Churches inevitably involve meetings. In the spirit of a cooperative effort small groups of people need to come together to talk about what they want to do, how to do what they want to do and of course who is going to do it. This involves meeting together to discuss it. Too often in church these meetings end up being micromanagement filibusters by one or two people talking completely through ‘how’ something is going to be accomplished and/or reporting after the fact on how it got done. Both I believe can be a waste of time.
I have suffered through many long and tedious meetings (mostly in previous churches) where people on opposite sides of an issue will each discuss at length the pros and cons of doing a task a particular way. Committee members feeling that it was their responsibility to report the depth and breadth of the task. Friends, I would want to say, we (or at least I) trust you to do the best you know how. We are becoming more and more of a task oriented, time pressured, society where people no longer have the time to spare coming to meetings to talk about tasks, today people just want to get the task accomplished.
When I first came to Hope Church nearly five years ago there were two things that I named very early on as “rules” for meetings. The first ‘rule’ is that no meeting should ever run more than ninety minutes. Meetings had been set to earlier and earlier start times to accommodate the fact that much was discussed in great detail and there were, so I am told, meetings that would go on for three hours. Respect for each other starts by respecting the time people hold so precious today. Meetings must be succinct.
In addition, and this I think is probably more important than the first rule, people must have fun. Communities of faith are like families and a family needs to be able to laugh together and laugh often. We cannot take ourselves so seriously that we do not laugh. Relax, enjoy, get to the work and get it done. We do work with important tasks, spiritual journeys are not to be taken lightly, but our loads are lightened considerably by the lightening up of the mood, so laugh.
Jesus might have laid down the law differently by saying, “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself,” as the two most important rules. The two “rules” that I suggest are not all that astray from the guide Jesus offered.
If God is manifested in the communities of which we are a part, then showing respect for that community by way of limiting the time of others we are using is a positive sign of respect and love. And the second law is fulfilled by the way we treat one another and what better way to treat others than to laugh with them and enjoy their presence.
So keep the law, respect friends time and laugh with them!
Blessings!
