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For years church leaders have been looking for ways of conducting church business other than by parliamentary procedure. The politics of voting resolutions up or down, and the practice of following the routines of Robert’s Rules of Order, tends to divide people into winners and losers. Is there another way?

The Central Committee of the World Council of Churches decided that there is. It resolved in September to implement a set of rules to govern the organization by consensus. The aim is to seek “the common mind of a meeting without deciding issues by means of voting.”