A friend asked me to teach them Robert’s Rules of Order.
Now, for most people that is truly boring! I even find sleep accompanies some of my reading. I have persevered, and am finding that the general idea of RONR (as the insiders affectionately refer to the current edition of Robert’s Rules of Order) applies across the board.
This morning I was looking at Acts 5 in the Bible. There a man by the name of Gamaliel steers a contentious issue through an inflamed gathering. How? By using “executive session”!
In RONR, this is a question of privilege. You can, as a gathering, decide to go ahead with it, or not. In this case, asking others to leave the room and chatting amongst each other without outside pressure helped quell the riot that could have broken out.
Interestingly, Gamaliel was a member of the minority party in the gathering. Because of his reputation and understanding of parliamentary rules, he was able to get the group to reconsider an action – or more properly, consider a thoughtful action.
So, I laughed. Robert’s Rules of Order in action, back in the old days!! I guess we’d better all pull out that musty book and read it over again 🙂
Quite frankly I have never heard of this before !! It is all Dutch to me !!
Actually, Roberts was an army officer in the United States. He wanted to have meetings with his people that didn’t end up in war (OK, that may be an extreme way of putting it!). So, he found some ways to make sure meetings worked. His rules are used extensively in United States and Canada and around the world. I used them to moderate the Assembly of the Alliance in Canada.
Lots of fun – but they can be a bit boring!