DECISION MAKING IN THE MISSIONARY COMMUNITY
SEEKING THE WILL OF GOD
Being called, constituted and empowered to act with authority, the Proclaim! International missionary community must act or decide collectively from time to time. How will it do this? What is its method of making decisions? The premise in all decision making is that it is the Lord who rules. The task of its members is to discern and obey his will. The goal in decision-making, then, is to discern the will of God and then to act accordingly.
What should be the essential elements enabling the community to discern the will of God? First, we must be living our individual daily lives according to God’s word and under his influence; if not, we are unlikely to be able to discern his will for direction in our community and our ministries. Second, we recognize that the Bible and the Holy Spirit provide the indispensable source and influence by which God’s will is known. Third, groups comprised of spiritually mature members need to agree together to seek to discern the will of God for the life and direction of their community. Fourth, groups are better able to discern the will of God if their members apply certain scriptural principles as they function in the group. They must seek to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace” (Ephesians 4:3), practice “…speaking the truth in love…” (Ephesians 4:15), act in humility and gentleness (Philippians 2:1-5), and maintain holistic, biblical fellowship.
SEEKING THE WILL OF GOD BY CONSENSUS
Most often in life, decisions, including those concerning the will of God, are made by individuals. We believe that when a group is seeking to discern the will of God the best method is to achieve consensus. When all members of the discerning group are unified in the Spirit concerning their decision or course of action and have fully participated in the process, they will have greater confidence that they have achieved true consensus and are acting according to the will of God.
Many espouse the strategy of consensus in decision making. Few succeed in making it work. What are some of the common roadblocks? First, some members of the group may not possess sufficient spiritual maturity related to the scriptural principles above. Second, the size of the group may affect its ability to achieve true consensus - the larger the group the greater the difficulty. Third, the facilitator or leader of the group may not be sufficiently skilled or gifted. Finally, the efforts of a group to achieve consensus may become disabled if the group is blocked by members who cannot resolve their differences. The group needs to have a way of dealing with this.
When meeting in formal session, the International Council, as a rule, will seek consensus in making its decisions. When they meet together to serve as the collective executive leadership of the mission, the Co-directors will also make decisions according to the same rule. Of course there are many circumstances in the daily work and ministry of a Co-director when decisions have to be made individually. To account for this they have agreed by consensus that each has areas of responsibility where individual decisions have to be made, and they are willing to trust each other and the action of the Holy Spirit in each other’s lives.
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