The Epic, Pt. 13

When the nominating committee resumed its work after the January business meeting one of the members promptly brought up the matter of how many people ought to be on the Support and Accountability Board. Up to that point in the nominating process Pastor DeSilva had told the nominating committee that the Accountability Board was supposed to have five members, period. However, he had just told the business meeting that the precise number was up to the nominating committee. There were several members of the nominating committee who had been present at the business meeting and thought the arguments for a larger Accountability Board made a lot of sense.

There was an extensive discussion of the matter in which Pastor DeSilva tried very hard to talk the committee out of increasing the number. When it became clear from the comments around the table that many favored increasing the number the discussion turned to whether there should be two additional members or three. Pastor DeSilva spoke up once again to insist that there could not be three more because that would make the total number of members even and create a potential problem with tied votes. [This was faulty reasoning because the senior pastor was supposed to be only an ex officio member of the committee—in other words, he was only supposed to be able to vote if there was a tie. If there were an odd number of members not counting the ex officio pastor there would be very little likelihood of there ever being a tie in the first place. With an even number of regular members, however, the chance of the pastor being an active voter to break ties would increase substantially.] The matter was finally put to a vote and the nominating committee decided that the Accountability Board should have seven members.

When the outcome of the vote was announced Pastor DeSilva was heard to mutter under his breath, “That’s too many!”

The nominating committee presented its report at the end of February 2008. In the rush to have the nominating process over numerous positions were left vacant on the theory that they would immediately be taken up by the standing nominating committee. This did not happen. It would be months before the standing nominating committee would make any report, and when it did it was only to add three more members to the finance committee. (Interestingly, these additions happened after the longtime head of the finance committee, who opposed the governance change, was told there were no more vacancies. The former chairman had relinquished the position temporarily to be an interim paid bookkeeper for the church between regular employees, which had made him temporarily ineligible for election during the regular nominating process, but he had quit the job before the three additional committee members were recommended by the standing nominating committee.) To this day the standing nominating committee has not made any recommendations on any of the remaining vacant positions, including the entire roster of Sabbath School Superintendents.

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