parties that felt a need to do something consulted each other and upon reaching consensus, proceeded to act. Those who remained outside the consensus disassociated themselves from it. Often Hanseatic communications would list those cities that exempted or disassociated themselves from a decision.

Another bunch of “traders” who used consensus were pirates. They routinely agreed on the constitutions and terms of the voyage on which they would embark. They also made many decisions collaboratively, including the appointment of their captain. You can read more about both of these groups in an interesting article from the Rhizome Network.

Religious Groups

Probably the best known of religious groups that make decisions by consensus is the Religious Society of Friends . The Quakers are not comfortable with the term consensus. For them it carries too much of the sense of human agreement. Quakers prefer to talk about discerning the “mind of the meeting”. Nevertheless for over 300 years they have engaged in practices that facilitate coming to a unanimous view on the business. For a more detailed presentation on the Quaker approach you can read Eden Grace’s article on Quaker business procedures.

Wesley and Methodism more widely, did not have a tradition of consensus-based discernment. This is perhaps not surprising. For example Wesley’s opposition to women preaching arose as much from being a child of his times as from Biblical reflection. The emerging parliamentary style of decision-making was the context in which his meetings were established.

Wesley considered that Christians should meet together in order to become more mature in their faith. As Kevin Watson, Assistant Professor of Wesleyan and Methodist Studies, Candler School of Theology – Emory University, notes: “Christian Conference was honest, direct, piercing conversation with other Christians that was intended to help the participants grow in holiness … it was focused on the details of individual people’s lives, where they were experiencing God and growing in faith and holiness …”. Wesley’s understanding of Christian Conferencing needs to be located within his concept of sanctification. This is the movement of a person to personal and social holiness. So Christian Conferencing expected that people would move towards a common mind on God’s will for their lives and community.

Far from being a novelty, consensus building and making decisions by consensus is widespread in history. What is clear is that it is most effective in voluntary associations and / or where members have strongly shared values. That makes it sound like it should be really useful in the church!

Say what!! Fish do Consensus !?!

 

Sometimes I get told that consensus decision-making is a fad. I’m told it is based on the postmodern fallacy that there is no such thing as truth. Therefore, it is said, everyone’s opinion is as good as that of the next person. So consensus approaches supposedly just shake around this ignorance until it settles at the lowest common denominator.

Tell me about the fish!

Fish don’t know about post modernism but they do consensus decision-making. In a fascinating study reported in Current Biology Volume 18, Issue 22, p1773–1777, 25 November 2008 David Sumpter, Jens Krause, et al report on their study about fish. The fish they studied are shown to engage in a series of interactions and observations, which lead them to all take on the same course of action. Following the direction of the majority is the result of sharing information that was not known to all the individuals. Yet when it is brought together it makes sense to follow.

Consensus in Nature

There are many examples in the animal kingdom where consensus makes sense and is seen in the practice of animals.

David Sumpter and Stephen Pratt in Quorum responses and consensus decision-making; published 27 March 2009 in Royal Society Publishing observe that for many social insects, the survival of the colony depends on them remaining together and making a good decision about where to live.

For example honeybee emigration. After settling in a densely-packed swarm several hundred scout bees fly out to search for a new home. Successful scouts use the waggle dance to recruit fellow scouts to the sites they have found. Recruited bees may in turn dance for a site, creating a positive feedback loop that drives up the population of scouts visiting a site. Bees tune their dancing to the quality of the site they are advertising. Hence better sites enjoy more effective recruitment and faster population growth. Scouts periodically return to the site they are advertising and somehow assess its population. Once this exceeds a threshold value, or quorum, they return to the swarm to perform a behaviour called piping.

This process unfolds over one to several days. During this time a large number of sites are found and advertized by at least a few bees. Usually, only one site reaches quorum and induces swarm lift off. Rare split decisions have been observed. Then bees engage in an aerial tug-of-war as rival groups of scouts attempt to lead the swarm in different directions. In these cases, the bees are forced to re-settle and begin the process again.

Why consensus matters

In their article Consensus decision making in animals reported in Cell, Larissa Conradt and Timothy Roper observe that in social species many critical decisions need to be made jointly because the group will split apart unless a consensus is reached.

They look at:

  • conflict of interest between group members
  • whether they involve either local or global communication
  • different categories of consensus decision
  • who makes the decision
  • what are the underlying mechanisms
  • what are the functional consequences.

They conclude

  • consensus decision-making is common in non-human animals
  • cooperation between group members in the decision-making process is likely to be the norm
  • this is so even when the decision involves significant conflict of interest.

All the researchers acknowledge that group actions occasionally lead to incorrect decisions. However the studies show that decisions reached through consensus are often more accurate, enhance information exchange, and on average allow greater accuracy than do complete independence or weak responses to the behaviour of others.

Consensus is natural and good

Consensus building is not a fad. Deeply implanted in creation is a sense of community, and acknowledgement that we need each other. Perhaps it is the pride of Adam that keeps people wanting to play God and not work in community (which ironically is the opposite of what God does). Clearly the animal kingdom doesn’t seem to have this fault.

Consensus building is effective, efficient, natural, and the most common way decisions are made on the planet. Humans are the odd one’s out and the influence of Western individualism has only made it worse. It is time to get back to our roots and work together.

What is a consensus approach to discernment?

What is consensus?

I’ve just spent a few minutes doing a search for quotes on consensus. Wow!!!! The quotes I found show that people have a lot of ideas on what is “consensus”. Apparently if I believe seeking consensus is important I might be a traitor, turn great ideas into mundane ideas, abandon all principles and beliefs, be a scam merchant and lacking in leadership. Clearly I need to say something about “consensus”!

The first thing to say is do not confuse consensus with compromise. Consensus is a perspective, an understanding, reached by a group. The Quakers (Religious Society of Friends) call it “the mind of the meeting”.

Compromise always has a focus on getting what I want. Compromise trades off some of my interests to get some others interests met in return. In contrast consensus seeks the interests of the organization, the cause, the whole – not the interests of the individual decision makers. Through a search for consensus people find words that can all say what all deeply believe.

The convergence texts that have come out of the World Council of Churches and other international church bodies on key theological positions are examples of this. The Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church have not compromised their positions on justification. However it has been possible for them to sign a significant convergence document on justification just a few years ago.

Of course there will be times in consensus building when our preferred words, emphases or priorities are set aside. However we do not put them aside to gain something for ourselves. We put aside personal preferences in the interests of the group as a whole, and the common cause that the members share.

Leadership and consensus

Martin Luther King Jnr observed: “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” I take this to mean that consensus is an outcome that results from a process. A good leader provides a process through which it is possible for a group to fashion a common mind on the subject at hand.

From a theological perspective consensus – a common mind – is always possible when we seek the will of God. We know how rare that seems. Yet to abandon seeking consensus denies that it is possible to know God’s will.

A consensus building approach is a set of processes and tools that may be used by a leader. They will, as Martin Luther King Jnr said, allow you to be a “molder of consensus.”

What’s the point of consensus?

Consensus building is not an end. It is a process that makes it possible for a group to reach high levels of agreement on things that matter to them. It does this by being

  • Biblically based
  • theologically sound
  • sociologically relevant
  • culturally appropriate
  • faith-encouraging

The end point of consensus building is not to get agreement for its own sake. A genuine experience of consensus gives confidence that a community is in tune with what God wants as a decision. The end point of consensus is not agreement – it is discernment.

Discernment is a spiritual experience. Therefore discernment means that you recognize the movement of the Holy Spirit in your life. You recognise God is present.

So, when consensus building takes place in the church it is a journey in community towards experiencing the presence and leading of the Holy Spirit.

Have you had experiences of the Holy Spirit’s leading in your community? We would be greatly encouraged if you share when you have discerned the leading of the Holy Spirit. Please add a comment.