LOUISVILLE—On Thursday, September 20, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly Council’s day was a sandwich—a thick slab of committee work between brief plenary sessions in the morning and evening.
The morning plenary was intended to be routine and quick—15 minutes for worship and 45 minutes to receive and discuss a report from the Relief and Development Entity Study Team. Last winter, the General Assembly Council (GAC) had considered a rushed proposal to spin off Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) as an independent nonprofit corporation. Such a move might provide certain benefits in terms of making the nonprofit eligible for government grants and corporate matching gifts. A windfall of receipts following Hurricane Katrina sparked the idea, but at the time, the proposal seemed hurried and insufficient. Thus, the GAC formed this study team to look into the matter, and the team was now prepared to report back.
A substitute motion by General Assembly Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase—originally offered as a “friendly amendment”—was the cause of great parliamentary confusion. (Photo courtesy PCUSA) |
The Rev. Eileen W. Lindner carried the weight of the report. Lindner is Deputy General Secretary for Research and Planning at the National Council of Churches, and she is a Presbyterian minister. Her detailed report carefully covered the work done by the study team, the thinking behind the 21-page written report, and the report’s three recommendations.
The study team’s recommendations included (1) creating a “very limited, related, and dependent nonprofit charitable corporation;” (2) clearing up “a number of vital issues”—19 of them, carefully delineated—that need to be resolved first; and (3) suggesting that the final proposal be submitted to General Assembly in 2010. It was so moved.
Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Consensus Mode
So far, so good. To this point, the process was most decent and in order. But what followed could serve as a horror story to warn those enamored with informal consensus decision-making. The process descended into chaos when Chair Allison Seed apparently attempted to “simplify things” by departing from parliamentary procedure.
A GAC member sought to provide for the possibility of consideration of an incorporation proposal by the General Assembly next summer in 2008. He moved an amendment, and it was seconded. Here, chairperson Seed—usually a perceptive leader—made a major judgment error in the name of “making things easier.” She proposed that the suggested motion be considered “a friendly amendment” and thus that its wording just be inserted into the original motion’s language without a vote.
From that point on, the house fell into confusion. Associated Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons repeated the parliamentarian’s well-worn mantra: “There is no such thing as a friendly amendment.” The amendment needed to be treated as a separate motion, he counseled, quite rightly.
But Seed persisted, informally asking the GAC members if they just generally liked the amendment. She voiced a preference for simple consensus on the matter. When some people objected, Seed made her second mistake: She acted as if the amendment had then simply been dropped from consideration without a vote. Seed then took the body back to an amorphous general discussion of the report and what the body wanted to do, without a clear motion on the floor.
There is a reason for formal motions: People then know what is being considered at any given time and can comment appropriately. In this situation, however, the unclear process was more like a rambunctious discussion of what anyone happened to think the GAC ought to do about the incorporation. Thus general confusion inevitably took over.
Finally Seed asked if there were other amendments people wanted to propose, and the body fumbled with trying to form wording for what it wanted to do. Generally the room appeared reasonably of a mind about what it sought, but members were ill-suited on the fly to put it into clear technical language. Various members fumbled with attempted wording and perfection of wording. The GAC was obviously spinning its wheels.
About this time, when Seed acknowledged once again that she was not being strictly parliamentary in the process (a rather large understatement!), the maker of the original amendment became insistent in asking what had happened to his legitimate motion to amend. The person who had seconded the amendment also stuck to his guns that that motion ought still to be on the floor and subject to consideration and a vote. Members were asking if now was the time to debate the substance of the motion, and if so, which motion of the many that had been proposed. The body endured long waits while inelegant wording was feverishly scribbled in an attempt to produce something concrete to consider.
Seed obviously was losing her bid to “simplify” the discussion. People were not tracking with her and were becoming frustrated. What should have been an orderly stroll down a path to a decision had turned into something more resembling a drunken stumble through a briar patch.
Robert’s Rules to the Rescue!
Finally, Seed returned to trusted and efficacious parliamentary procedure, the friend of all who love decency and order. The erstwhile “friendly amendment” became instead an official substitute motion. Now the house knew what it was doing! With a main motion from the study team and this substitute motion from former General Assembly Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase, the GAC members could then proceed to “perfect” both motions and make the grand choice between the two options by voting on the question: “Shall the substitute motion become the main motion?”
Finally operating again in familiar parliamentary territory, with rules well practiced and understood, the GAC worked efficiently through the process from there on out. A strong majority favored the main motion—the original idea of eventually submitting an all-loose-ends-tied-up incorporation proposal to General Assembly in 2010. Then the perfected main motion passed unanimously.
There was never much disagreement over what the GAC wanted to accomplish. The jumble and frustration arose out of an unclear and undisciplined way to get to that decision through an “informal” method of decision-making. Imagine how nasty the situation could have become if the issue had involved a deep difference of theological or moral convictions!
The whole tangled mess consumed 90 minutes rather than the docketed 45 minutes it should have taken. By its negative example, it serves as a sterling testimony to the efficacy of parliamentary procedure.
As involved as Robert’s Rules can seem at times, the process truly does work. It certainly beats the alternatives nine times out of ten. Parliamentary procedure is not in the Bible, it is true. But it has been perfected over centuries in order to focus consideration and provide the fairest deliberation. This time-tested wisdom proved abundantly clear in the GAC’s experience of the incorporation issue.
Why then the seemingly headlong rush to abandon parliamentary procedure for mushy “alternative forms of decision-making”? I would hope that the GAC notes its own lesson learned, and that other governing bodies likewise benefit from the GAC’s experience.
Parliamentary procedure remains the Book of Order-mandated method for Presbyterian decision-making (G-9.0302). Certainly, there can be different or less formal approaches taken during discernment processes prior to formal decision-making. But once a proposal is before a body for a decision, Robert’s Rules is the prescribed procedure to rescue the body from its own confusion, folly, or tyranny.
No comments yet
Leave a Reply