There seems to be a lot of churches moving towards having unitary constitutions. While I understand the reasons for this (less meetings; reduction in duplication of work; church trustees dealing with decisions etc), I have been concerned about how the change will impact on non-elder Congregational Board members.
The unitary effectively does away with the board and any business which was their remit (such as finance, property, fellowship) becomes the responsibility of the Kirk Session (I am going for a really basic overview here, so bear with me). There will be members of the board who, for what ever reason, are not members and, as such, not on the Kirk Session. Thus, they could attend Session meetings - they are public after all - they do not have a voice and cannot vote. While on the board, they would have these privileges.
So, how does a church, especially the session and minister, ensure the board members feel valued once their role goes when a church moves to a unitary constitution? I know there is the option of asking them to become elders, but not everyone can or wants to do that.
Is the movement to less meetings really a benefit (and I am playing devil's advocate here) if those who contributed well and effectively in one way are no longer included in decisions they were before (and may have been for years).
I'd imagine there's the possibility of asking former board members to be on a session committee and there they can be a part of the decision making process. When the matters from that committee are to be brought to the session, they attend to support the motion (or whatever) and be there to answer questions if required, much like the people who helped draw up stuff for General Assembly being there when it's presented, yet not having a vote. If done in the right way, this could benefit the whole church; handled badly and...well, that's not a very good sign of a church.
I hope, when I eventually get to the stage of these meetings, I can ensure all can contribute with what they can give and feel that contribution is valued, no matter what type of constitution the church uses. Mmmh, I think I'm reiterating another post...
Sessions working with a unitary constitution are generally organised into sub-groups which take responsibility for particular functions, e.g. communications, fundraising, pastoral visiting, etc. In fact, one church I was placed in even devolved a certain degree of fiscal autonomy to appropriate groups, giving them a budget which meant that they could spend it as appropriate without coming to the full session for approval on every spend.
ReplyDeleteThere is also the possibility to co-opt members on to individual task groups if they have specialist knowledge to contribute. They do not, of course, have a vote on how things are done, but one would hope that, having been asked to contribute, their experience and knowledge would be used wisely.
Of course, none of these completely rule out the concerns you raise and wanting to involve as many people in major decisions is a good thing. That said, the presbyterian system is not intended to be a democracy which allows everyone an equal say - that's congregationalism.
I can go for the whole co-opting thing and, though I probably didn't express it very well, I was trying to get at. I suppose I'm thinking how would I feel if, when I was a board member a unitary constitution had come in and how I would have felt about that. Keeping that in mind, I think, will be useful if I was ever in this situation.
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