Committees

Our church just went through the process of getting our committees together to work on our ministries for the year. I am excited about what we are doing. The ideas that were generated give great hope. Now comes the part of actually doing them. I know that we have very dedicated people in our congregation who give of their time, talent, and even their treasure to support our ministries. I thank God for them. We are also looking at how we can extend an invitation to others to become part of our work.
We will be working hard this year especially to respond to the tragedy in Haiti. As always we are responding to the needs of the people there and to support the relief work in prayer and action.
I also want to copy some of the ideas that I read from Homelitics regarding committees. I know that these do not apply to us, but we all have had experiences that would speak to some of the ideas. I share them not as a commentary but as a time that we can laugh and enjoy as we go about our work.

Author and pastor Nancy Ortberg offers thoughts for building better teamwork into church teams. Drawing from Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Ortberg recognizes five unity destroyers and offers ideas to address them:

• Absence of trust: Make every ministry team a place where honesty and vulnerability are required. Open meetings with “shared life,” and then get to “shared mission” second.

• Fear of conflict: Conflict isn’t bad, but how we handle it can be. Require conflict-resolution training for every team in the church, and bring in an expert to help.

• Inability to commit: Once a team makes a decision, ask if everyone has “buy-in” and ask how each person will implement the decision. Without buy-in, a decision wasn’t actually made.

• Avoidance of accountability: If the cause we’re supporting with our gifts is worthwhile, then we should value accountability. It’s the natural result of trust and commitment.

• Inattention to results: The church body needs evaluation, just as the human body does. Did we do what God wanted us to do? If not, how do we improve for next time?
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Oh, give me a pity, I’m on a committee,

Which means that from morning to night,

We attend and amend and contend and defend

Without a conclusion in sight.

We confer and concur, we defer and demur

And reiterate all of our thoughts.

We revise the agenda with frequent addenda

And consider a load of reports.

We compose and propose, we suppose and oppose

And the points of procedure are fun!

But though various notions are brought up as motions

There’s terribly little gets done.

We resolve and absolve, but never dissolve

Since it’s out of the question for us.

What a shattering pity to end our committee.

Where else could we make such a fuss?

—Phong Ngo. glenandpaula.com/quotes/index.php?quote_id=737&retrieve=1. Retrieved July 27, 2009.
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When it comes to facing up to serious problems, each candidate will pledge to appoint a committee. And what is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary. But it all sounds great in a campaign speech.

—Richard Long Harkness.

To get something done, a committee should consist of three men, two of whom are absent.

—Robert Copeland.

If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it.

—Charles F. Kettering.

A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours.

—Milton Berle.

A committee can make a decision that is dumber than any of its members.

—David Coblit.

To kill time, a committee meeting is the perfect weapon.

—Author unknown.

If you see a snake, just kill it — don’t appoint a committee on snakes.

—Ross Perot.
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As winter approaches, we read all kinds of suggestions for conserving fuel and making our dwelling places warm. Here are a few pointers for keeping warm in church:

Rush to the front of the church to avoid the draft in the rear.

Invite your neighbors and friends and sit 10 people to a pew.

Seat yourself near the pulpit; much hot air is emitted from that area.

Fuss and fume when you don’t like what the preacher says.

Wear thermal underwear (in the appropriate liturgical colors).

Wait for an unfamiliar hymn, and then watch the sparks fly!

Let the Holy Spirit fill you; he will warm your heart and body.
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A man is on a boat. He is not alone, but acts as if he were. One night, without warning, he suddenly begins to cut a hole under his seat.

The other people on the boat shout and shriek at him: “What on earth are you doing? Have you gone mad? Do you want to sink us all? Are you trying to destroy us?”

Calmly, the man answers: “I don’t understand what you want. What I’m doing is none of your business. I paid my way. I’m not cutting under your seat. Leave me alone!”

What the fanatic (and the egotist) will not accept, but what you and I cannot forget, is that all of us are in the same boat.

— Elie Wiesel, “When passion is dangerous,” Parade magazine, April 19, 1992.
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Independence ... [is] middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

— George Bernard Shaw.
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Cooperation is the thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there.

—Virginia Burden.