{"id":486,"date":"2006-05-02T23:08:45","date_gmt":"2006-05-02T23:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2006\/05\/its_decided.shtml"},"modified":"2021-05-29T02:46:46","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T02:46:46","slug":"its_decided","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2006\/05\/its_decided.shtml","title":{"rendered":"It’s Decided"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, it is decided. After over a month of deliberate, open dialog, the Columbus Church of Christ will sign the unity proposal. While I am sad and disappointed in that decision, the process that lead to it tempers my emotions quite a lot.
\nWe began with a discussion at our leaders meeting back on April 2nd. Nearly all of the family group leaders and others present had read the proposal and we simply went around the room expressing our thoughts. I was surprised that most people at that meeting had some level of reservation or concern with it. The reasons for concern and the level of it varied, but based on what I heard at that first meeting, it seemed that there was not a majority of support for the agreement.
\nNext, we asked the membership to read it and we had a discussion at our house church midweeks on the 12th. Then, the leaders came back together on the 23rd for a little more discussion and a ‘vote’. It was not a simple yes or no vote, but what’s called a Likert Scale<\/a> question. The question was:<\/p>\n

Are you in favor of signing the Unity Proposal?
\n+2 -Strongly in favor
\n+1 – In favor
\n0 – neither in favor or not in favor
\n-1 – Not in favor
\n-2 – Strongly not in favor<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The idea was to capture the strength of opinion as well as the simple yes or no. This process was then repeated at our congregational midweek on the 26th.
\nThe results were that more people wanted to sign than did not. For the leadership group, close to 2\/3 were in favor, about 1\/4 not and the rest neutral. Those not in favor had a stronger feeling than those in favor, but the result was an average of about +.54.
\nFor the congregation (without leadership), about half were in favor, slightly under a third neutral and the rest not in favor. Again, those not in favor tended to feel slightly more strongly about it, with a resulting average of +.41. The goal of polling the congregation was note to have a democratic vote on what to do, but to get the pulse of the church, to give everyone a chance to be heard (2 chances, actually) and to make sure that the leadership’s consensus & decision was not out of line from the church as a whole.
\nCombined then it was a little more than half for, a little more than a fourth neutral and the rest against. The overall average was +.45.
\nAnd so we sign, I think the email went out today. Am I disappointed? Yes and no. Yes, because I had hoped for more, I had wished that we could somehow rise above this. It seems that we aren’t there yet and that makes me sad. Perhaps I should instead be sad that we as people<\/em> continue to fail to rise above these sort of things.
\nBut I am not sad about how we went about this. Everyone who wanted to be heard was heard. We stopped the process when just one of us needed to pause to collect his emotions (You’ll never guess who. More on that later). We did not find agreement, but we reached a consensus. I know ther are ways that we could have perhaps done better, but not much.
\nAs our minister has said this is not the end of our striving for unity. It wasn’t really the beginning either, just a step on the road. It was potentially a perilous one, and even if I don’t like the result, I think we handled it well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, it is decided. After over a month of deliberate, open dialog, the Columbus Church of Christ will sign the unity proposal. While I am sad and disappointed in thatRead More It’s Decided<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nIt's Decided - salguod.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2006\/05\/its_decided.shtml\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It's Decided - salguod.net\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Well, it is decided. 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It was a very fruitful and encouraging time. I'll answer your first question right off the bat: I don't know if we will sign or not, and it would be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "God and Church"","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":456,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2006\/03\/unity_proposal.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":486,"position":1},"title":"Unity Proposal","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"March 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, the ICOC Unity Proposal Group has gotten their work done. The proposal has been drafted and is complete. Unfortunately, you can't see it yet. (EDIT: I guess it came out today, 2 days earlier than intended but still several days after some recieved it.) It was sent out to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "God and Church"","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":461,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2006\/03\/what_if.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":486,"position":2},"title":"What If …","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"March 23, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Please keep in mind that I'm still having issues with the site. Your comment will likely generate an error page, but it should go through. Please hit back and refresh to check before re-submitting your comment (you might want to compsose your words in another program so they aren't lost).\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "God and Church"","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":144,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2004\/05\/a_new_era_for_t.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":486,"position":3},"title":"A New Era For the Columbus COC?","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"May 30, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Monday night was a monumental night, or at least it could have been. Time will tell. The deacons of the Columbus Church of Christ (myself included) met with the evangelist to discuss the state of the church and its future direction. Decisions were made that will effect the lives of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "God and Church"","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":406,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/11\/coming_full_cir_1.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":486,"position":4},"title":"Coming Full Circle","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"November 14, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Long term readers of this blog (both of you) might remember this post from back in May of 2004:Monday night was a monumental night, or at least it could have been. Time will tell. The deacons of the Columbus Church of Christ (myself included) met with the evangelist to discuss\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "God and Church"","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":381,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/09\/responses_1.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":486,"position":5},"title":"Responses","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"September 5, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, the church leaderships are responding to Kip, to the LA proposal or both toghether. So far, only one has signed onto the LA proposal (more on that later.) I must say, overall I am encouraged. What I feared might become a landslide into the past does not seem to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "God and Church"","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1787,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions\/1787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}