Face to Face still has its place
I was in a meeting yesterday.
Nothing new there. In universities meetings are the culture. For some, meetings—their planning, leading and directing—are the very air they breathe.
I'm glad I'm not one of those. At the end of the day, or at least at the end of some days, I like to have something tangible: a magazine, a story, a paragraph I can call my own. Like a builder who can point to a fence or a mechanic who can rev up a previously persnickety engine when someone asks, "and what did you do today?"
Fortunately, I'm blessed with a boss and co-workers who can make meetings what they ought to be. We have passion, laughter, frustration, dreams. We strain to see our organization in a new way and our work as part of a larger whole. Sometimes we get snacks.
Over the summer FPU and the MB Biblical Seminary hosted a meeting so big we called it a "consultation." Sponsored by the International Committee of Mennonite Brethren (ICOMB), representatives from 23 schools from around the world gathered for the first time. They did everything my colleagues and I do, but on a historic scale. They ate full meals.
It was passionate, funny, frustrating and soul-searching. It was also impossible to do by telephone, email or MySpace.
So I'm reminded at my most impatient—as the clock ticks and the conversation seems to circle like a hiker lost in the woods—that meetings are good. They are the food of communication.