The Epic, Pt. 52

Elder Ramirez responded to Brother G’s request to proceed with the next stipulated meeting on February 15, 2009.

“Dear [Brother G],

“I have reviewed your response to pastor DeSilva’s proposal and I am submitting the following comments for your consideration:

“1. No where in your synopsis do you mention the issue at hand that I introduced at the beginning of the meeting. This was the only item on the agenda:
“‘The present governess structure of the Takoma Park SDA church is not in harmony with the church manual. This is notibly reflected in the absence of a church board as stipulated in the church manual.’

“Perhaps this is the reason why pastor DeSilva did not response to your other observations.

“2. Your request to meet again with a larger group is appropriate. Please select two additional representatives from your group and send their names to me. Also, I will need in writing from you, the objections that you and the group are raising in preparation for the next meeting. These objections will serve as the agenda.

“As soon as I get the above information, I will work with pastor DeSilva in scheduling the meeting date.

“Thank you for your interest in seeing this issue resolved. I wish you a blessed day.

“Jorge A. Ramírez”

The Group considered this message and felt that it reflected a misinterpretation of the issue statement which the Group had provided to the conference. Per standard Group procedure, a responding message was drafted, circulated among the Group membership for comment, amended, recirculated, and finally forwarded to the designated communicator in whose name it was written. In this instance Sister L had been the Group member tasked with coordinating the response preparation, and it was she who forwarded the completed message to Brother G. Upon receiving the message Brother G forwarded it to Elder Ramirez without bothering to remove the forwarding information from the body of the message, thereby leaving a “trail” of Sister L’s involvement in the preparation. (We mention all of this because in his response to this message Elder Ramirez referred to the message as “sent by [Sister L] through you.”) This message was sent on February 22, 2009.

“Dear Jorge,

“All systems of governance exist in two parts; 1) what is written down, and 2) how the leaders of that system implement what is written down. Both parts inform the observer as to the total nature of the system. Given the extremely limited nature of the written documentation in this situation the way in which it has been implemented becomes even more important to the understanding of the system. Everything said in the previous meeting spoke to one or the other of these two points. The charts that were provided clearly demonstrate that the present Takoma Park Church system of governance is not in compliance with the Church Manual on paper. The remainder of what was said addressed the way in which our pastoral staff has implemented the structure, and as such was absolutely relevant to the agenda.

“We are concerned by your decision to make continuation of the Matt. 18 process contingent upon receiving detailed, advance, written documentation from us. The verse itself places no such burden on either party. Please allow us to proceed with the scheduling of the next meeting without further delay.

“Regarding an agenda for the next meeting, we intend to address Pastor DeSilva's proposal point by point, explaining what we find objectionable and why and what we believe to be necessary for the implementation of an eventual solution. We prefer not to be more specific than that at this time because we wish to have the freedom to interpret our own written documents as we intend. The experience of the last meeting has shown that the written statement we provided was interpreted far more narrowly than we intended. We wish to be able to bring up all matters we believe to be relevant to the subject at hand, without restriction. We observe, for the record, that this agenda is far more specific and detailed than what was provided in the initial preparatory meeting, for which—despite repeated requests for greater specificity—you would only state that it would be about 'process and procedure.' We will be happy to provide a written document at the time of the meeting to serve as a guideline for the discussion.

“The specific identities of our additional attendees will vary depending on availability on the determined date. Please select a date which works for you and Pastor DeSilva. Once we have that information we will be able to determine our representatives.

“Sincerely, [Brother G]

“P.S. It has occurred to us that Takoma Park is due for a business meeting in the next few weeks. It has also occurred to us that Pastor DeSilva might choose to recommend action on his proposal in that forum. We would like to be clear that any such action will not in any way resolve our concerns, since to our minds the proposal does not satisfy them.”

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