Conciliar Decision-Making

The Uniting Church makes decisions in councils. Members of those councils (Congregation; Church Council; Presbytery; Synod and Assembly) meet together to “discern the guidance of the Spirit in response to the word of God” (UCA Manual for Meetings 2004, p. 7). Conciliar decision-making is an ancient practice of the church. It’s the way in which the Christian faith was defined through the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds in the first 5 centuries of the Christian church.

Conciliar decision-making is community decision-making. Decisions are made through a process of community interaction. Councils meet together. “Christian community develops when members of a group share the life they have in Christ. Community is strengthened as members are open to each other’s insights and feelings in pursuit of the ideals and practices around which the group is formed” (Manual p. 7).

The central practice of the Church as a decision-making community is that of worship. In and through our worship, we are formed as the people of God, the Body of Christ, the Communion of the Holy Spirit.

Ecclesial (church) decision-making is about discerning God’s will in community. Because we are human, we won’t always get our decisions right. “In retrospect… some decisions are considered to have been visionary and innovative, others inappropriate and destructive” (Manual p. 7). That’s part of the community decision-making process too. It’s not just our immediate community, but the community in continuity that is involved in discerning God’s will.

Our decision-making is governed by our primary theology (our worship) and our secondary theology (our developed systematic understandings of the nature of God and all things in relation to God). Worship and theology are key to making decisions that are faithful to who God is and who we are in relation to God. “The communal nature of the relationship expressed in the Trinity and re-expressed in the Body of Christ provides a model for the type of community we become, and both enlightens and sets limits to our agenda; for the church is a community created by Christ and sustained by the Spirit” (Manual p. 7).