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Meet the Village Council

Posted Jan 27, 08:27 PM | 0 comments | by Amy Moffitt | Link

“Institutionalization… is the collective equivalent of embodying –we know we’ve learned something when it becomes a part of how we do things.” From Presence by Otto Scharmer

To paraphrase Scharmer, cherishing a network of conversations with the same holistic seriousness that you do the cells of your body means intuitively forming structures.

If you trace the history of Emergent Village, it is similar to your church, or a family, or even an online open source project. At first there are just a few people, and those who know each other are within two degrees of separation. As the network grew, Emergent Village formed into a 501©(3) (non-profit) with a board of directors, who shortly thereafter decided to hire a National Coordinator to manage EV. After 3 years, the Board decided based on feedback to return to open source coordination. Within a year of eliminating the National Coordinator position, the board didn’t know many of the practitioners, the participants in Emergent Village didn’t see simple ways to coordinate, and the only recognizable coordinated efforts were the website plus some various book/speaking tours.

So in May ’09 a bunch of people who had an investment in the future of EV decided to reshape the board of directors into a “council of practitioners”, the Emergent Village Council. At this point, the purpose of the EVC is basically to accomplish the following things:

1)To coordinate the efforts of multiple teams: In some ways, the main job of the EVC is simply to lay out on the table everything happening in various working groups and ask, “What is syncing up? What is jamming up? Who can use help here or there? What is this team thinking of that we can get on the front burner of this other team?”

2)The second reason for the counsel is even more pragmatic. Like any other board of directors, the EVC is tasked with the job of finding out where the bills go, paying taxes, amending bi-laws, planning succession, etc.

EV’s needs and directions have changed a lot over the years, and we’ve inherited commitments made in the past, such as agreeing to help promote books by authors that Emergent sought out and introduced to publishers. However, we also are looking to refresh, streamline, or remove ourselves from expiring/irrelevant commitments in order to free us up to support the “Village Green”.

Emergent Village exists for something much larger than the 501©(3), and so this organizing structure serves the whole, and not the other way around. We are still an order committed to “four practices”, and as always, your help, prayers, and feedback are always appreciated!

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