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Hallo again to all. Watching sausage be made, it's commonly said, is a bad idea if you want to eat sausage with enjoyment. Seeing tofu (a vegetarian equivalent) be made is at worst boring. Watching scrapple be made sounds rather loathsome. But the phrase that people utter when their exposure to a process reduces their ability to enjoy the end product is 'watching sausage being made'. Much commercially prepared food is best enjoyed by those unfamiliar with its ingredients or with the process of preparing it. It's not just food that's subject to 'sausagemaking'. It's much of life.
There is nothing special about parish governance that breeds sausagemaking behaviour. Parishes, deaneries, dioceses, provinces — no difference. Wherever there is a committee, there seems to be rancour. It's similar to the contentiousness in real life, but magnified and entrenched. And along with that contentiousness comes a full spectrum of unpleasant organisational dynamics. We've watched in amazement as a church employee leapt to the defense of an incompetent and abrasive co-worker, about whom in private she never had a good word, because, well, they were colleagues. A meeting can jump from 'clear and frank dialogue' to 'circle the wagons' in seconds, dividing the group into irreconcilable factions, over what seem on the surface to be the smallest issues. We've heard many explanations for this phenomenon. 'The church is different.' 'The Holy Spirit is guiding each of us in different directions.' 'The PCC attracts people who just want to fight.' 'There's no way to measure success or failure, so you can never prove any idea right or wrong, other than by seeing what kills the parish.' That last one gets our vote. Church meetings that go well seem to include prayer, song, or the eucharist at strategic times. The first time we experienced this, we thought 'How quaint', but later came to realise that breaking up long meetings with prayer or song or communion is a wise way to cut down the number of ruined friendships and hardened hearts. One aspect of instant global communication — such as is enabling you to read Anglicans Online just now — that it has ultimately (and unfortunately) gathered all of us in a gigantic never-ending PCC meeting, in which everyone can opine but no one can vote. Our churches are making their sausage not in a back room, but under international scrutiny. And no one seems to be taking proper time out for remember-what-it's-all-about activities between rounds of the arguments. We aren't suggesting change to prevent these disputes. We don't think it would work. We're suggesting that maybe all of us need to pay less attention to the process and more attention to the purpose. (Perhaps the pillar saints and desert monastics of the 5th century AD had the right idea.) We find ourselves dealing with it all by paying less and less attention to the details of the global dialogue, neither granting an audience nor picking a fight. In fact, we ought to put down this computer and go light a candle and read a book right now. See you next week.
Last
updated: 26 September 2004 |
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In
our travels around the Anglican world we have heard mention of
sausagemaking most frequently when people discuss their experiences
on the committees
or councils that govern parishes. Variously called the PCC, the
Parish Council, the Vestry, or the Select Vestry, these are the
elected committees that govern the earthly aspects of running a
parish. Until
you have served on such a body, you could never imagine the number
of different ways to start angry disputes about minor subjects.
When the Christmas decorations are put
up at a church, be glad that those who look at them and enjoy them
did
not have to listen to the disputes beforehand. We've not heard
of anyone having been stabbed to death during a debate about
refurbishing the parish kitchen or leasing meeting space to a 12-step
organisation, but we know of more than one divorce whose roots
were in arguments
about parish governance. 
