by Randall Fairey
In June I focused on reporting the discussions around sexuality at the May CoGS meeting. Notwithstanding the rapid developments from the General Convention of The Episcopal Church, I do not want to revisit the subject this month. I had thought that commenting on the other business of CoGS in detail would be useful but I found myself repeating the excellent summaries found on the Anglican Church of Canada website at http://www.anglican.ca/ about/ cogs/ highlights/ index.htm and I commend them to you.
I want to comment this month on decision-making and leadership at CoGS outlining where I believe we must significantly improve. I accept the fact that as this column has evolved over the months I am tending to move more from just reporting facts to adding personal opinion and editorializing. I apologize if you believe it should be otherwise.
The Governance Working Group has accepted the challenge from General Synod 2007 to identify, among other key questions, how the Anglican Church of Canada might become more efficient in terms of how we empower our churches for the Mission of God. Our Primate has also asked the dioceses to examine their structures and mission statements in terms of how they might make better use of resources, including financial and human. Do current diocesan boundaries reflect optimal structures or should dioceses merge in whole, or in part, or expand? Are the four Ecclesiastical Provinces mission-critical?
Governance is asking General Synod to seriously look at its size and representation, not only from a cost-savings view, but allowing more effective discernment of the will of the Holy Spirit. It is also proposing that CoGS look at reducing its size and accepting the new principle that not all dioceses will necessarily have a representative in this executive body (as opposed to General Synod, which is legislative). The Episcopal Church, for example, administers a very large and complex church with proportionately far fewer members on its National Executive than the ACC.
In November 2007, CoGS agreed to "test" a new consensus decision-making model adopted by the Uniting Church in Australia, the Presbyterian Church in Aotearoa, and elsewhere. Alternative Decision Making (ADM) seemed desirable because CoGS members were concerned that a parliamentary (voting) decision-making model was resulting in unsatisfactory "win-lose" outcomes on weighty and difficult matters that require considerable discernment and debate, such as same-sex blessings. This has been employed at all the CoGS meetings to date.
In my opinion this model is failing CoGS and the wider Church. ADM requires a specific intentional methodology that is quite time consuming in its conduct. Just as Indaba sessions at Lambeth required specific methodology, often quite time consuming, so does ADM. I believe that the tight agenda of a CoGS meeting simply does not allow the time for ADM to work properly, and the skills required to conduct ADM are not evident.
The outcome is a model that actually favours indecision, or at least fosters maintaining the status quo. No one wants to be the difficult person who declares they are not in consensus and "cannot live" with a resolution, thereby blocking a consensus decision. So there are members who become the silent minority for the sake of getting through the agenda. Furthermore consensus implies unanimity yet there is no recorded measure of the degree of disagreement on an issue. I discussed an example of this in my June column regarding the "consensus" around not moving forward to amend the Marriage Canon.
I have raised specific concerns with the Planning and Agenda Team of CoGS, who prepare and lead the agenda process. There are talented and well-intentioned people on CoGS. I believe we must re-evaluate decision-making by November 2009 particularly as CoGS has little time left in which to prepare important resolutions for General Synod 2010, and provide dynamic executive leadership.
