Committee Meetings Continued

Committee meetings.

They bring out the worst in people, I think.

I think my room is full of talented, strong-willed and -minded people of varying views. I think they are all trying to make the church what it should be in their own faithfully thought view. I think they want to do things by the rules, to the last comma. I think they are passionate.

However, sometimes that can be an intimidating and heated atmosphere, and that's exactly what my committee is.

For example: yesterday we had our first meeting. I knew it was a tough crowd when we couldn't even approve the agenda.

There appeared to be a study guide that was already made but just needed an overview by the committee to be approved. The Moderator of our committee and the planning team decided that rather than sit and read the study guide, it would be more effective and entertaining to actually discuss it as a study guide and use it for the overview. Knowing how much mail we would be receiving, the leaders decided that the study guide would be passed out the day that it was to be reviewed. After all, there was no reason to read it before we reviewed it, the very reading of it was the review. Sounds considerate of them, right?

People were infuriated.

One women got up and commented on how the leadership had undermined her ability to make decisions and that she was mature enough to make the decision of whether or not to read the study guide herself. Not presenting it to her in the mail was an insult to her intelligence, so she said.

Hey guys, remember the people in Africa dying of AIDs?

Why are we wasting our time and energy on this? That's a hard thing to deal with here: the pervasive idea that the work we do here is so tedious, that is means nothing and we should be spending our energies somewhere else.

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Today, our main issue was that of the Heidelberg Catechism.

It concerned a few mistranslations and an addition made during the English translation in the 1960s to the original German text.

There was much deliberation of which I would love to elaborate on including an advocacy speech by both Dr. Jack Rodgers (to whom I adamantly introduced myself--I don't ever remember being so excited, I think, to meet someone as when I saw he had entered the room) and Dr. Robert Gagnon (to whom I would have liked to introduce myself again, but unfortunately he had left before the meeting was at a break session), but the night is rather late and my eyes are rather fuzzy again. Basically it was debated, to the fullest extent all day. There were moving and convincing testimonies to both sides. There were good questions and tedious ones.
The issue was between whether or not it was a "restoration" or a "revision," and whether or not this was simply a ploy to be one step further in the homosexuality debate, or indeed to return a sacred confession to its original content.

I voted in favor of the amendments each time. Of my table, Jay was in agreement, but the rest were not.


It should be noted though, that the room, despite its adamant differences, was still able to laugh with each other. Laughing was present throughout the day, albeit a stiff laughter at some points.

The real thing that I loved though was that after everything was finished, we had a short time to read Scripture together and sing in a worshipful manner. The opposing tables were joined for the singing. Every person, snaked through the round tables, had a hand to hold. We were a committee. A group. A community. A church. One.