Why Can’t We Decide (Part 2)

In my last blog, I considered whether assembly-based decision making (practiced by most denominations) might be a flawed decision-making process. I suggested that even if the people in the assembly wished to make wise and healthy decisions, the process might be flawed in ways that cause the assembly to make poor decisions.  In that blog, I suggested that assemblies were created to overcome two dividing obstacles, time and space, which are no longer our greatest dividing obstacles.  You can find that blog here. 

Today, I want to offer you a second observation why assembly-based decision making might be a flawed decision making process in our current reality. 

Assembly-based decision making was founded on the broad trust of delegates who were sent. When assembly-based decision making started, who did people send to the assembly? We weren’t there in the mid 1500’s and 1600’s, so let’s just consider our lifetime (those of us over 55 or so). In our childhood, delegates to broader assemblies were trusted community leaders and/or pastors with standing. Lower/narrower assemblies voted to send these delegates based on that assembly’s trust of the delegate’s character and judgment. 

Then came the 1960’s and its turmoil. In the following two decades, assemblies of all forms were criticized for their lack of diversity and voices. In response, organizations diversified their assemblies. By necessity, they did this through general votes for a slate of delegates (for example: rotational models of delegates which focused less on trust and more on diversity were added) and the addition of more and more unelected delegates to create diversity of all types. 

None of this was inherently bad. Many of these choices opened up assemblies to new voices and new perspectives.  However, regardless of their positive effects, these types of choices did, in fact, weaken the assembly system as a decision making process. Since the decisional authority of a broader assembly is primarily based on the trust that a lower/narrower assembly has in its delegates, changing the selection reality weakened the authority of assembly-based decisions. 

When delegates were chosen by majority vote, there was “trust” in that delegate. Assemblies said, “We chose him or her.” Today, it has become common to say, “It was his or her turn to attend.” Some lower assemblies even utilize the same person repeatedly because that person is willing to attend so no one else has to go (meaning they don’t have to use vacation to attend or there aren’t other people). Either way, the trust of the group that sent the delegate is eroded in the broader assembly itself. 

The result. When that broader assembly makes a decision, the folks who mistrust the delegates immediately begin looking for their options to challenge that decision. Or, at least to make it unenforceable. For example, look at the United Methodist Church. A few years ago, the UMC had an international vote on the Biblical definition of marriage. Their delegates voted for marriage to be defined as between one man and one woman. Within a week of the assembly’s ending, a majority of U.S. United Methodist congregations publicly declared that they were not going to obey that decision. The same could be said of assemblies that made decisions to open ordained offices to women only to have congregations say they weren’t going to live out that decision.  

It doesn’t matter what side of the “aisle” you’re on when viewing assemblies. When a broader assembly makes a decision that lower/narrower assemblies either won’t obey or work to make unenforceable, the decision-making process has failed.  In the end, it’s not the decision that is broken. It’s the decision making process that no longer functions.