DECISION-MAKING IN ONE CHURCH

A future united Church will have to be able to make up its mind. It is currently strongly argued that three elements must be present in the visible, organic, structural unity of a future united Church. The first two, common faith and mutual recognition of sacraments and ministry, we have been considering. The third is the bringing into being of common structures for making decisions.

This raises all sorts of issues about the way a common decision-making process could work and what would be the source of its authority. It also makes it necessary to think further about the character of consensus, and about the handling of a larger quantity of material for decision than has ever been presented before.

Two interacting decision-making processes have gone on throughout the history of the Church. One is formal, involves meetings of the churches' representatives or pronouncements by leaders, and results in statements (decrees, resolutions). The other is informal, involves the whole people of God, and consists in their active reception (and sometimes their call for the modification or development) of such decisions. The relationship between the two has always operated ad hoc and de facto. We are not yet in a position to agree which makes a matter of faith or order binding on the faithful, though it is hard to see how the answer can be other than ‘both together’. For reasons of space, and also because it is important to see the way forward in these two areas before we can get any further, I shall confine myself mainly to them in this chapter.