Is group decision making possible?

From Fixing Problems to Corporate Discernment:

When something feels painful, disappointing, or uncertain in church life, most of us respond in a very normal way: we try to solve it. We want to name the problem, find the solution, and move forward, because discomfort creates urgency, and urgency makes quick answers feel responsible.

So strategic conversations often follow a simple pattern: (a) here is the problem, and (b) here is the solution. That is not foolish—it’s human. It’s how we deal with problems everywhere else in life.

But church decisions are rarely that simple, because what we call “the problem” is almost never neutral.

Why problem–solution thinking breaks down

The first issue is that everyone’s experience is subjective, which means people can look at the same situation and feel completely different things—concern, grief, frustration, hope, fear—depending on their story, their role, and what they care about.

And under that subjectivity sits something even more important: behind every “problem” is an expectation that is not being met. Those expectations usually come from past experience (“church used to be like this”), and from values that are often implicit (“a healthy church should feel like this”), and because those values are often unspoken, people can sound like they are arguing about facts when they are really arguing about different pictures of what church should be.

That’s why problem–solution conversations often go nowhere. People spend most of their energy fighting over what we should do, while they have never built a shared understanding of where we are, or where we believe Jesus is leading us.

A clearer framework for discernment: A ? B ? C

Corporate discernment is not best framed as problem ? solution, but as three slower and deeper questions:

A) Where are we now?

This means more than naming what feels uncomfortable. It includes the external context we are in, who we actually are as a people, what our real capacity is (spiritually, emotionally, financially, relationally), what history has led us to this point (including both wounds and faithfulness), and what we can see of what God has been doing among us.

B) Where are we going?

This is about vision shaped by values, meaning a shared understanding of what faithfulness looks like and what we believe God is asking of us. This is not just preference or ambition; it is an attempt to name what it would look like to follow Jesus together in this time and place.

C) Therefore, what should we be doing?

Only once A and B are clearer does strategy make sense, because “what we do” should move us from where we are toward where God is calling us, and it should align with the values we claim to be living from.

Here is the key diagnostic insight: the problem ? solution model is usually based on a partial understanding of A (mostly focused on discomfort), it is driven by an implicit and underdeveloped B (unstated expectations of where we should be), and it spends almost all its energy on C (what we should do). In other words, we often rush to action while the deeper assumptions remain unnamed.

Why this matters especially in Baptist churches

In a Baptist governance model, the church isn’t meant to function like a hierarchy where direction is handed down, and it isn’t meant to function like a collection of individual preferences either. We claim something more demanding: that together, under Jesus, we seek the mind of Christ.

That means corporate discernment is not optional. It is part of what it means to be a Baptist church. But for that to be more than a nice phrase, we have to do the work of building shared understanding:

• A shared understanding of where we are now
• A shared understanding of our values and vision—where Jesus is asking us to go
• A shared understanding of what matters now—what should be focused on next

In this framework, the “real problems” are not simply whatever feels painful in the moment. The real problems are whatever is not leading us toward the future God has for us, or wherever we are not operating from our stated values.

The practical move when questions arise: slow down and trace the question

This has a very practical implication: when strategic questions arise, we need to slow down and discern where the questions are coming from. Before we debate solutions, we should ask, “What has generated this question? What pain, expectation, value, or story is underneath it?”

This is where feelings matter. Feelings don’t determine truth, but they are real, and they often reveal what a person believes is at stake.

Personal needs: valid and invalid

Discernment is complicated because people are complicated, and each of us carries both valid and invalid personal needs into leadership conversations.

Valid needs include needs for rest, to be listened to and loved, for food and stability, to make a meaningful contribution, and to express creativity. These are human needs and they should not be dismissed as weakness.

But we also carry invalid needs that are often unconscious and shaped by past painful experiences, and these frequently surface around power and influence. When the central question becomes “am I being listened to?” rather than “are we following Jesus?”, it is often a sign that these deeper needs are being triggered.

This is delicate, because we must be careful: it is easy to explain someone else’s pain as “their issues,” while treating our own pain as a pure reflection of reality. So we need humility and maturity, not amateur psychology.

One important aspect of spiritual maturity is being able to discern within ourselves where our pain is coming from, so that pain rooted in our history doesn’t quietly set the agenda of our life or the church, while pain that comes from a real recognition that important values are missing is taken seriously.

Cultural values shape us as well

There is one more layer: even when personal needs are not driving the conversation, the values of the world can still shape how we see and what we want, often without us realising it.

The world defines “success,” “health,” and “progress” in ways that often differ from the values of the Kingdom of God, and the church growth movement showed that it can be easier to grow a church when the church aligns its values more closely with the values of the world. That may produce quick wins, but it can also quietly reshape what we think we are aiming for.

So discernment must include this question: Is my interpretation being shaped by Kingdom values or by cultural values that I’ve absorbed without noticing?

Because none of us sees the whole truth, we need reality checks

Another essential part of your model is this: none of us can be completely sure we are seeing truth, which is why we need corporate discernment in the first place.

Each person brings a partial view of A and B, and even if everyone in the group represented reality as they see it perfectly, the group would still not be seeing everything. That’s why it is wise and humble to intentionally reach beyond personal perception by using history, statistics, surveys, and other forms of data—not as replacements for the Spirit, but as tools that help us see what we would otherwise miss.

Listening prayer is not optional

And we must explicitly invite God into this process, not as a quick “opening prayer,” but through genuine listening prayer, where we ask God to speak into our understanding of where we are and where we are going, and where we are willing to have our assumptions challenged.

Discernment must happen in every issue

Over time, the task of a leadership group is to build a shared understanding of A and B so that C becomes clearer and less reactive. This actually happens in every conversation already, because every conversation contains assumptions about where we are and where we should be going, but it needs to be named explicitly—especially when assumptions are unspoken.

A simple ongoing habit is to ask, in every significant issue:

• A) What are our assumptions about where we are?
• B) What is our sense of where we are going?
• C) Therefore, what should we be doing?

As this becomes a habit, the group becomes more able to discern personal needs, cultural assumptions, and gaps between actions and values. Initially this takes a lot of time, but as a leadership group learns this way of thinking—and learns to invite God to influence the process—the discernment becomes easier and more natural.

It never becomes effortless, because people are complex and reality keeps changing, but it becomes more faithful, less reactive, and more deeply aligned with Jesus.

HERE is a worksheet we are using to think through complex questions.