By: Curt Gesch

Curt Gesch — Sat, 12 Jan 2019 14:24:40 +0000

Thank you, Mr. Laidlaw, for your comments. Something not perhaps unrelated: The Anglican Church of Canada and the various diocese structures need, in my opinion, an ombudsman (ombudsperson?). The reasons? If the rector runs the meetings and he has taken a vow of obedience to the bishop, the bishop is a sort of final law in the diocese, and the chancellor “works for the bishop,” then how do people even work towards changing structures?

By: John A Laidlaw

John A Laidlaw — Mon, 20 Aug 2018 23:10:34 +0000

Jeffrey: A very interesting way of looking at our councils and committees. Have you tried (as I’m doing, in the back of my mind, even as I write this) pairing this insight up with Northcote Parkinson’s Essays on Administration? I’ve always found them all the more trenchant in their humorous construction, rather like AP Herbert’s fictitious cases in Uncommon Law and others of his. Both writers treat of very serious problems with humor – and make their point memorably, without booting their reader in the butt.
What’s going through my head is Parkinson’s claim that ALL committees tend to lapse into sterility, largely because the people that wind up on the mare very seldom original thinkers, but rather rule-followers, and they tend to recruit like members, Parkinson even gives us a reason for this, in that no-body – even the most divergent thinker – will appoint folk who “rock the boat”. He’ll only appoint those who are more rule-bound than he is, so that, eventually, the committee dissolves into a body that can only function as self-perpetuating, and will have to be stripped of authority until such time as it becomes so inanimate that it expires peacefully.
How to correct this was a matter he didn’t delve into, for correction can come in two ways – one through expiry, and the other when the meta-committee becomes so blind that it cannot see that someone is actually like a time-bomb in the organisation, and it appoints this person, expecting one thing, and discovering, to its horror that he is quite unlike that.
Such a person arrived in the Roman Catholic world in John XXIII. Possibly the same will be true in John Paul II, or in the current Pope – only time will tell. But I do think we need such a person or persons in the Anglican Communion,, among our Lutheran colleagues – in fact, throughout the Church. Truly, God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform!

Comments on: Seeing the fungus through the trees

By: Curt Gesch

By: John A Laidlaw