Dear Abby,

I am a minister in a small American Protestant denomination and I am a member of a Commission in one of its regions. While I love and respect the other members of the Commission, I have a problem.

According to our Constitution the Commission is required to create guidelines for its work that are to be approved by our region’s Administrative Council. Our Commission has been in existence for over eight years and, while one other member of the Commission and I have tried on three occasions to get the Commission to complete this most basic task, still after all these years no guidelines exist.

In the last year we did submit guidelines which were returned to us by the Administrative Council for revision. We resubmitted revised guidelines which were returned again for still further consideration. The leaders of the Commission keep promising to discuss the guidelines but successfully avoid the discussion each time we meet.

The issues that remain are controversial and bring the members into sharp disagreement with each other. A friend of mine (I’ll call him Bill) says that because the Commission leaders are well connected to the Shepherd Mafia that runs the denomination and because they themselves are shepherds that they would rather have our Commission ignore our responsibility to our region and to all its churches and pastors than involve themselves in controversy.

The guy I’m calling Bill says that this obstinate willingness to disregard a clear obligation to our part of the Body of Christ and to make light of the task the region has given us is simply a manifestation of the arrogance of the shepherd dominated leadership culture that has overwhelmed the Western Church. He says that this arrogance is the main reason that our region and whole denomination and all of Christianity in our hemisphere is in decline.

I have two questions for you, Dear Abby.

First, do you disagree with Bill?

Second, what can I do to convince the others on the Commission to take their responsibility to heart?

Signed,

Rev. Righteously Indignant in the Heartland, B. A., M. Div.