Categories: uncategorized
Date: 05 November 2007 07:14:11
Union membership is falling, church membership is falling, membership generally is falling and within these organisations there seems to be a fading understanding of the art of crafting motions or proposals. Some, perhaps rightly, question whether membership is still a useful concept or whether we need to form new types of being associated.
My personal view is that as organisations what we need to do is take the lead from schools and put forward some kind of practical citizenship programme to explain to people what the purpose of membership is, how meetings work and how change is actually achieved. Within churches this would obviously take a theological aswell as practical approach.
The end result might well be that we get beyond frothy discussions that go round in circles and actually achieve something because the steakholders understand how they are to work in partnership with each other to achieve the goal on their mission statement ;)
Or in plain English people might understand they actually have a role to play in the organisations they are part of and have just as much of a say as anybody else. Oh and in churches it might encourage them to engage brain and bible together.