Last Friday in Foundiougne

Last Friday, I had the privilege to facilitate a retreat for the national Church Council of the ELS—the Lutheran Church of Senegal. This new council was just elected in March, and with the exception of the General Secretary and the Treasurer and one elected member, the entire council was new.  The new ELS President, Pastor Abdou Thiam, decided that the group needed to get away to Foundiougne for the day away—without an agenda of church “business”—in order to do group building, bible study, prayer, and discernment of what exactly their work together would be and how exactly they’d do it.

As the one non-council member along for the ride, I was able to make some observations, some of which really struck me as important and impressive:

1.    The Church Council had a retreat. I’m not sure if it was the first, but it was certainly the first in a long time.  To me, the medium was the message: the fact that this group got away simply in order to be together, without work to do, per se, but to work on how they’d eventually do their work, the magnitude of this cannot be overstated.

2.    It’s a young group. One of the communication exercises we did began with the group simply getting themselves into a line by birth date, with the oldest on the left and the youngest on the right. When I put myself into the group, I was second from the left—the second oldest in the group. Now, I know I’m not as young as I used to be, but would a person still three and a half months shy of his 45th birthday be the second youngest in many ELCA parish councils, or in the ELCA Churchwide Council? I doubt it.

3.    It’s a group with visionary leaders and participating members. Often with such groups as church councils, the newcomers hold back and watch the others before deciding how to enter into conversations. That probably can’t be the case when 7 of the 10 are new. But everybody entered in, and far from dominating, the President invited comments at every turn.

4.    People appreciated the concept of a council retreat, so much so that they said they needed to do it again. More than that, the ten all agreed to start contributing to a retreat fund—money withheld from their check if they were church employees, or collected from them each month if they weren’t—to make sure they could get away once or twice a year. They understood the financing of the church, that there was not “extra” money in the budget to do this more than once a year, so they chipped in themselves for a second or even third retreat per year.

The following Wednesday, I was able to sit in on the council’s first business meeting. It would be great to say that there were no glitches, no communication problems, and that the agenda was followed succinctly, with everything dealt with in an hour and a half. That was not the case. But, everyone of the ten members were on time, each person raised his or her voice and entered into the conversations, and a comfortable, respectful, engaged and participatory group process held sway for the entire time this group was together.

I know this is just one down, many more to go. But I am hopeful that this council set a high standard for those who follow; I’m hopeful that they will be an example to the whole church of how to serve and lead at the same time.

Easter Hope and Expectation,
Peter

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