The Lost Art of Consensus

Ever been in a meeting where not everyone was in agreement?

We all have. It can be an uncomfortable experience, but it's a part of living and working together in a church or other community.

What makes the difference, in such a situation, is not how we go into the meeting.

It's how we come out of it.

If we come out of the meeting with a consensus, we feel like we've accomplished something, and rightfully so.

Consensus and unanimity are not the same thing, as church consultant Susan Beaumont affirms in a noteworthy online article, "The Truth about Consensus," that's well worth clicking through to read. (More on that in a moment.)

Sometimes groups decide to set aside Robert's Rules of Order for a time, in order to make a decision "by consensus." What people mean by that vague phrase is baffling - especially because the whole purpose of Robert's Rules is to achieve consensus.

It's important to be clear, up-front, on what we mean by the word. My Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines consensus as "Agreement or unity of or of opinion, testimony, etc.; the majority view, a collective opinion; (an agreement by different parties to) a shared body of views."

Consensus is closely related to "consent." Now, we all know that to give consent to something is not the same as giving wholehearted affirmation. If a father hands over the car keys to his teenage daughter, it's true he's giving consent to her using the car that evening, but he may not be wholeheartedly in favor of the idea. He may sit up late with the porch light on, anxiously awaiting her return. But Dad's given his consent, so he's not going to stand at the foot of the driveway and prevent her from backing out.

Beaumont insightfully points out that, when many people talk about achieving consensus, they're not really talking about consensus at all. They're talking about unanimity, which is different:

"True consensus is achieved when every person involved in the decision can say: 'I believe this is the best decision we can arrive at for the organization at this time, and I will support its implementation.' In contrast, unanimity is undivided opinion. Everyone is in agreement on the best course of action to take. The difference is subtle but important. When we strive for unanimity, we end up taking an inordinate amount of time to make decisions. At best, innovation grinds to a halt. At worst, we create unhealthy patterns of interaction where people are pressured to acquiesce on important issues."

It's those unhealthy patterns of interaction that concern me. They can be subtle.

Setting aside Robert's Rules for alternative models of decision-making is in vogue in many parts of the church today. "Open space technology," "the World Cafe," and other modes of decision-making are popular options in presbytery meetings.

Such processes certainly have their advantages. They allow members who aren't so skilled in parliamentary procedure to voice their opinions. They allow introverts to shine. They provide highly visual polling methods that allow for reality-checks at key stages of the process. They also leave room for creative, even artistic, means of exploring very complex issues. Yet, applied unsparingly and without careful monitoring, they can also open the way to subtle manipulation of the group.

Here's how such manipulation can happen. Let's say a group suspends the rules and decides to spend some time sitting around tables talking about an issue. The moderator speaks rhapsodically about the virtues of unity, and how wonderful it would be if everyone could achieve a common mind during this interlude The instructions are that each table is to come up with a "consensus" recommendation and report it to the larger group. Let's also say that, at each table of four, there are three people who tend to favor Option A and one who favors Option B.

They get to talking, and at each table, the person who favors Option B feels very much alone. Mindful of the moderator's encouragement to strive for a common mind, the "B" person falls silent. Each table reports a decision to support Option A, and everyone marvels that the decision was made so easily.

That is, until some of the pro-B people get to talking afterwards, out in the parking lot, and realize they were not in such a small minority as they'd imagined. Had the rules not been suspended, more of them would have spoken up about it in debate, found strength in numbers, and could possibly have swayed enough pro-A people to change their minds that there would have been a different outcome. At the very least, they might have proposed an amendment or two that would have altered Option A to make it more to their liking.

The problem, Beaumont writes, is that many people confuse the meanings of "consensus" and "unanimity." When many use the word "consensus," what they're really hoping to achieve is unanimity, 100% agreement.

True unanimity is rare. It does not consist in the naysayers falling silent, because they've already heard the many voices in favor and have figured out in advance how the vote's going to come out.

Beaumont makes this helpful distinction:

"According to Larry Dressler, 'Consensus is a cooperative process in which all group members develop and agree to support a decision that is in the best interest of the whole. In consensus, the input of every member is carefully considered and there is a good faith effort to address all legitimate concerns.'

Consensus is not the same thing as a unanimous decision, in which all group members’ personal preferences are satisfied. Consensus is also not a majority vote, in which some larger segment of the group gets to make the decision. Consensus is not a coercive or manipulative tactic to get members to conform to some preordained decision.

In testing for consensus you are not asking: Is this your first choice of options? Do you like this option? Does this option satisfy your personal needs? In testing for consensus you are asking: Is this an option that I can live with and ultimately support? Does this option satisfy the criteria that we have claimed as a group? Will this option adequately serve the best interest of our congregation and its stakeholders?

Simply agreeing with a decision is not true consensus. Consensus implies commitment to the decision, which means that you oblige yourself to do your part in putting the decision into action."

There's one place where I disagree with Beaumont, as excellent as her article is in every other respect. She has a singularly low opinion of majority voting as a decision-making method. Having articulated the difference between consensus and unanimity, she still views majority voting as, ultimately, a failure of consensus-building.

When consensus-building fails, she recommends four possible options:

"(1) Defer the decision...,(2) Dissolve the group...., (3) Give decision making authority to a sub-group...., or (4), Default to a majority vote."

She describes this fourth option as follows:

"The group can decide, in advance, on a point in time where consensus seeking will end. If you have not reached consensus by that point in time, the group will vote and the decision will be determined by the majority."

This, in fact, happens under Robert's Rules by either passing a motion to fix a time at which to vote (in other words, docketing a vote to take place at a particular time) or by voting to "move the previous question," thus ending debate.

But - and here's my quarrel with her reasoning - why is this sort of outcome a mere "default"?  Isn't a majority vote, following spirited debate, in fact an excellent means of achieving consensus - as that word is truly and accurately defined?

I believe it is. Consensus means trusting the group enough to be on the losing side of a vote and still support the decision.

The trend in our larger society is against consensus of any kind, to see it as a failure of one's own argument and therefore to be be resisted at all costs. It's precisely the loss of the art of consensus that is bedeviling the Congress of the United States in these days of partisan polarization.

Let's not be that way in the church of Jesus Christ. Let us remember how blessed it can be to agree to disagree. Let us honor true consensus as a mark of Christian unity.

Thought for the Day: Jimmy Carter on Church Unity

Christians who truly follow the nature, actions, and words of Jesus Christ should encompass people who are different from us….It is not easy to do this. It is a natural human inclination to encapsulate ourselves in a superior fashion with people who are just like us – and to assume that we are fulfilling the mandate of our lives if we just confine our love to our own family or to people who are similar and compatible. Breaking through this barrier and reaching out to others is what personifies a Christian and emulates the perfect example that Christ set for us.

- Jimmy Carter, Our Endangered Values, America’s Moral Crisis (Simon & Schuster, 2006), p. 31.

Along this same line, you may want to check out a thoughtful blog entry by my friend and former colleague on the staff of the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, Gene Straatmeyer. These are his thoughts on the subject of schism in the church.  Gene is an evangelically-minded retired Presbyterian minister, who's had long years of mission involvement with Native Americans, and, more recently,  a year of volunteer service in Malawi, Africa.

View from South of the Border

In an excerpt from a blog posting, below, a PC(USA) woman minister tells of an oddly troubling experience she had. She was visiting a Mexican presbytery meeting for the day, at which a guest speaker from the Presbyterian Church of America made an hour-long presentation on why women should not be ordained to the ministry.

I don't expect that everyone reading this will draw the same theological conclusions she does, with respect to the current debate in our denomination about the ordination of GLBT people. I do think it's worthwhile, though, to reflect on the feelings she so eloquently puts into words:

"Unfortunately my Spanish is good enough that I caught pretty much all of the presentation, about how the speaker did not hate women – 'I love my wife and my daughters' – but that he was simply trying to obey the Bible, which 'clearly states that there are different roles for men and for women' and that was all he was asking of the men gathered....

But what struck me almost immediately and stayed with me throughout the duration of his presentation was how much it reminded me of something I had heard recently in my own presbytery, only there it was the ‘Biblical case against the ordination of homosexuals’ rather than the ‘Biblical case against the ordination of women.’ As I sat in that Baja church (called 'Dios es Amor' or 'God is Love') listening, I couldn’t help but feel that I was in some sort of odd time/space warp between their presbytery meeting and my own recent presbytery meeting.

During that February gathering in Los Ranchos, Richard Mouw, who has had a key role as a reconciler between ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ in the ongoing debate/conversation regarding homosexuality, similarly made the point that he was not against homosexuals – 'I love homosexuals' – but that, at the end of the day, he had to be true to Scripture which makes the clear case against the ordination of homosexuals.

He spoke of his desire not to put down gay people or to hate them, but the greater conviction to uphold the authority of the Scripture. It was almost apologetic, in the 'I’m sorry' kind of way, as in 'I’m really sorry I have to believe this, but I just can’t do anything else and be true to who I am, who God is, and who God calls me to be'....

But sitting in that Baja church, listening, in Spanish, to an hour long presentation of why I, as a woman, was unworthy to be called by God as a minister, what I was struck by, in addition to how similar these arguments seemed to those used regarding ordination of homosexuals, was how painful it was to be the subject and focus of that argument being discussed around me....

In the distance, beyond the variety of dwelling structures, one can see the ‘border fence’ between the US and Mexico, cutting its path through the hills. One of the Mexican pastors saw me looking at it and said 'Otro lado esta muy cerca pero muy lejo' – more or less, 'the other side is so close and yet so far.'

The other side is so close, but yet so far....

The morning’s debate really had nothing directly to do with me, and yet it was still painful and uncomfortable to be, in a sense, its focus. As I was driving through the hills of northern Baja, along the Blvd 2000, I picked up my phone (while using my headset, of course) and called a gay minister friend of mine, apologizing to her for not really ever realizing how much she had to sit through as other people discussed whether or not God might call someone like her."

In these tender times, may we take to heart these words from The Presbyterian Hymnal:

Help us accept each other
As Christ accepted us;
Teach us as sister, brother,
Each person to embrace.
Be present, Lord, among us
And bring us to believe
We are ourselves accepted
And meant to love and live.

Needed: A Second Opinion

Many of us have been following with concern the recent debate over the "deathly ill" letter, signed by a large number of large-church pastors from across the denomination. Reading some further material from that group ("The Fellowship") online, I was struck by one observation they call "non-negotiable." I've posted this response (which reflects my own opinion and should in no way taken as anything more than that):

As a cancer survivor, I’ve learned of the importance of always getting a second opinion. I advise newly-diagnosed patients that, if their doctor bristles at the suggestion of a second opinion, it’s time to find a new doctor. Such a physician, no matter how impressive-looking the diplomas on the wall, has an ego so large that it will eventually impede medical decision-making.

With that thought in mind, what am I to make of the statement, in the very first item of the “Markers for the Way Forward” document, that the diagnosis of our denomination as “terminally ill” is the sole item described as “non-negotiable”? The claim that the PC(USA) is “dying” because of popular discontent over liberal theology is but one more repetition of The Big Lie the Presbyterian Layman and similar groups have been repeating, ad infinitum, for so long that good people are starting to believe it.

It is without basis in fact. Yes, we can all come up with anecdotal evidence of some individuals, even some churches, who have defected in place or departed for this reason (many solely on the basis of their having been hammered into submission by the endlessly-repeated Big Lie). Yet, the truth is this: in no way does a real or imagined swing of Presbyterian denominational leadership to the left begin to account for our loss of membership.

Several independent sociological studies have convincingly demonstrated that larger, societal factors are to account for the gradual loss of members in mainline Protestant churches (and would be true of Roman Catholics as well, were it not for the growing Hispanic population).

Check out Robert Wuthnow’s After the Baby Boomers.Wuthnow convincingly demonstrates how massive, well-documented social changes like the declining birthrate, the sharp increase in average age at marriage and the rise of two-paycheck households (with all that’s meant for churches’ volunteer pools and families’ discretionary time) – to name just a few – have had a massive, negative impact on church participation. He also shows how – historically speaking – the post-Second-World-War surge in church participation was a statistical anomaly. In no way was it a Third Great Awakening (even if it were, the tide did go back out after those earlier high-water marks).

Then, check out Robert Putnam’s and David Campbell’s new book, American Grace, and especially the “Trends in Religious Identity” graph from that book, which can be found by clicking on this link and scrolling down. Putnam and Campbell convincingly show that EVERY religious denomination has been experiencing slow declines in membership – even, in recent years, the more evangelical denominations.

In short, this is not just a Presbyterian problem. To imply otherwise, or to imagine that “rearranging the deck chairs” in the form of a two-synod structure will help the situation is a colossal act of hubris.

Still, this is no excuse for complacency. Christ’s Great Commission calls us to redouble our efforts at sharing the good news. The world is as hungry for the gospel as ever. We will accomplish far more to advance this greatest of causes by working together than by splitting apart.

Friends, our current predicament is much bigger than anything our national church leadership may or may not be doing. To imply, as the tired old Presbyterian Layman refrain puts it, that the denomination is “dying” because it has “gone liberal” is to engage in false prophecy.

Please, please don’t make the mistake of considering your recent “deathly ill” diagnosis as your one “non-negotiable.” Do the smart thing and get a second opinion. You will be leading many good people astray if you do otherwise.

Interesting Times

Some Presbyterians have been concerned, recently, to read a letter signed by more than 50 pastors of large Presbyterian churches, expressing their dismay about the future of the denomination and expressing their desire to create new ways of being the church.

Because the letter speaks frankly of creating new structures outside the denomination, some have seen it as the first step towards a split, or schism, in the church. Indeed, the letter itself acknowledges "the appearance of schism" - dancing right up to the edge of advocating a split in the church, without actually saying so.

Others aren't so sure, preferring to read the letter as advocating a more flexible, "missional" approach towards church order. Such an approach would replace some of the hard-and-fast institutional boundaries of our present polity with more flexible, "permeable" structures.

It's hard to say whether the signers of the letter are still in the process of working out a specific list of changes they'll be calling for, or whether their minds are already made up and they're just being cagey.

The three senior leaders of the denomination - General Assembly Moderator Cynthia Bolbach, Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons and General Assembly Mission Council Executive Director Linda Valentine - have issued a letter of their own. Their tone is conciliatory, an invitation to dialogue.

All of this, of course, is being played out against a backdrop of presbytery voting on proposed amendments to the Form of Government - particularly the controversial new language replacing G-6.0106b, dealing with qualifications for ordained officers.

I understand there is an old Chinese curse that goes like this: "May you live in interesting times."

Well, these times sure are getting more interesting.