Nick explains some procedures for the second phase of the community-wide consultation.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
NICK:. . . . So. After my talk, we will have a panel discussion again, and everyone who has given a talk this weekend is on the hook to be responding to questions. And I asked Paul DeCelles to be on the panel too, and he said okay. So, there will be questions about the whole thing.
So, this is the second talk about the practical aspects of the consultation. Youâll recall [that] yesterday we talked about phase one, which is about understanding our sources. And, itâs gonna last roughly from June through December, with a training conference in September and a more intense period from September through December.
Also, the board of governors is gonna to send head coordinators to as many branches as possible this summer, to invite everyoneâevery member of the community to actively participate in the consultation. And, weâre asking you to go back to your branches and work with your leaders teams about how to communicate this stuff to the rest of your branch as well. More on that a little bit later.
And, yeah, thereâs gonna to be a conference over Labor Day weekend.
Now about phase two. And, so, I mentioned yesterday that there will be a conference in January to kind of kick thatâphase two off. But I want to say a little bit about how we are gonna structure phase two, which is the consultation proper.
Of course, how we structure things is very important.
I heard about a convent where the rules were: you could only say one word per year. [Laughter.] And there wereâso there were these cloistered nuns, and they could only say one word per year. And there was a new nun, and she moved in, and she moved into her cell, and after the first year (some of yâall are shaking your heads like youâve heard this one before) . . . so, her prioress comes to visit her, and itâs her one word, and she says, âCold.â Andâ[Nick chuckles]âand the prioress says, âWell, okay. Weâll look into see [sic] if we can get a space heatâor maybe some more blankets. Thanks. See you next year.â
So, next year, the word is, âHungry.â [Muffled laughter. Nick mumbles something unintelligible.] And then the third year the word is, âLeaving.â [Louder laughter.]
And the prioress said, âWell, Iâm not surprised. Youâve done nothing but complain since you got here!â [Nick and all laugh.]
So, thatâs a bad way to structure and conduct a consultation. So, we donât want to do it that way. [Laughter.]
No. With our consultation, the heart of the consultation will be in the menâs and womenâs groups. Thatâs the heart of the community, where our community life is strongest, where everyone gets heard. Thatâs where we experience our life together to the most âin commonâ degree. And, I think we can probably all agree that COVID revealed that in some pretty amazing ways, how our small groups persisted through COVID.
Menâs and womenâs groups find their proper context in areas, and other area-sized groups, like small branches and new starts. Recall Seanâs beautiful comments about his experience of community life in the Shreveport branch.
So, the heart of our consultation is gonna be in menâs and womenâs groups, in areas. And, weâre gonna to follow our existing structure that way.
So, the process:
In January, the same set of people that gather in September will gather againâweâre not sure where, but in early January thereâs gonna be a gathering to train these folks in how to help the small groupsâthe small group leadersâconduct consultation conversations in their menâs and womenâs groups.
So, the purpose of the January conference is to train this [group of] roughly 60 to 70 people to help the leaders of small groups conduct consultation conversations in their small groups.
There are, by our current count, 293 menâs and womenâs groups in the community. (Thank you, Annie Bulger, for making that calculation.) There are also 36 areas, small branches, and new starts. So, if you kind of passed the whole community through a net thatâs about the size of an area, you get 36 groups. Does that make sense? And, within those 36 groups are housed 293 menâs and womenâs groups.
So, we hope to have one man and one woman from each area-sized group come to the September and January conferences, and we hope to have those men and women relate to four to five menâs and womenâs groups: the men relating to the leaders of menâs groups, the women relating to the leaders of womenâs groups.
And the math roughly works out, right? So, there will certainlyâitâs. . . . Oh! And we hope to have the people who come to the conferences relating to leaders of menâs and womenâs groups who are in their areas, right? So, we hope these men and women to come from areas, and then go back and be relating to the leaders in their areas and new starts, and that sort of thing. Thatâs what we hope for.
Thereâs no doubt that itâs gonna be a little messier once we start working out whoâs coming and how thatâs gonna go. Our team will be selecting these people, and inviting them, and weâre busy working on the most effective way to do this. But itâs gonna be a matter of considering every situation case-by-case.
So, after the January conference, these 60 to 70 people will spend some time training the leaders of the menâs and womenâs groups to have consultation conversations. And then, the menâs and womenâs groups will start having those conversations.
The input from the groups will be gathered, sent to the consultation team, organizedâand there will be iterations. And the whole thing is gonna be very interactive, and back-and-forth.
We got a picture of that process from Nanoâs talk, where thereâs, you know, âIs this what you said?ââyou know, that kind of thing. So thatâs how this is going to work, only on a slightly larger scale.
And we expect phase two to take roughly three months.
So, the real consultation will be going on in the menâs and womenâs groups, and that input will be included with all the other input. And what the Spirit is saying will be evident, and shared with all.
So, what you can do:
Like I said yesterday, you can study the sources. Let your enthusiasm be contagious. You can also, as [David] Salmon mentioned, share your opinion back with the resources teamâwhat yourâwhat sources have beenâyouâve been glad to read and hear. And you can also share that with the people around you, because, over time, everybodyâs gonna have access to these things.
So, thatâs number one.
Number two, please take what youâve learned back to your branch coordinators and the leaders of your small branch, and get the message out to everyone else in your branch. And, you can refer people to these talks that will be on the File Library very soon.
We donât want anybody to find out about the consultation by accident. We donât want a situation where, âIâm a longtime member of the community, and all Iâm hearing is rumors. And itâs like other people are being told, and theyâre mentioning it to me, and Iâm like, âWell, whatâs going on here?â â
No! We want every single person to be told about it. âWe want you to know this!â And in this connection, we can recall Mike Wackerâs talk about the need, especially for those who feel isolated, to be seen, and to beâI forget the word you used, Mike, but it was like âacknowledgedââlike, theyâre not just seen, but they know theyâre seen. Theyâre touched.
So, thatâs number two.
Number three is, as I mentioned before: please help the board of governors set up branch visits with your branch.
The board and its consultation team are working hard, but every person has some responsibility for the success of the consultation. So, itâs essential for all of us to be âall in.â Otherwise it wonât work.
So, a fourth thing you can doâif you wantâis: you can be âall in.â
And this is related to hope. Hope is participation. âIâm gonna join.â Thatâs a very hopeful thing. âIâm gonna pour myself into this.â Hope is believing that itâs possible, and that we can do it. Itâs possible, and we can do it. It can be done, and we can do it. With Christ, we can do all things. So, letâs go back to our branches in that spirit: âWe can do this.â
Iâve lost count, but thereâs another thing that you should know about. Is this five? [Nick and others chuckle.] Okay. So, Mike Wacker is the liaison on behalf of the boardâs consultation team, relating to the leaders of the branches: the PBCs and the small branches. And, so, heâs gonna be reaching out. But also, as things come up throughout the whole consultation process, the leaders are gonna go to Mike with questions that will surely come up.
So thatâs kind of aâthatâs a fifth thing that you can do.
As we say in our Authority and Obedience talks, an essential function of leadership is bringing about unity in the body.
We are all leaders of our branches and new starts. This consultation is an opportunity for much greater unity for us as a community. Studying our sources together could be hugely unifying. Talking and praying together about our future could be hugely unifying.
But it could also be disunifying, even unintentionally. Every conversation in every small group and area could go 1600 different directions. A lot of that will depend on how we, as leaders, participate. So, letâs âstrap up,â and throw ourselves into it, and lead and unify by example.
Questions are gonna come up that you donât have answers to. Thatâs an opportunity for you to say, âI donât know, but I know how to find out. Iâll get back to you.â And then, you can call your local leader, and maybe your local leader can call Mike Wacker.
You may encounter people who criticize the consultation process. There may be suspicions, uncertainties. Perhaps thatâs inevitable. But those are opportunities for us, as leaders, to bring unity out of division.
Thatâs where our hope comes in. We may make some mistakes. But fixing them will only improve us all. And thatâs essential to the process.
This is gonna work! Weâre all in, and weâre all in together.
Amen?
[Crowd: Amen!]
Amen.
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