April 30, 2010
Sent on a Mission
As Executive Board members, I and another woman were asked to attend a meeting of one of the sub-committees. We quickly learned that we had entered a hostile environment and that we were not the first board members to be attacked at these meetings. In a subsequent meeting the Executive Board was told by a committee representative, “We want you to send a Board representative to our next meeting…but don’t send any of those people who’ve already come before.” Obviously the representative was hoping to keep going through Board members until he found one who would take up their cause. I’m reminded of the Parable of the Talents. At harvest time the landowner sent some of his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third.” (Matt 21:33-40 NIV) I certainly wouldn’t encourage any of the other Board members to attend those committee meetings…I know what happened to the landowners son.
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Gail;
-----If I understand procedures properly, an executive board is responsible for appointing committee members and has the authority to remove them as well. The owner of the vineyard will do that very thing, when He comes. For reasons known to Him, He will choose the appropriate time for the action. But its timing is also a part of His autonomy. He works it for His purpose.
-----Whether benignly or maliciously, the vineyard tenants misunderstood the nature of their situation. The lease indeed gave them the right to act autonomously with the vineyard and profit from their actions. That is one of the purposes of a lease. But the other purpose is for them to profit the lessor, who also acts with the twin purposes of profiting himself and his lessees. So both parties to a lease act autonomously for their own profits and mutually for the profit of the other.
-----Of course, an executive board and its sub-committee do not act for their own profit, nor for the profit of each other. They act for the profit of those whom the organization serves. In your case, they serve the citizens of the city. If there is any profiting occurring on the part of either the board or the sub-committee, and the board remains complaisant, then it is for the citizens to exercise their autonomy by coming and removing them.
-----For ultimately, the situation is the responsibility of the citizens. If they do nothing, they have no excuse and deserve the loss they will suffer. If they complain about not knowing of the malfeasance, then they should not have been doing business with any watchers whom they trusted. If they complain about having no community consensus for action, then they should have been more mutual in their relationships with each other, more logical in their conversations, and less tolerant of irrational thinking.
-----Community and responsibility are complex. If any one person, or group of people, are responsible for community, then the risk of tyrannical abuse skyrockets. If everyone in the community is responsible for it, then the risk of impasse mushrooms. Every person in a community of personal freedom must not use that freedom for only personal gain. But realizing he is somewhat like the tenant of the vineyard, he must be his own watcher and assure that his actions are mutually benefiting his neighbors.
-----After the formation of our government, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government they had given us. He responded, “We have given you a democratic republic, if you can keep it.” Another one of those dead white guys (if you would allow me the terminology of irrational ideas we have tolerated) said our constitution would serve only a moral and religious people. Having had our morals and religion conquered and divided by the progressive tenants to whom we have lent our social institutions, is there any hope of turning them out of the vineyard? I think there is. But it is not at the ballot box alone. It is even more in the integrity of each heart abiding in good sense and speaking with a rational mind. Until we require that of one another, the sheep will remain too scattered to restore what has been destroyed. Read Malachi 3:16.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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