Three-dimensional chess

I've never played three-dimensional chess http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaMf4cb-tAc but chairing a meeting is nearly as complex. You have to keep clear track of: what's the current agenda item; what's the next agenda item; what is the ordered list of people who wish to speak; whether the discussion should continue or whether it is showing signs of going off track; whether it might be best to split the issue being discussed into two components; whether it might be best to join this issue with another; whether the sense of the meeting is moving towards a resolution; how the agreed rules of procedure indicate we should proceed; and (most crucially of all) whether we are running out of time.

I've chaired meetings before, but yesterday I chaired a PCC meeting and (this surprised me) it was the first time I had the opportunity to operate within the formal structure of identifying a proposer and a seconder when we moved to votes. In previous meetings we'd either been operating informally, or (in departmental meetings) within an understood albeit limited framework of hierarchical responsibility. Certainly the extra complexity made the task of chairing seem more like three-dimensional chess. I hope I got it more right than wrong, but I'm still a learner ...

One might take the view that all this fuss about procedures was somehow unspiritual; that a group of Christians should in some way be able prayerfully to discern the way forward and agree unanimously.

Or one might argue that these same rules of procedure express a spirituality; operated correctly, they allow everyone to have their say (each person being part of the Body of Christ and hence a vital voice), and they also allow a structure within which minority views can be clearly expressed and yet we can agree to act in concert when a decision is needed (because the Good Lord's Creation is not a zero-sum game).

For myself, I know I'd prefer the challenges of three-dimensional chess to the ideological horrors of authoritarianism - whether religious or secular.