The Epic, Pt. 69

The following email was received from Elder Ramirez on the morning after the Executive Committee meeting (May 29, 2009).

“Gentlemen,

“In regards to the Takoma Park Church issue, the Potomac Conference Executive Committee voted last night to take some actions that seek reconciliation between the two sides. However, the committee is not ready to articulate them. We will meet again in about two weeks to finalize these actions. We will officially inform you of the outcome as soon as we are ready. Thank you for your prayers and continue interest in seen this issue resolved. I wish you a blessed Sabbath.

“Jorge A. Ramírez
“Vice President for Administration
“Potomac Conference”

On June 10, 2009 word began to circulate that the Potomac Conference leadership had called a meeting of Takoma Park’s Church Ministries Board to be held the following evening, June 11. The conference was setting the agenda which, though not announced, was assumed to pertain to Takoma Park’s governance problems. It was also announced that it was to be a closed meeting—only members of the ministries board were to be allowed in the room. The combination of the short notice and meeting closure excluded many members of the Group from attending. (Most of the Group’s inner circle held elected leadership positions, just not ones that came with a seat on the ministries board.) We were surprised and disappointed that the conference chose to so exclude those who had made the appeal from hearing their decision on the matter.

After an introduction by Pastor DeSilva the meeting was turned over to Elder Miller. He gave a brief history of the appeal process we had followed (as he saw it, anyway). He informed the ministries board that after each side had made their presentations to the executive committee the committee had come to some very general conclusions and appointed a six-person delegation of committee members plus one Church Manual expert to study the matter further and flesh out the general direction that the committee had decided on. Elder Miller stated that the Church Manual expert who had assisted them was Dr. Gary Paterson. (We later discovered that this consultation with Dr. Paterson was not quite as it was represented to the ministries board, but we’ll get to that in a later post.) Elder Miller went on to say that the executive committee had met again that afternoon in a special session to hear the report of the delegation and finalize its recommendations.

Before presenting the formal recommendations of the executive committee Elder Miller declared that the committee had concluded that there was some misunderstanding about its role and power, and went on to “clarify” the misunderstanding. He said that the executive committee’s only “engagement” with the activities of a local congregation is to advise and disband congregations. He further stated that there was a need to be cautious that the Church Manual not be violated in the process of trying to enforce the Church Manual. In this context he claimed that involving the executive committee in its advisory capacity with the business of the local church should only occur at the formal request of the whole church body. Elder Miller compared the situation to small groups requesting that items be placed on the agenda of a constituency meeting and being told that they must first have the request endorsed by a congregation. He went on to describe the “role and power” of the higher administrative levels of the Church. Elder Miller claimed that the union's only power was to provide clarification on decisions and recommendations of the conference and to disband conferences. He further claimed that the division has no power at all because it is simply an arm of the General Conference, and that the General Conference can only advise and disband unions. His conclusion to all of this was that the executive committee was making a few recommendations to the Takoma Park Church, but that the church business meeting, as the highest authority in the congregation, was within its power to refuse them.

Elder Miller also stated that once the business meeting of the church made a decision the church must “move ahead.” In this statement we saw yet another veiled jab at the Group—his assertion that small groups had no right to appeal to the executive committee having been the first one—but this statement conveniently ignored the fact that the circumstances surrounding the original approval of the change in governance did not constitute a legitimate decision by the business meeting of the church. See The Epic, Pt. 5 (posted 10-19-08) and Double Take (posted 4-5-10) for explanations of the illegitimacy of the decision.

On the subject of whether a “small group” could appeal to the executive committee, Elder Miller took this opportunity to attempt to distance himself from the statement in the Manual that if a church was dissatisfied with a decision of the conference that it could appeal to the union for clarification. On this occasion he interpreted this statement as referring to an entire congregations' dissatisfaction, not that of an unofficial group within the congregation. Under this interpretation a group like the Group would have no standing for appeal to the union unless a formal decision to appeal was voted by the congregation. In making this interpretation Elder Miller made it sound as if it had been the Group that first introduced this statement from the Manual into the equation and that we were wrong to have done so. Once again he was conveniently ignoring the historical fact that he was the one to introduce this statement and the procedure described therein in his letter to the Group on June 17, 2008. The Group’s appeal to the statement since that date had simply been an attempt to follow through with the process that Elder Miller himself had prescribed. Just to remind everyone of what was said on that occasion, here is the relevant excerpt from that letter (the full text can be found in The Epic, Pt. 25, posted 9-15-09):

“I understand that you did take a request to the board of elders, on April 23, to refer this back to the church in Business session. This was denied. The next appropriate step would have been to then contact the conference administration with your dispute, with the full knowledge of the Pastor and board of elders to contact the conference in an official capacity and request a meeting. If the decision then made would not have met your group’s approval it would then be referred to the Executive Committee. After the Executive Committee the manual states:

“‘Churches should look to the local conference for advice pertaining to the operating of the church or on questions arising from the Church Manual. If mutual understanding or agreement is not reached, the matter should be referred to the union for clarification.’ xxii Church Manual 2005 edition.

“We will be glad to work a process as understood in principle by Matthew 18 and as outlined in the Church Manual.”

After making this presentation (the substance of which we will analyze in a separate post), Elder Miller distributed printed copies of the executive committee’s formal recommendations and made comments on each one. The following is what he distributed.

“Executive Committee Approved Recommendations

“The assigned group of the Executive Committee voted to recommend:

“1. In affirmation of the Takoma Park Church:
“a. Your support of the Mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church
“b. Your desire to impact and reach the local community for Christ
“c. Your desire for accountability to the Mission and Vision of the church.
“d. Your desire for spiritual reconciliation

“2. Recommendations:
“a. Although the Church Manual does not specify that another name is incompatible, the Church Ministries Board should be called the Church Board
“b. The Support and Accountability Board be renamed to the Support and Accountability Council and that it be Selected by the Nominating Committee and reports to the Church Board
“c. The primary role of the Church Board is to discuss and plan the evangelism outreach for the church. The newly renamed Church Board should study pp. 90-92 in the manual to make sure the Board functions as stated.
“d. That 15 key individuals from each group join together to fast and pray; to pray for reconciliation, unity, humility, and renewed energy to focus on what it is God has called the Takoma Park Church to be. This will not be a time to discuss issues.
“e. Items a, b, & c voted by the Takoma Park Church in Business Session.”

Elder Miller asserted that the Manual doesn’t provide any process for congregations to make local hires, and that he and the executive committee’s delegation of six had found no consistency in hiring practices among the congregations they had surveyed. His conclusion from this was that it was acceptable for congregations to manage local hires however they wished. Therefore, the executive committee had concluded that there was nothing wrong with the accountability board existing separately from the ministries board for the purpose of managing local personnel, but that its conclusions should be brought back to the ministries board. To clarify the fact that it did not/should not possess the power to act independently the executive committee recommended that it be called a “council” rather than a “board.”

Elder Miller reiterated that the executive committee could not legislate the recommended reconciliation, or any other part of their recommendations. It was really a point that he dwelt on with quite a bit of fervor, so much so that one really got the impression that perhaps he didn’t like the conclusions the executive committee had come to and was rather hoping that the church would reject them, but that is conjecture rather than provable fact.

During the question period Elder J asked a couple of questions significant enough to document. Fairly quickly into the question period Pastor DeSilva had asked whether the recommended changes to the accountability board were the result of the current configuration being wrong or whether the current system was fine and the changes were purely for conciliatory purposes. Elder Miller had replied that the answer was “both/and.” Pastor DeSilva had pushed the point further, leading Elder Miller to emphasize the conciliatory aspect of the recommendations. Elder J picked up on the ambiguity of this answer and asked Elder Miller flat out why the conference was recommending changes if there wasn’t actually anything wrong with the way things were. When Elder Miller hesitated in answering Elder J put an even finer point on the question, asking Elder Miller for a definitive answer on whether the new governance was in harmony with the Church Manual. Elder Miller responded that he didn’t have before him a list of the articulated responsibilities of the various entities of the new governance system, and therefore could not give a direct answer to the question. (We feel a need to point out here that in its presentation to the executive committee the Group had provided the very lists Elder Miller claimed to be ignorant of and that their deficiencies had been discussed at length in that meeting. Either he had willfully ignored that presentation, or he was in this instance telling a deliberate lie to the ministries board. As to why he would do such a thing, the only answer that makes sense to us is that the Group did indeed prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt and he therefore couldn’t say we were wrong, but he did not want to say we were right because that would have meant the undoing of his grand schemes for change, so he chose to evade the question entirely.)

The other significant question Elder J asked was whether disciplinary action could be taken against the Group if the church considered the executive committee’s recommendations, declined them, and the Group continued to appeal. Elder Miller responded that reconciliation should be the goal, but that ultimately discipline was the church's right.

When asked how the ministries board could maintain a focus on ministry if its name was changed to “church board,” Elder Miller observed that meeting discipline was needed—the board simply needed to make a commitment to focus on important things rather than unimportant ones. To this end he recommended 1) that meeting agendas be circulated in advance so that board members could get their thoughts together ahead of time and then speak to an issue only once during a meeting rather than speaking up several times in a disorganized way, 2) that ministry issues be placed on the top of the agenda rather than the bottom so that if anything was to be shorted on time it would be less significant items, and 3) that the duties, responsibilities, and relationships of the church board and all subcommittees be articulated and written down so that everyone could understand what each entity was supposed to be focusing its effort on. (This the Group actually found to be sound advice. We can’t help noticing that it is also advice that could have been given and implemented for the betterment of Takoma Park’s governance without the interference of a consultant or deviation from the stipulations of the Church Manual.)

The ministries board didn’t take any formal action on the executive committee’s recommendations during this meeting. Pastor DeSilva declared that they would be discussed briefly at the regular ministries board meeting in July, which would then make a recommendation about them to the business meeting that was scheduled for the following week in July.

Next: Call the Question

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