A Fine Way of Meeting

El Padre singing with the men's choir.

There’s been a sudden change in the men’s fellowship group that I find quite interesting. I’ve been regularly attending the men’s fellowship group of our local church for over a year now and have found them quite welcoming of my participation. Occasionally they’ll translate an important announcement for me and occasionally I feel like I understand everything they’re discussing in their own language. Most of the time there is some kind of teaching from the Bible and discussion, followed by practicing singing the song they will do in church the next day, and then any news or prayer requests from their families. Things changed a few weeks ago though, after there was a national men’s fellowship group conference to try to stimulate more of these groups in churches. More emphasis is now put on the importance of this group, so now there are about 12 men who attend regularly, doubling the size of the group with just about all the married men in the congregation. 

The other change is that the elected “treasurer” of the group has started keeping track of not only the dues owed per month, but also of people’s attendance, and late arrivals. If you arrive late, you have to pay about $0.50, and you’re fined more for unexcused absences (which is a decent amount of money here). This is not surprising because I know that the Youth fellowship group and the Women’s fellowship group already do these sorts of fines, and I suspect that other non-religious organizations might as well. It made me think about what if we ran meetings in US churches with this level of urgency that people attend and are on time? It has made me work a little harder to be on time the last couple weeks, but I wonder if the diligence will fall off soon and they'll stop keeping so close a watch. I do think it communicates well that they want to be serious about meeting regularly together and serious about respecting the time limits for everyone. Most of the church committees that I’ve been on would probably feel like this is overboard, but I wonder if maybe this was the same seriousness that people had in the 1950s church in the US? Or does it just show a commitment to process and institutionalism, which I think is part of the French influence on organizations here, which was also more prevalent in the US 60 some years ago?

-- El Padre