I think it does radically change the way things are done.
I think there *is* a chance to feel silenced, but I have never felt worse than at an NCCA Forum (national level meeting of that body) and a decision went through by formal majority (because the NCCA uses a weird semi-consensus/semi-Westminster form of decision-making) against the wishes of about 40% of the group. I'd never experienced an atmosphere in a church meeting like that one, and I've been in some awful meetings, atmosphere-wise. And the reason I felt awful in the NCCA meeting was because of just how many people were outvoted because of the way we were making that decision. It would never have been made at that point in time in the UCA.
Also, I've seen one person turn the entire meeting around. I've seen it a number of times. Because the procedures are far less strict about who can speak and in what order, it allows for the random comments that make people think about things in a completely different way.
Meanwhile, see if you can get a hold of Coming to Consensus: A Case Study for the Churches. I've given you an Amazon link because it gives you the details, but you might have access to it from a library or friends. It's written by a past President of the Uniting Church of Australia, and as far as I recall (I don't have a copy of my own) most if not all the examples are from our church. It's pretty much the backbone of what the WCC used in its implementation of consensus decision-making in 2006.
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Date: 2008-04-15 06:42 am (UTC)I think there *is* a chance to feel silenced, but I have never felt worse than at an NCCA Forum (national level meeting of that body) and a decision went through by formal majority (because the NCCA uses a weird semi-consensus/semi-Westminster form of decision-making) against the wishes of about 40% of the group. I'd never experienced an atmosphere in a church meeting like that one, and I've been in some awful meetings, atmosphere-wise. And the reason I felt awful in the NCCA meeting was because of just how many people were outvoted because of the way we were making that decision. It would never have been made at that point in time in the UCA.
Also, I've seen one person turn the entire meeting around. I've seen it a number of times. Because the procedures are far less strict about who can speak and in what order, it allows for the random comments that make people think about things in a completely different way.
Meanwhile, see if you can get a hold of Coming to Consensus: A Case Study for the Churches. I've given you an Amazon link because it gives you the details, but you might have access to it from a library or friends. It's written by a past President of the Uniting Church of Australia, and as far as I recall (I don't have a copy of my own) most if not all the examples are from our church. It's pretty much the backbone of what the WCC used in its implementation of consensus decision-making in 2006.