Church Minutes

Statistics, as they say, are a lot like bikinis. What they show is important, and what they hide is even more important.

The same could be said for church minutes.

I’ve spent a great deal of time in the last few weeks working through the minutes from the past nine years of business meetings at Pecan Grove. They show the barest outline of the conflicts and confrontations which have shaped the community of faith during this decade.

Reading church minutes is up there with reading food labels and graduate papers as pastimes that induce narcolepsy. But going through the minutes with the Transition Team has added a lot of background and color and texture to the minutes. (As well as filling in the gaps!).

The record of the minutes don’t lie. They allow us to pinpoint different times when various conflicts began. Reading through the minutes, we’ve seen the missteps emerge in black and white. What also tend to emerge are patterns for dealing with conflict and disagreements. At times these patterns play out and repeat over decades.

So reading minutes are a dull, dreary process…but a process that can be quite revealing.