Out of silence: the practice of congregational discernment

Christian Century, April 3, 2007 by Amy Johnson Frykholm

I HAD AGREED, along with 11 other people from my congregation, to attend a program on congregational discernment, but I was not looking forward to it. I was skeptical of the diocese's ability to teach a nonbureaucratic method of reaching decisions, and I was also skeptical about our group's ability to discern anything. Few of us could have defined the word discernment, and none of us had any idea what we were in for.

Congregational discernment is a vague phrase, and yet it is one gaining a foothold in many churches. The concept is shaping concrete practices, such as the way Presbyterian churches have sought to work through controversies over sexuality; the deliberative procedures adopted by the World Council of Churches; and the decision-making styles of many congregations. Two specific practices ground discernment: silence and the use of consensus in decision making.

The training my group was to undergo was developed by Catherine Tran. Like many of the practices being adopted by congregations nationwide, Tran's approach has roots in both Quaker traditions of corporate discernment and Catholic models of spiritual direction. Both models rely heavily on prayer and silence and emphasize pondering questions over time. While much of this method may seem like common sense--what congregation doesn't pray?--few congregations apply silence and contemplation to matters of church business.

Our session focused on learning how to help a person discern a call to ministry (the procedure can be used for other church issues, such as deciding what hymnal to use in worship). As we gathered in a circle on folding chairs, the trainer passed out folders. Inside each was a half-sheet of blue paper. "This is the heart of the discernment process," she told us, "and today we are simply going to practice it."

The blue sheet outlined a procedure for silence and speaking. One person played the role of the candidate for ordination who was seeking to discern a call. Three people were designated as responders and the rest of us were assigned the role of "compassionate observers."

Over about 30 minutes we were silent together, and then various people were offered opportunities to speak and to respond. What emerged from the silence and the listening was something strikingly different from our normal conversation. By punctuating our communication with silence, we were stripped of the desire to offer advice or jump in with stories from our own experience. By staying intentionally silent between remarks, we found ourselves offering words and images that came up from another, seemingly deeper place.

The landscape into which we entered in this conversation was something more like a dreamscape than I had anticipated. Incongruent words and images emerged and then retreated without announcing their precise intentions. There was no linear movement toward resolution, and yet as the silence drew to a close and we moved back into more ordinary conversation, we had a sense of having built a deeper intimacy.

Over the past ten years, First United Methodist Church of Bixby, Oklahoma, has transformed its way of doing church business by using models for spiritual discernment. The church's councils work by consensus, and contemplative silence and prayer punctuate church meetings.

Pastor Jessica Moffatt Seay was frustrated by the way the traditional patterns of church business often meant that the most animated and substantive conversations took place in the parking lot--after a vote had been taken. She wondered how she might generate a deeper and richer conversation--including richer disagreement--during meetings.

Meanwhile, her church was experiencing a growth spurt, which raised issues regarding space, Sunday school and worship preferences. When Seay gathered a small group to consider the problem of space she simultaneously happened upon models for spiritual discernment. The group practiced silence and prayer together using a model developed by retired United Methodist bishop David Lawson.

Among the most significant things to emerge from that experiment, Seay said, was that the people showed more humility toward one another and seemed more open to the idea that the voice of God might come from someone else's mouth. Then what Seay called the miraculous started happening. Land was donated to the church. The discernment group heard a call to build a retirement community, and from its clear vision came fast and furious activity. Over time, the practices learned by that small group were adapted for the administrative council and brought to other committees of the church.

"We went from being a group of people talking about our opinions, feasibility studies and surveys to being a church that got quiet to listen to God in prayer and looked for the voice of God in others, in humility," said Seay. "We started doing business differently."

That difference has taken a great deal of time to enact, and Seay says that not every decision merits using a discernment model. But members of the congregation have learned to identify issues that might require periods of deeper reflection. Instead of asking for a vote, committee chairs may ask, "Have we reached a conclusion or do we need to talk longer?" Instead of starting a debate, committee members may say, "This feels like an issue that requires discernment."