Proposed New Structure for GWUC (published 2 Jun 2013)

You will all be aware of the proposal coming from the recent Church Life and Witness consultation to re-structure our church governance. Carolyn Kitto, in her report, suggests that in order to reduce the “dissonance” in many areas of our church life, we need to re-kindle and re-establish the spiritual leadership of our church.

Elders and Church Council have themselves for some years been in misalignment with current Uniting Church visions. We had special permissions for their structure because of our size, but now seems to be a time when we should re-examine them. The Future Directions Steering Committee appointed by the Congregation at its meeting on 17 Mar 2013 has been searching for the way forward so that we can build upon a “Community of Love”.

This document sets out a proposed new structure that will see church council reduced in size to a body of 10 elected members, and a shift in focus from the traditional council/elders leadership to a new “missional leadership”, where the mission groups that we set up in 2010 as part of our Growing Generous Givers program will be at the forefront of our church energy. Council will become more strategic and discerning in facilitating our missional work.

This document has been revised to incorporate feedback received on version 1.

It is important to understand that this is not your usual 'structure' or 'hierarchy' diagram. We usually put the most important thing in a structure diagram at the top. That would usually be the church council, but instead as the diagram shows, it is God's people living out God's mission. The UCA Regulations require us to have a Church Council, and those regulations place all legal responsibility for the church's actions on Council. Council may delegate certain tasks to other groups in the church (as we are doing here), but it is essential to understand that while Council 'serves' the Mission Groups above it, it still must take overall responsibility for what happens in the church. Hence its charter of 'Spiritual Oversight and Governance'. As the UCA Regulations put it,

• The Church Council shall give priority in its life to building up the Congregation in faith and love, sustaining members in hope, and leading the Congregation to a fuller participation in Christ’s mission in the world. This priority shall be reflected in the agenda of its ordinary meetings.

We are trying to show in this new model that while the responsibility for God's Mission ends with the Council, it must start with the people of the church - the congregation. They are represented in the new 'box at the top', labelled with the key missional tasks that we have set ourselves. All the wonderful things at GWUC will be supporting God’s mission in this place. We would hope and expect that all members of the congregation will be involved with one or more groups that take on these tasks.

The missional groups will have responsibility for living God's mission. They will have the resources: enthusiastic volunteers, ministry team members, money for resources and the permission to respond to their mission. To reflect that fact that these Mission Groups are servants of the Congregation, we have shown the four 'Mission Groups' immediately below the congregation in the diagram. They will take on the various day-to-day management of decisions required in the discharge of our mission, and they will have control of individual budgets to allow them to resource those mission tasks, and the groups under their care (see the section 'Age Specific Ministry' following).

Each Mission Group will have its own management committee, which will coordinate and resource all the groups under its aegis. Cross-group activities will be encouraged, and jointly supported. One of the members of each of the management committees must be a member of Council (required by UCA Regulations).

The church council's role is to hold the soul of the congregation, to provide spiritual oversight and governance in support of God's mission at GWUC, and most importantly, to be a role model as a Community of Love and to encourage all the groups in our Church to be Communities of Love. Both the ministry team and the elected councillors will model servant leadership. Members of the Council will be elected by the congregation for their gifts of spirituality, leadership, discernment and vision. All members of Council will be required to undergo some form of training to develop and refine these gifts.

God's mission at GWUC is dependent upon good management of our property, financial resources and communication, labelled in the diagram as the 'Functional Groups'. A committee for each is shown on the structure, and members of these committees will be appointed by Council. It is important to remember that Paul talks about 'Administration' as a spiritual gift and we need to recognize it as such. These groups will respond directly to requests from the four Mission Groups, but their reporting line is to the Council. One of the members of each of the functional group committees must be a member of Council (required by UCA Regulations).

So where is the ministry team in this structure? Actually they are everywhere bringing their special gifts to work alongside the congregation in living God's mission at GWUC.

Issues for Resolution

• Some have queried the number '10' quoted for the size of the new Council. This is taken from both Carolyn Kitto's report, and from the subsequent resolution of the congregation. There is nothing magic about this number - some have proposed smaller numbers, some larger - but the intent is to make the council a manageable size (which it currently is not).

• Which groups are elected, and which not? Is there not a potential for "stacking the meeting" if anyone can turn up? In the current propopsal, only the council is elected. It has been apparent over the years that having more elected groups has not worked - we often have to coerce and cajole people to stand for election, so fewer elections for fewer people seems like a good idea. As to "meeting stacking", it would be council's responsibility to ensure that decisions made by the various groups did align with the overall "spiritual leadership and governance" directions. Significant changes of direction (such as merging worship times) would still need approval by the congregation. Steering Committee also believes that if groups are truly living a "Community of Love", then they would not allow themselves to go down such a path.

• Some of Brace's "Teams" approach seemed creative and helpful, while others were not seen to fit so well. With feedback, the Steering Committee hope to refine these.

• We will need to seek input from the Ministry Team to see how they would allocate their groups and responsibilites across the MGs, eg. where does Youth Council fit? This is to be decided by the new Church Council as part of their responsibility for "spiritual leadership and governance". Youth Council would become the management committee for Youth and Young Adult Ministry.

• We will probably need to tap people on the shoulder when we can identify their gifts, as some people may have difficulty discerning on their own.

• Ongoing Spiritual growth and learning is very important for all lay Leaders – with no Elders, how will this happen? At MG meetings? We WILL have Elders in the new structures. It's just that they are called "councillors and elders". It will be the new Council's responsibility to make this happen.

• Pastoral Care is essential ongoing work and its a big job – how can we ensure it still happens in the next few months?

• When should we start making restructure changes in MGs, and inviting new people to join MGs.

• Will MGs need their own Treasurers & Secretaries? Only if they decide that it is necessary. They will need some way of recording their decisions, for which they should use the church wiki so that all decisions are transparent and recorded for posterity. The Treasurer will maintain a line item budget for each mission group that does not have a treasurer, and where groups do elect a treasurer, he/she will need to report transactions to the church treasurer. (Need to run this past Finance Committee)

• Would Presbytery be able to tell us about other churches which are working with a similar structure so that we could visit and observe some positive models?

• How will new CC members choose/be chosen to join particular MGs? (ie. existing connections, self-selection, CC discussion?)

Age Specific Ministry Groups

The life and witness process has identified that it is important that faith formation and ministry considers age specific groups. Hence we suggest that most of the current groups will find a place for themselves in the matrix below, so that they continue to exist and will form the mission delivery bodies in the missional groups. The missional groups will provide resources for the initiatives from these groups. An initial draft of how this may work is shown below, and must be seen as indicative only. If we were to include all 80 active groups within our church we would not be able to fit all of them into our diagram!

A more comprehensive (and ultimately definitive) allocation of groups to ministries is given in a separate wiki page ChurchFutureScServiceGroups.

The steering committee hopes that the GWUC community will find that this re-orientation of the church structure will give it new life to be a community of love living God’s mission.

The steering committee looks forward to discussing the structure life with the missional groups and age specific ministry groups over the next few weeks. Please talk about this new structure with your fellow parishioners, and send any comments you may have to one or more of the Steering Committee listed below. You are welcome to contact any member of the committee if you feel the need for a face- to-face chat, or alternatively, any of us are happy to address your group if you do want to know more.

GWUC Future Directions Steering Committee

• Brace Bateman, 9807 3941, [email protected] (convenor)

• Belinda Chung, 9802 7263, [email protected] (8am worshipper)

• Mark Easton, 8802 8496, [email protected] (4:30pm worshipper)

• Margaret Fraser, 9803 7653, [email protected] (9:15am worshipper)

• John Hurst, 9803 9346, [email protected] (11am worshipper)

• Bronwyn Lowe, 9885 8514, [email protected] (7pm worshipper)