Interminable Meetings and the Liberating Gospel

Japanese people seem to revel in meetings. You see it every day on television: company board meetings, special taskforce meetings, cabinet meetings, local community group meetings. An Australian friend said that one downside of his job as an overseas student coordinator at a Japanese university was the lengthy meetings at which seemingly unimportant details were discussed in depth.

Typical comments by Westerners working in Japan include, “Meetings are unproductive, inefficient, always painstaking, even for the most trivial of subjects, and there are lots of them”; “If there was a single bit of a doubt regarding the minutest of details on a proposal, it would be dissected, analyzed, and reviewed over and over again until every imaginable alternative had been exhausted”; and “I regularly have to sit in meetings that were initially scheduled for only one hour but drag on for two hours. In most cases at the end of two hours there have still been no conclusions or outlines to direct future activities.”¹

As shown below, meetings in Japan do have many commendable aspects that Westerners can learn from, but the fact remains that Westerners generally struggle with the frequency, length and scope of Japanese meetings.

Our experience: Church in Australia vs. in Japan

Not surprisingly, this aspect of Japanese culture finds expression in many churches. One of the greatest differences between the church my wife and I went to in Australia and the one we go to in Japan is the frequency of organisational meetings (as opposed to worship services, prayer meetings and small groups). In that respect they were polar opposites. The Australian church hardly ever had any organisational meetings — even its annual general meeting was a brief ten-minute affair. In contrast, our Japanese church often holds multiple meetings each Sunday, some of which run for a couple of hours or longer.

My wife (who is Japanese) has first-hand experience of this. Two years ago, our Japanese church formed a seven-person committee in September to plan that year’s Christmas program. Each small group was asked to nominate one person to serve on the committee. In my group, no-one initially volunteered (probably because they knew what was involved) and there followed a long and painful process where we discussed who would be the best person to serve. Fortunately, I was let off the hook because of other commitments, but my wife was not so lucky — she was nominated by her group.

In the lead-up to Christmas, five committee meetings were held, each lasting between one to two hours. In these meetings, the logistics of the program were discussed down to the finest details. Since there were three Christmas events (a concert, a candlelight service and a fellowship lunch), it was decided to assign two committee members to each event. But this did not simplify the planning process, as it was still necessary for the committee as a whole to discuss all three events. There was even a sixth ‘post-mortem’ meeting to review how things had gone and suggest improvements for the following year.

In total about 60 man-hours went into planning events that lasted for approximately 6 hours. After our experience in Australia, it struck us as overkill, but to other church members it was par for the course. (This process reflected our experience during our first year at the church; fortunately, the frequency of meetings has decreased considerably since then.)

The Trellis and the Vine

Clearly, both ways have advantages and disadvantages. The Japanese way means that events are very well planned and every eventuality is considered. As Proverbs says, “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed” (15:22, ESV). And “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (11:14).

But there is a cost involved. Church members often have to rush from one meeting to another and sometimes they don’t even have a chance to eat lunch. Opportunities for deeper fellowship are lost and visitors to the church may get overlooked in the busyness. Furthermore, many members who have to work crazy hours during the week get little respite on Sundays.

I find the thesis of the book “The Trellis and the Vine”² helpful. Using an analogy of tending a vine growing on a trellis, the authors distinguish between two forms of ministry: trellis work and vine work. Trellis work is activities necessary to keep structures in place and things operating smoothly. It includes things like setting out chairs, operating the projector, and making coffee. Vine work, on the other hand, is the ‘real’ work of speaking God’s Word to others. It includes activities such as giving the message on Sunday, singing praise songs, meeting up with a church member for a coffee, and doing a Bible study. The authors of the book believe that churches should seek to maximize vine work while doing just enough trellis work to ensure that the vine is adequately supported.

The Gospel confronts both cultures

But could this be a case of cultural imperialism? By advocating fewer and shorter meetings, could Westerners be accused of imposing our ways of doing church on Japanese churches? This is a legitimate concern. To avoid this danger, we need to understand both the dynamics behind the Japanese propensity to hold meetings and the ways in which the Gospel impacts culture in this area. While I don’t fully comprehend either, I have a few ideas regarding them.

Japanese clearly value careful planning, especially when inviting outsiders to participate in special events. This is something Australians with their relaxed “she’ll be right” mentality (it will be okay) could learn from. I also think it is very important to make decisions with the consensus of the whole group in Japan. This contrasts with our individualistic way of doing things in the West. If only a few select people were to make decisions in a Japanese group, it might endanger the harmony of the group. Thus, large meetings are necessary to ensure that everyone has an equal say on how things are run.

While this ensures that many different viewpoints are considered, it can make it very hard to make decisions. I recently heard of a progressive Japanese university that had dispensed with faculty meetings because it would often take many months to obtain approval to do things like hiring foreign researchers.

The Gospel simultaneously confronts our Western individualism and the Japanese need for everyone to have a say in each decision. In the West, the Gospel sets us free from our individual agendas and allows us to serve the community self-sacrificially. In Japan, the love generated by the Gospel provides the glue that holds the group together, allowing the group to entrust responsibilities to individuals and thereby reduce the need to hold long meetings.

I would love to hear about readers’ experiences of meetings in a Japanese context and thoughts on how the Gospel impacts church meetings. Please write to me at docsimple111@gmail.com. 

¹ http://www.japantoday.com/category/opinions/view/japanese-company-meetings-getting-by-at-the-table
² Colin Marshall and Tony Payne “The Trellis and the Vine” Matthias Media (2009).