Quaker decision-making, in the sense of collective
discernment, is one of the most consistent elements of Quaker
practice among the worldwide family of Friends. Waiting on the Spirit
for guidance and taking decisions based on the leadings that that
Spirit brings out of silence is an amazing expression of faith, of
trust in the process and in whatever-it-is that you believe gives us
those leadings.
However, there are variations in the practice,
related to different communities and traditions, or to do with the
circumstances of the discernment. One major factor for this is the
size of the group. If you're dealing with a group from around a dozen
to several dozen, it's all much of a muchness – the basic
principles and common expectations work in most such cases, like
leaving silence between contributions, the structure of business
items, and the clear expectation that each Friend minister at most
once. However, with much larger groups, or with smaller groups,
things can't easily work in exactly the same way. In those cases, you
need to vary practices and expectations slightly, while maintaining
the principles that underlie them.
In this post, I will be sharing some of my
thoughts, largely based on experience, on small group discernment.
This is especially useful for committees, when they are taking
decisions by discernment rather than discussion (I tend to think a
lot of committee work can be more effectively conducted by
discussion, though by no means all of it – but that is a subject
for a future post). However, it's also relevant to smaller Meetings,
who may simply not get more than half a dozen or so people at a
business meeting – and for whom the burden of expectations of the
usual conventions of Quaker Business Method may become a barrier to
effective working.
