Day 3 of Synod – what if you disagree with a matter of wisdom?

The main item on the agenda at Synod yesterday was the expenditure side of the financial ledger.

But first we made some minor but important amendments to our Discipline Ordinance—the way in which the Anglican Diocese of Sydney deals with complaints about paid church workers and volunteer leaders who are accused of breaching our professional standards, especially in the area of sexual misconduct or child abuse.

I mention this as a reminder for all church members and leaders to pray for those with the heavy responsibility of overseeing their church’s or denomination’s safe ministry standards. Jesus says we must protect those who cannot protect themselves. Pray for those who oversee your denomination’s professional standards or act as chaplains to victims.

But back to expenditure. What do you do if you disagree on a judgment matter made by a leadership team or decision-making body you belong to?

Given our diocese’s drastically reduced amount of funds available to spend, we had to make some big cuts. Quite rightly it was not just a case of chopping 50 per cent across the board. Some creatures just can’t function with half their body gone! And so there were hard decisions made, guided by a strategic plan that our diocese’s Mission Board has developed.

The philosophy was to re-focus our funds on core business that must be funded centrally because it cannot be funded locally or elsewhere. You can read the strategic plan (here in pdf). Or you can browse through the FAQs here.

A key change was the introduction of Mission Areas (an area bigger than the local parish, but smaller than a whole region overseen by our now over-stretched bishops) to be led by Mission Leaders (suitably godly and gifted Senior Pastors). The idea is not to waste a good crisis and this change is a chance to get us focusing on something we should have been doing all along: local churches co-operating (now there’s an idea) to reach the spiritual deserts and lost tribes in our midst.

As it happens I am not convinced by the proposal. And so I have raised those concerns in various forums. I have asked some hard questions to those proposing this change (scroll up and down on that link to see what others were saying).

But it is not a matter of doctrinal error. There is nothing unethical about the new proposal. It’s just a matter of wisdom. And I don’t really have better alternatives, at least none that I can supply any evidence for to say they would work better. And perhaps some of my questions have no answers until a bit of water flows under the bridge.

So the purpose of this post is not to debate the issue again. Our Synod has already decided to go with the proposal of Mission Areas.

My question is: how do you react if you disagree on a judgment matter made by a leadership team or decision-making body you belong to?

Surely the answer is you work for it to be a success, rather than crossing your arms and sitting back and waiting for problems!

You pray for those involved in the implementation. You co-operate with the Mission Leader when appointed. You continue to offer constructive suggestions and even criticisms where appropriate. But not in a way that hinders the effort to make it a success.

You’ll probably be surprised to hear me citing C Peter Wagner on Sola Panel. But I was very struck years ago reading one of his very pragmatic books on church growth by his invention of the term ‘followership’. He wanted Christians to be good followers of their leaders, following passages like Hebrews 13:17.

I think it’s an especially good reminder for those who are competent and strong-minded leaders in the church themselves. When there’s a duly-taken decision made that you would have made differently, then unless it’s a matter of wrong doctrine, or clear immorality, or complete stupidity, then give your loyalty to the decision and exercise the fine art of good followership!