Two meeting assemblies, one vote

[Guest Gary Williams]

Our church has two morning services and the church votes occur at each service. Discussion occurs on the previous Wednesday. Can substitution motions or amended motions be made are either service? Can a vote proceed knowing the other service also needs to address? With the Avnet of many churches having two services, how is this being addressed?

[Timothy]

Interesting. Our church has looked at going to multiple services and found many reasons not to do so. This was not one that we considered. But our business meeting occurs after a Sunday evening service. Even if we doubled the attendance at the business meeting, we would have plenty of seating.

 

I believe that what you are trying to do violates some of the fundamental principles of parliamentary law. On page 1 of RONR it states concerning a deliberative assembly, "The group meets in a single room or area or under equivalent conditions of opportunity for simultaneous aural communication among all participants."

 

Attempting to split a meeting across three services with different people in each one does not qualify as "equivalent conditions" because one service can't talk to the people in another service.  However, if you eliminated the voting in the morning services an did everything in the Wednesday service, even though your turnout might be significantly less, the actions taken would be binding.

[Chris Harrison]

This article discusses Shift Meetings.

Shift Meetings.pdf

[Timothy]

The Multi-cameral Assemblies that Jonathan Jacobs discusses in his article are an interesting concept, but it isn't a method handled by RONR and implementing such a meeting requires not only bylaw changes but overhead that churches usually don't deal with. Unlike unions, where the shift a member works dictates which meeting he attends, churches welcome their members in all services, even if they sat through the sermon once before. For business to be transacted, it would be necessary for some form of registration to take place before people could vote. Otherwise, a member could vote more than once, just by attending each service. The image of members lining up to get their credentials is not the kind of thing you want visitors in the services to get stuck in their heads.

 

But without credentials, consider what happens if a disgruntled member opposes a motion that was passed in one service (A). He can go to service B and convince them to amend the motion. Even if they also approve the motion, it would now have to go back to service A, where the man could once again offer an amendment. 

[Edgar Guest]

It's probably best not to combine the meeting of a deliberative assembly with a religious service. Render unto Allah that which is Allah's  . . . and unto Robert that which is Robert's.

[Gary Novosielski]

You might also  consider holding the business meetings between services--if necessary, ending the early service early and beginning the later service later.