How do you grow a spirited organization from 15 experienced, audacious, and enthusiastic pastoral professionals who come from the same culture, to an international ministry of qualified certification and accreditation serving over 1100 pastoral care professionals who represent a broad range of cultures, countries, races, ages, genders, sexual orientations and religious traditions? Certainly not by majority vote.
In his article included in this issue of the Pastoral Report, Ed Outlaw himself affirms that this phenomenal growth and development has indeed been the journey of the CPSP in the past 25 years. However, he does not recognize that the answer to the question above includes credit to our consensus model of decision making. The emphasis on consensus has allowed for great diversity of opinion without necessarily dividing the body or excluding the growth of participants. Outlaw claims to represent people who do not like those who promote consensus or the decisions that have come out of consensus; the promotion of majority voting is seen as a way to obtain a different outcome, not an ethically superior process. Since Outlaw himself has regularly participated in consensus governance in the CPSP for decades, he well knows that he is being misleading when he contends that the CPSP has no representative form of governance and that only a few people are in charge of the CPSP and its mission.
When Outlaw requested that his comments be published in the Pastoral Report, he demanded that they not be edited or abridged in any way. In this case, our community deserves to critically evaluate his assertions as he presents them, without any editing, knowing that the Leadership Team of the CPSP takes issue with his statements. Although Outlaw did not refer to him by name, George Hull was the author of the article Outlaw criticized. Hull was entirely correct in stressing that "Removing consensus decision making would radically change the very nature of who we are in CPSP."
Consensus is not in opposition to democracy or good order. Consensus operates on a different plane and seeks decisions based on a full expression of opinion and differences, and the determination to then entertain the needs of one another, not one side versus another. Openly, and often with deliberate patience, our representative process of consensus achieves the decisions for our organization, whether at the level of the local Chapter, the Governing Council, or the Leadership Team. The issue for Outlaw is that he wants results that differ from what has emerged from consensus. He says nothing about concern for what is important to those with whom he disagrees, which makes his exaltation of Robert’s Rules of Order especially disturbing. By definition, the use of RRO presumes an oppositional process in which one side, the majority, has the right to rule the other. One provision of RRO even calls for a voice vote in what is called a “motion to divide the house”, a notion and procedure that are anathema to the spirit of the CPSP.
Several of us on the Leadership Team have been committed to the CPSP since 1989-1990, in part because of the brilliance and mature value of consensus decision making, and we have experienced the same history that Outlaw has experienced. There is no claim to perfection in the CPSP, nor does the consensus model promise perfect outcomes. But consensus makes room for the extraordinary growth and variety of persons and ministries in the CPSP that reflect differing and expanding opinions and visions about the needs of God’s people. That is the very growth in outreach, clinical integrity, and personal commitment that we seek in the future. Yes, the future of the CPSP is not jeopardized by consensus but will rely on continued use and increasing appreciation of consensus, no matter what forms of distraction and obfuscation Outlaw attempts; his premises are simply wrong.
Consensus brings with it the conviction that we are all on the same journey both during and after decisions are made. Consensus leaves little room for persons to be destructively oppositional, while requiring each of us to tolerate a few ambiguities. Consensus can be a little unsettling at times, but whatever may be unresolved in any moment is not a cause for dissension but an opportunity for more creative engagement. 25 years ago, the CPSP was an experiment in community building, as well as a new model for the certification of qualified clinical pastoral professionals and the accreditation of their training of others. That experiment has thrived because of a decision to implement consensus as a path to the greater good of all of us. To that we must continue to aspire.
William Scar, CPSP Diplomate
For the CPSP Leadership Team
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William Scar, CPSP Diplomate
GoodSamCtr@aol.com