The art of courtesy

The Methodist Church, or more properly the United Methodist Church, held their annual meeting last week in Greenville. As an officer in the men’s ministry in the church, I am supposed to attend. As one who likes talking to people and would rather not sit and listen to others (judge that as you will), it is a bit of a struggle for me to sit for most of three days.
Our presiding officer at these meetings, and we call it holy conferencing, is our Bishop, Rev. Al Gwinn. We vote on budgets and resolutions and where the next Annual Conference will be held. We have a number of worship services, a retirement service, a commissioning service, and we celebrate Holy Communion.
This year we elected delegates to an upcoming Southeast regional meeting, and to a national meeting. Yours truly did get elected as a regional delegate (that’s another story).
I say all of that to tell you there is a lot of business that properly comes along with affirming we are people of God and seeking His will in our lives and in the work of the church.
While I would say, as you would hope, we are a pretty tame group overall, we are people of passion. We can and will speak ardently on topics, and sometimes, you could argue, our passion overrules our good sense and maybe even our Holy Compass. Our humanity may get in the way of our holiness. Most of the time I think we hold on to the right things.
The way in which the business of our church, at this level, is run, clergy and laity have virtually equal voice. As you may understand and expect, some of our clergy, and occasionally, some of our laity, may push along the extremes.
We debated a resolution which, from my perspective, might have been drafted by the Democratic Party (I know we have Democrats and Republicans among our group). The resolution was critical of the administration's actions during the current conflict, condemning the president and his administration. While as Christians we oppose war and we pray for our enemies, and I affirm that, I felt the resolution went too far. With passionate speeches on both sides of the debate on the issue, we ended up defeating that resolution but did adopt a more moderate resolution.
Again, presiding over all of this was our Bishop.
I have had the honor and pleasure of serving on a number of committees with our Bishop and have met with him individually on occasion. He is a man of passion and vision and he has advocated moving our church in a number of important and sometimes controversial areas. I say controversial, not so much from a liberal theology perspective, but because our church can grow fat and lazy. We like who we are and we don’t particularly like someone coming in and suggesting we need to get up off our good intentions if we are going to fulfill our role as the church in the community. I (we) need to hear that and I appreciate his Holy nudges.
I have also been in a meeting where he went into the lion's den, a church meeting where the church members were angry at him over a decision he made. There were some ugly things said and disrespectful things said. I was amazed at the way in which he acknowledged every comment and affirmed those which were appropriate. He was courteous to some people who were not always courteous to him.
Last week, in a long period, I saw the exhaustion of the three days begin to take a toll on many, including the Bishop. I was amazed at how well he held on to the courtesy he extended to all in trying to move us along on our business. With a number of things on the agenda, and we did get behind on our agenda at times, he encouraged us to keep things brief at times, and there were times that things were controversial.
All of us have been in meetings where parliamentary procedure was used against someone. He stated it early and practiced it many times, when someone would want to make a motion or amendment that was not proper or at the proper time, some of which he probably didn’t agree with. The Bishop helped speakers find the proper means, or came back to them at the proper time. He acknowledged those who were trying to be helpful but who were violating the rules under which we operate.
It took some considerable effort and caring. It was inspiring.
In contrast, I went to a local board meeting Monday night. I know those there, and particularly the presiding officer, were not intentionally discourteous, and it was a contentious meeting, with lengthy debates. But I couldn’t help but wish the Bishop had been there.
Maybe most of us could be more courteous.