Quorum, noun: The minimum number of members of an assembly or society that must be present at any of its meetings to make the proceedings of that meeting valid.
Bishops and Popes probably have many things to think about. What they probably never think about is a quorum. The House of Commons (Parliament in the UK) has a quorum but neatly does not demand that it needs to be in attendance. Or at least only for a vote.
From time to time as a Baptist Pastor quorums have occupied my thoughts because in our congregational way of running church we have to have them for our 'governing body of the church of Christ on earth' to be in existence.
I could occupy webspace with mildly amusing anecdotes about desperate efforts to cross the line over the years, but fortunately last evening our church achieved an evening so bizarre that I now only have to remember this one anecdote to keep any listener in bemused interest. (Warning: you are unlikely to understand what follows on first reading [you may never understand it])
The story goes like this:
- 8:00pm Not at all for the first time in my experience I am chairing a meeting that is not quorate at the start time. We wait.
- 8:10pm We're (I'm) getting bored. We start anyway. This is not the planned meeting [hereafter the Agenda Meeting] but an Informal Meeting that can still listen and talk but can't do the stuff like minutes and decisions. We are one person short of a quorum.
- 8:20pm Lady A arrives! We have a quorum! We start the Agenda Meeting.
- 8:40pm Man A has to go home. We no longer have a quorum. We start another Informal Meeting because we think there is one more latecomer who has said he will try to be there by 9:00pm.
- 9:00pm Man B arrives! We have a quorum again. We resume the Agenda Meeting.
- 9:20pm Lady B suddenly announces she needs to leave. The meeting is no longer quorate, never to be quorate again. We have a third Informal Meeting to round off the evening.
- 9:35pm We end. Though something meetingy had ended in me long before . . .
