Bleeding Deacon Seaweed

I'm a bit of a stickler for meeting protocol.  I think that we should be able to say whatever we want in a meeting as long as we're not giving advice directly to another member, avoiding the famous but deadly "cross-talk."  I also think that we should honor the procedural rules that have been established as to how a particular meeting should be run.  For instance, if the format for a particular day is to read out of a particular book then the leader should read out of that book, whether he wants to or not.  I'm also not shy about correcting this when someone else diverts from the format.  Out loud.  In the meeting.  In front of everyone.  Mind you I have absolutely no authority to do this except for the authority that I've given to myself.  This usually goes over reasonably well but not always.

So a few weeks ago I was asked to chair a meeting where we read out of a particular book.  We also have a meeting where the leader gets to select a paragraph out of this particular book that's meaningful to them and then share about that section.  On this particular day, however, we pick up at the spot where we stopped at last week.  The short section we read didn't spark any deep and meaningful thoughts so I went ahead and read the paragraph that I had selected when I still thought the format for the day was Speaker's Choice.  I also made a snide comment about the dry nature of the section I was supposed to talk about.

The first person to share was a woman sitting right next to me.  A friend of mine.   She politely disagreed with my assesment of the quality of the selected text and then proceeded to share her thoughts about it.    The next person followed her example and so did the next and so on and so on.  I finally thought: : "Wow, they're ignoring me and following the format despite my attempts to bend the world to my will."

My face flushed briefly as I realized what was happening.  My Will was being subverted.  As it should have been.  

I got a good lesson on how to handle a Bleeding Deacon that morning.