One of the most fun jobs I've ever done was to help run a scientific society. The society in question is the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability: and for three years in the late 90's I was the Scientific Secretary. It took me a while to learn what the job was really all about, though Jef Teugels (the society President who appointed me) gave me a succinct and accurate summary right at the start: "Your job is to have strong legs [ie: to keep going] and to tell everyone else what to do". In a sense the Bernoulli learning curve was all about learning how very true his early words had been.
The Bernoulli Society at the time had a membership of over a thousand university statisticians - a small society, but spread all across the world. There were (and are) no paid staff at all; matters were run by six or so members of the Executive Committee (including the Scientific Secretary) on a strictly voluntary basis. So by one way of accounting this was a very small operation indeed; the annual budget must have been around £30k, mostly spent on distributing newsletters and a scientific journal. On the other hand, what we did was something that mattered; along with other scientific societies we nurtured a world community of researchers drawn from almost every possible culture and language and region. We oversaw regional committees and subject specialist committees and sponsored conferences. We had virtually no money for any of this: even the travel to committee meetings had to be found by ensuring coincidence with scientific conferences. But scientific societies play a key rôle in forming connections, in making it possible for junior researchers to meet the giants in their field, in providing opportunities for people to travel to conferences when their own countries could not afford to send them.
No wealth, then, and not much prestige, but the shared labour has won me many good friends whom I would otherwise have missed. And I learned a few lessons along the way.
Mostly, I think, the lesson that in the end it is people that matter, people and their motivations. When we had to choose people to do various jobs, we had to figure out whom we could trust, who might want to do the job we had in mind, who would see it through to the end, preferably without causing too many international incidents along the way. (Successful international scientific societies hate international incidents - we passionately prefer calm constructive creative peace.) Always we had to remember that we were all getting older at the standard rate (one year per year), so that if we wanted Bernoulli Society to prosper in the future then it was vital to look out for opportunities to involve younger people. And, since there were never enough people for the jobs we wanted doing, we couldn't afford to be blinkered by gender or other discrimination. I learned that it is important to write emails which set things out clearly, item by item; that while the other person may well be smarter than me, they need not necessarily share the same cultural frame of reference, and that they may care deeply about things which seem trivialities to me (I am not going to embarrass myself by giving examples here: ask me when you next see me). And also I learned that friends come from all sorts of places, that it is important to be open to the new.
It was a fantastic experience, and I was really sorry when increasing administrative pressures at work forced me to give it up.
So here I am again, clambering up a different learning curve in a different environment. I hasten to note, I don't think a churchwarden's job is "to have strong legs and to tell everyone else what to do", though both may very occasionally be useful. Certainly Holy Trinity Coventry is a voluntary association just like Bernoulli Society; it works when people fill the rôles they want to fill, and are good at filling. Maybe the significant element of this job is to find round holes for round pegs, rather than square ones. One of the big differences is that in Coventry we can all meet relatively frequently; Bernoulli Society could only convene as a whole once every four years at its World Congress. (But how often do you make the exotic and exciting trip to visit a different service at worship? might it be an intriguing experience to observe for yourself the contrast between evensong and an 0930 service? or to rise - almost - with the sun to go to 0800 communion? or to discover an opportunity to find Holy Trinity worshipping mid-week?)
And the trust thing. We had to trust people when we ran Bernoulli Society. No way could we micro-manage Bernoulli-sponsored meetings across the globe. Instead, we laid down basic rules and simple methods of accountability - reports in our periodic newsletter, protocols for regional meetings of statisticians, procedures and expectations for earning the right to use the Bernoulli Society logo for a conference. So it is interesting to see here in Holy Trinity the growing emphasis on the central rôle of the Parish Council, and the way in which responsibilities are being devolved to the Youth and Children's Work Committee and others. Learning to talk to each other, learning to take decisions together, learning to trust each other when we devolve tasks. I guess in some sense we've been doing this forever, but it's the kind of lesson one has to keep on learning, keep on practicing. And on the way we find ourselves meeting the other, the people with whom we would not otherwise have come into contact. You won't get cash-rich in this sort of world, but there are other kinds of wealth that matter much much more.
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