What is community

[Michele H. Morgan]

Last weekend at our diocesan convention we passed the standing rules for the election of the next bishop of Minnesota. They seemed straight forward enough – I mean, I read them and they were okay but as the conversation unfolded at my table I realized that I had not read them nearly carefully enough. It was a lot of points, somewhat legalistic and at the end of a convention booklet. So when the discussion started, a paragraph jumped out at me that stated that once balloting has begun for election, the room would be closed to non-voters and the doors would be locked and voters could only leave the room in case of emergency.

What?
Really?
How did I skim over that part of the rules?

So I was forced to do something that I am loath to do….go up to the microphone in front of the convention and ask a question. The reason I hate going up there is I always get nervous and say something that is not in order. So I came up and said, “Debbie, I have a question.”

The deep voice of our Bishop cut me off, “Michele, address your comments to the chair of convention, please.”

So I stood there trying to figure out who the bishop wanted me to address. I knew I was wrong in addressing the chair of the standing committee and I knew he did not want me to address the chancellor or the parliamentarian. So I looked at the chief executive officer and then the bishop … and then the chief executive officer and the bishop again. As I pondered, my head tilted and I realized I looked just like my dog Zack when he is puzzling something out. Having realized that time had stopped and I did not know the answer I plunged onward.

“So this point of not allowing anyone to watch the proceedings and to carry the voting on in a locked room seems counter to the openness and the transparency that the search committee is seeking to carry out. I am wondering why we are thinking about running the election that way.”

As Debbie, the chair of the standing committee, started to answer my question I scurried back to my chair. I sort of heard, “well, this is how we have done it in the past, and these rules have been drawn up by other search committees and we are following their lead.” I actually did not hear it all because I was trying to get back to my chair before anyone teased me about doing an impression of my dog.

Another priest got up and amended the language to allow visitors and then a new conversation started about who was allowed devices that could transmit information to the world. I let them fight that out without my help.

Later that day I had a conversation with a member of the standing committee who told me that the rules were written not so that it was a closed process, but to create a process where we could work together, vote, pause between ballots, have liturgy and pray together. The election was designed to allow the Holy Spirit to be a part of our community. The assertion was that allowing people to be in contact with others, to post results, or to write blogs before we are done with our process would not allow that to happen.

The question I have is where and when does community happen?
When and where does the Holy Spirit move in our communities?
How do we as a church define our community?
Does the Holy Spirit move through Anglimergent?

Our standing rules of how we do things in the church have been passed down to us with almost as much care as our Book of Common Prayer. It is the way we move through our business as a church. We vote rather then reach consensus and we are so afraid of technology affecting us that we cling to what we know. So our rules of how we do things are a lifeline that is now strangling us and I wonder how we move through this next part of our collective lives together.

[Kit Wang]

It sounds as though it's time for your standing committee and searc committee to talk with some other dioceses. We elected a new bishop here in Maine just a bit over a year ago. The ballots are secret and on paper, so there's no real need that I can see for the locked room--ours certainly wasn't. Visitors--non-voting folks were asked to sit in an an area that was cordoned off from the voting area, but only for the election. Any moderately electronically connected diocese/conference site can offer near immediate web connection to post results of each ballot as soon as is permissible/after it's tallied. Folks can be asked to turn off devices and refrain from sending unofficial information. This seems like an opportunity to veer away from "But we've always done it like this."

[Vincent Karl Schwahn Ryckman]

HI Michele,
I used to be from the Dioces of Minnesota and am now in Mexico. I have been through four or five bishop elections including Minnesota and Mexico. I presume the closed door business is more about not allowing election fraud than anything else. That is why the secrecy. Logically all the voters inside are aware of what is going on. But your questions about Community is even more important.

I think that we are called to make and create community no matter where we are and who we are with, that means both inside and outside the church. The Holy Sprit is the glue that keeps our communities together and helps us to work together despite our differences, despite our weaknesses, despite even our divisions but this also means that we must be very intentional about making community and also be intentional about our inviting the Spirit into our ventures be they religous or secular. I have learned that much of our success or failure in what we do in the church has to do with how intentional we are in making things happen the right way, the positive way, in setting the environment, in making our spaces welcoming and open. I have seen so many times tha we sabotage community because our attitudes are negative, critical, and unfriendly. That means that the Spiritual bit is there when we are prepared to give the Spirit "her" space. WE are all called to be more intentional in our communities to make things happen in great and wonderful ways. Sometimes it takes many tries, over and over again. My prayers are with all of you in Minnesota as you elect a new bishop. I hope that also you ask the hard questions about what "Bishops" should really be doing. I think that we have stepped a long ways away from their original job in the primitive church. The mideaval model just doestn't work for me. We don't need any more "Prince" bishops, we need "pauper" bishops! Vincent, Mexico City

[Wendy Johnson]

Good point. What I keep coming back to throughout your post is fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of failure. Fear of change.

I mean, really. Can we not 'work together, vote, pause, worship, and pray while remaining connected to our other communities, as well. Is this a process for the elite or for the whole of the community.

And why do they think that outside connectedness is bad? It reminds me of a conversation I had with a rector once about staffing patterns. He was interested in looking at other churches -- Episcopal churches, only, thank you. When questioned why only Episcopal churches, he answered, "They're the only ones like us."

Golly, if we stay that self-focused, that fearful of what the 'other' might be doing...dare I say it, that provincial, the only change we'll have to worry about accommodating is shrinking.