The British Weekly ran an article beginning: ‘I spent an hour this morning with ten prisoners, and as we separated, I said to myself very firmly “Never again”. Our meeting was not behind barred walls… but in a suburban vestry.’ Peter Drucker, the management specialist, tells us the ‘church can be run with one-tenth of the committees they have without the slightest impairment of anything.’ (1)

When the ‘authorities’ in Jerusalem heard about some unusual happenings in far-off Antioch they did what ‘headquarters’ always does when people are creative – they sent a committe to investigate (Acts 11:22).

It was a committee of one person – Barnabas, a Jew from Cyprus, who may have been converted with many other ‘foreign’ Jews at Pentecost. He was held in high esteem by the Jerusalem apostles (and maybe by others as well, which is perhaps why he didn’t flee the city after the persecution). He was a good choice. Barnabas was able to understand both the Jewish and Greek mind-sets; like Paul, he was brought up as a Jew (actually a Levite) but outside Palestine.

Back to ‘committees of one’: they are always the best committees in the church. Most effective ministry gets done by one person with vision, energy and commitment. Dr. W E Sangster put it well in one of his Westminster sermons: ‘How were the slaves freed? Did all England wake up one morning and say “This is wrong. We must free the slaves?” No! One man woke up one morning with the groan of God in his soul and William Wilberforce and his friends laboured until Britain paid a larger sum than her national debt to set the slaves free.

‘How was all the social trouble after the industrial revolution ameliorated? God groaned in the heart of Lord Shaftesbury and he toiled and toiled to serve and save the poor. How were the prisons cleaned up in England? Did everybody suddenly say, “These prisons are places of indescribable filth?” No! God groaned in the heart of Elizabeth Fry. Progress is the echo of the groan of God in the hearts of [individual] men and women.’

Committees of one get things done! However, in a responsible community that person ought to be accountable to the leaders God has placed in the church, so a clear ministry description should be mutually agreed upon, with boundaries of authority clearly understood. In addition, such persons ought to be encouraged to consult and work with others where appropriate. We don’t want the church to become a hive of activist ‘loners’ doing their own thing because they can’t get along with other people.

Committees don’t have a ‘good press’ in most churches. ‘Groups of people who take minutes and waste hours’; ‘devices to keep people away from families and spiritual exercises’; ‘what happened to the unicorns? they tried to get into the ark by committee’; ‘In the first place God made idiots – this was for practice; then he made boards’ (Mark Twain): so run the cynics’ comments. In a cartoon the chairman says to three or four bored people around a table: ‘You’ve heard of art for art’s sake? This is meeting for meeting’s sake!’ More seriously: ‘Committees of rational people can be expected to act less rationally than their members’ (Kenneth Arrow).

Many pastors and leaders think that if you want to ‘involve’ someone in the life of the church, invite him or her to join a committee, and they’ll feel wanted, active, part of the group. That’s a fallacy. For one thing, many amateurs run church committees, and run them very poorly, creating frustration in those who give high priority to spending time fruitfully. Further, the best happenings in life involve openness, warmth, trust and spontaneity – most of which may be missing when a group meets as functionaries rather than as brothers and sisters. (‘Bureaucracy is a way of carrying out transactions among strangers’). But there’s a more subtle temptation: the Devil would prefer that people join committees rather than growth or cell groups where they may develop spiritually. No one should be a committee-member (except as an occasional advisor) who does not already belong to a Bible study/prayer group. However, with all this said, church-members need the satisfaction of knowing what’s going on; they ought to be part of the decision-making processes of the church, and they ought to feel their contributions of time and ideas are valued.

Anthropologists tell us that almost all the world’s cultures have three things in common: sex, war, and committees. So if your church is going to have committees of more than one (and that’s inevitable), here’s some wit and wisdom I once heard from Lyle Schaller, which could save your church’s life: ‘What’s legal? In Germany everything’s prohibited unless permitted; in France everything’s permitted unless prohibited; in the USSR everything’s prohibited including most things permitted. With standing committees everything is prohibited unless permitted (continuity’s the key word); with study committees everything is permitted unless prohibited; ad hoc/action committees do things rather than study them: they can’t adjourn until their job is done. Middle-sized churches need more standing committees, to take the load off the board. Small churches need more ad hoc committees, with authority to act. Large churches need more of all three. Why don’t cows fly? Because that’s not the nature of cows. Don’t expect standing committees to create or implement ideas: they’re cemeteries for ideas. Give half-baked ideas to a study committee to be tidied up. Action committees get things done (they should have 3,5,or 7 people – an odd number). We all tend to project our view of the world on to others. If a new programme is envisaged, create a new committee to get it going if you want new people involved. If a large sum is given to the church, give it to non-trustees to decide its destiny (trustees vote for continuity rather than a new ministry: for ‘trustees’ read whoever are the ‘permission-witholders’ in your church – and every church has ’em!). (2)

In other words, committees are ideas-oriented, process-oriented, or action-oriented. You’d better decide your committee’s purpose before you launch it. Many crises in church structure are crises of objectives, not of organization.

As a general rule, the larger the committee the more cumbersome it is. Committee-people should have sufficient data before the meeting, to pray and make informed decisions. The meeting’s purpose should be clear, and announced early. Always have some sort of agenda, and suggested time-frame. With literate groups, assume the minutes are read: they should be action-oriented, with a column for persons responsible for what to whom by when. Ask the best chairperson to do that job: he/she will have integrity (ie. not a manipulator), will be an amateur psychologist (people have all sorts of agendas other than those spoken), will move things along, firmly control ‘talk machines’ and ‘suggestion squelchers’, delegate work to people between meetings (or encourage not meeting at all if there are insufficient reasons), and lead the committee to ‘own’ their work (rather than be a rubber-stamp of someone else’s). Have some sort of evaluation of your meetings: say ten minutes at the end. You’ll be surprised how open people are in assessing what’s going on.

Jacques Ellul has a sober word to say about obligatory prayer at the opening of business meetings of the church: ‘The intention is good…[but they can in reality be] purely formal prayers to cover the mediocrity of our decisions. They are a kind of official prayer, which allows us afterward to manage according to our own ideas… without giving God the slightest chance to express his will. Such prayers can be] an affront to the honour of God.’ (3) Let us take note!

A final word on committees: beware the ‘mythology of achievement’, ie. the belief that once you’ve talked about something you have done something!

By the way, back to the colour of the church restrooms: never discuss things like that in a church meeting! Give the decision to three people whose homes have the best decor.

Discuss: Do a diagnostic test on your church’s committees: what should be done by one person? Are there committees for the right things? Are they the right size? Are people on committees in some sort of spiritual growth context? (2) How well do your people know what’s going on? By what formal or informal channels do they find out? (3) Where are decisions really made in your church (eg. wives of board members, over the farm-fence etc.).