Study committees and majority and minority reports...

(Tim) Deep in the many helpful comments under my brother David's post from a few months ago titled "Moving on in victory towards peace and harmony," one writer asked about my own experience serving on General Assembly's Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military a few years back. My response bears on the overtures requesting study committees on sexuality issues that have been sent up to this year's General Assembly. Here's the question I was asked, followed by my response.

QUESTION: "Actually, maybe we should ask Tim his opinion. I know (of) the attempt to make the Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military "balanced" in such a way that nearly no other committee was. That is why that Study Committee was one of only a couple to have minority reports. I'll leave Tim to say whether that was a blessing to the Church."

RESPONSE: The experience was not good. Through it I came to believe even more than I already did in majority and minority reports (except in certain very limited cases). Why?

Well, the year before our final report was presented, our chairman did his best to get us to accept a unified report. So our penultimate year (Daryl has inspired my vocabulary), we presented one report agreed upon by both sides.

Being a grazed woodlot, it was neither good woodlot nor good grazing...

The next year, we separated and—finally!—were able to get to work saying what the Scriptures and church fathers said, rather than what compromised and compromising men were willing for us to say.

Consensus is vastly overrated.

Years back, I was working at First Presbyterian in Boulder, Colorado, and we had famous Pastor John Doe in as a Lenten speaker. It was our habit to go out to breakfast with our big name preachers the morning of their departure and I remember the exchange we had with Pastor Doe, but more what our own wise senior pastor said after Pastor Doe left for the airport.

Pastor Doe had been waxing eloquent about the decisionmaking practice of his board of elders. He told us every decision they made was by consensus, and when someone at the table (there were about ten of us) asked what happened when the vote was split, he responded that they’d defer the vote until everyone agreed. Of course, the subtext was that they practiced mutual submission and unity in all their leadership.

Then Pastor Doe was off to the airport and, having some time before we all had to leave, we sat and talked for a few minutes. One person must have commented on the extraordinary method Pastor Doe had described, to which our Senior Pastor responded, “Yes, but you know what he meant when he said they waited until they had consensus on the matter, don’t you? He meant they never proceed until everyone’s figured out what Pastor Doe wants.”

This man was greatly loved because of his meekness and wisdom, and there was not an ounce of Little Man Syndrome in him. I don’t remember ever hearing a similar comment from him, but this one time he popped the hot air balloon decisively. And I’ve never forgotten it.

Now, if anyone apologizes to our session for speaking or voting against the majority, I tell that story and express to them our gratitude that they have honored us and the decision with their disagreement.

Back to the work of the Ad Interim Committee on Women in the Military: As I said, during the last year we were finally freed to work on a report that was in conformity with Scripture. And when it came time to vote, the majority of the committee signed on to that report, saying “No” to women as military combatants. But when we arrived at general assembly, our chairman called a meeting and asked us to approve a motion that would forbid him from identifying which of the two reports was the majority report, and which the minority.

The motion was made, seconded, and it carried. Only two of us spoke and voted against it. I argued that refusing to tell the assembly which was the majority and which the minority report, would send the assembly into parliamentary meltdown. I went on to say that if the chairman was so set on us presenting an irenic appearance in our presentation to the assembly, it would be much better to accomplish this by having the majority report become the minority report than to refuse to have either.

Sure enough, when our chairman presented our reports, the assembly was completely flummoxed by his refusal to identify which was the majority, and which the minority report. There was much consultation at the podium, but even the parliamentarian couldn’t figure out what was going on. Finally, in frustration, the moderator called a break for dinner and, as the assembly departed from the hall, five or six of us were up front looking for a way out of the mess. Two or three times the moderator asked our chairman to tell the assembly which was the majority, and which the minority report. Our chairman refused each time, saying the committee didn’t want any winners or losers.

I’ll never forget it. I knew you could have effeminate hand gestures, clothing, and even preaching. But I’d never dreamed a judicatory could have effeminate procedures.

So that’s why I’m a real believer in minority reports. They free up both sides to write what they believe Scripture teaches rather than compromising with the position they believe contrary to Scripture. And they can’t put anything in their report that hasn’t been presented to all the committee’s members. It’s an excellent process, really. It protects the full assembly from being given a report to act on that hasn’t hit its head against the best arguments of its opponents. It also guarantees that each report responds accurately to the best arguments of the other side, rather than simply trotting out straw men and hacking them to bits.

So if I were responsible for appointing a study committee, I would appoint the best men from both sides and encourage them to give it their best shot, but not until they’d had some good knock-down arguments of love. Yes, of love. That’s what the deliberative assemblies of Christian judicatories are supposed to do: Argue truth in a climate permeated with hard work, earnestness of conviction, zeal for truth, prayer, and love.

And before you reach for your guns, I'm not trying to smear the work of our own F-V study committee or those who appointed them. I know some will take my comments that way, but believe me when I say that it's my purpose simply to speak to the future--not to reignite a war over the past. So please, put your guns away, dear brothers.