Out of a parliamentary quagmire

Our Convocation (region within a diocese) meeting this past Sunday was a parliamentary textbook study. It was a mess. The Dean, bless his heart, didn’t know enough Robert’s Rules to stop two people from having a back-and-forth across the aisle. I made ping-pong motions with my hand while shaking my head in the direction of the Chair. He finally caught on to that.

When someone suggested putting off a resolution until we had decided on diocese budget recommendations, the Chair asked, “Shall we table it?” I stood up, was recognized, and said the way to handle it was to “postpone until….” That worked and we came back to the resolution automatically.

The parliamentary zoo was multidimensional. With around fifty people in the room, we had people speaking multiple times to motions (from their seats yet), people making speeches on a motion after the vote was counted. The Dean was just unprepared to help that many people make decisions in an orderly, gracious way.

If you are made a chairperson of a large meeting, ask someone who knows Robert’s Rules to sit by you and offer help.

If you find yourself in a hopeless meeting, you can enlist help if you feel you are starting to sound like the parliamentary policeman. At one point, debate was going on an on with people repeating points. I suggested to a person that they call the question—ask that we move to a vote. They had never done this before, but took a chance. It was a rewarding moment of education. That person will speak up again. The motion passed and we moved to a vote.

I tried to help at the break, informing the Dean of <<The duty of the Chair to help>>. I told him he could help people make amendments against the resolution I had composed. He turned the meeting over to a facilitator who proceeded to make a speech and an amendment while in the Chair. Sheesh!

I had spoken enough already and didn’t raise a point of order. You can irritate people with too-frequent objections. The way this was going, I figured I had better save my ammo.

A savvy layperson, who was proposing the resolution, accepted the temporary Chair’s “friendly amendment” and turned a mundane budget resolution into a radical (in the best sense) mission resolution. Now we will need to support it before the Resolutions Committee. Good enough!

In addition to the resolution mentioned already, two motions regarding the evolving diocese budget passed. These motions asked that mission causes already ranked highly in the diocese budget process—mission work in Haiti, Cursillo, Kairos, and Epiphany—be fully funded. In line with our meeting instructions to find a source for the money, the motions suggested taking the money from an increase of giving to the national Episcopal Church. The giving to the national church was proposed to increase 8%, while general budget increases were around 4%.

When the surrogate chair asked me if I would accept a friendly amendment to take the money from elsewhere on one of the motions, I declined. I suggested anyone could make that amendment if they wished. No one spoke up.

Several priests tried to get the assembly to refuse to fund the mission causes from the increase for the national church, but were unsuccessful. They will have to live with the majority vote. Of course, they will have another opportunity in the diocese convention.

After the train wreck of General Convention, I must say this was a good day. Parliamentary interventions helped avert another wreck.