GWUC Life and Witness Consultation

Recommendations for the next period of GWUC’s Life

That GWUC

  1. Recognise that the roles of Church Council is first and foremost spiritual oversight and leadership.

Basis of Union 1992 Ed
The Elder’s or Leaders Meeting - the council within a congregation or group of congregations consists of the minister and those who are called to share with the minister in oversight. It is responsible for building up the congregation in faith and love, sustaining its members in hope, and leading them into a fuller participation in Christ’s mission in the world.

Regulations 2012 RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CHURCH COUNCIL
3.1.2 (a) 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.

  1. In order to establish a church council with the focus above, resolve that
    1. The Congregation meeting to be held in June elect 10 confirmed members who will form a Church Council along with those in approved Presbytery Placements and up to 2 co-options as required in the regulations.

    2. All Church Council members be elected as Elders and fulfil the obligations of the office of Elder as outlined in the Regulations.

      • (All Current Elders and Church Council members, should they believe they are gifted and called, offer to stand for election to the proposed Church Council and as Elders. The term of the Current Church Council members will conclude upon the election of the new Church Council)
        (All elected members of Church Council will be elected as Elders to fulfil the UCA Regulations that at least half the Council be Elders.)
        (All Current Elders will continue as Elders for their elected term. Those who chose not to stand for election to the new Church Council may designate one of the Missional or Task groups of the Church where they wish to continue to exercise their ministry of Elder)

    3. 1/2 of the elected membership of The Church Council to be under the age of 55 (noting the requirement that they receive a majority vote from the congregation)

      • (In the interviews it was pointed out by older people that there were many older people in the roles, that they are getting tired and that younger people should be stepping up. This new structure is an opportunity not only to go to a structure that younger people will be able to be a part of but to positively engage them in leadership as something more than “the youth representative”. There are many people in this age group exercising spiritual leadership who could contribute positively.)

    4. That the positions be for an initial 2 years with the option of re-election for another period of 2 years.
    5. The Congregation on recommendation from the New Church Council
      1. Appoint a Chairperson from those members elected to the new Church Council. The Chairperson of the Church Council will also be the Chairperson of the Congregation Meeting.
      2. Appoint or co-opt a Secretary, who will also act as Secretary to the Congregation meeting.
      3. Appoint from the new Church Council or co-opt a Treasurer.
  2. The Church Council will
    1. normally meet 10 times a year and appoint the missional groups and task groups as required
    2. ensure that each missional group, the finance and the property committee and ongoing task groups will have a member of Church Council amongst their membership and conversely each Church Councillor will be a member of one of the missional groups, finance or property groups or one of their permanent task groups. Church Councillors will be appointed according to their giftedness and calling.
    3. Establish a meeting structure where
      1. As far as is possible committees and task groups who find it best to meet at night will also meet monthly and will meet on the same night of the week as each other.
      2. Quarterly there will be a joint meeting where all missional groups, committees and task groups are asked to attend. There will be opportunities to pray, worship and share together the directions of the church
      3. There are 2 – 6 Congregational forums to explore directions for the future, offer input into the directions for the church on these matters and seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
  3. The congregation
    1. shall continue to meet three times annually for the purposes of completing the governance matters of the Congregation as required by the regulations.

From GregCrowe 2013March8

Some comments from JohnHurst

Let me say at the outset that I have no conceptual problems with the proposed structures. However, I have some concerns at an implementation level that I would like answers to before proceeding much further.

We need to spell out the roles that each councillor would undertake. With only ten councillors, and almost as many roles, there is a need to try and match roles before the election, or we might find all the councillors wanting to serve on the Outreach Group. While that might be commendable, we do need a councillor for the Finance, for the Property, for Communications, etc., and these will not necessarily align with the skill set of the councillors. I note that the secretary and treasurer can be coopted, but the other tasks require just as much "gifts" and "calling". To that end, I suggest that we identify each role required, and ask each councillor-nominee to identify which roles they would be prepared to undertake, so that we can make informed decisions in electing them.

I also think the injunction that councillors should have a sense of being "gifted and called" needs some clarification. In the past we have elected people on the basis of simply being willing to be nominated, and leaving it to the election process for people to identify whether they are indeed "gifted and called". I think we should be more intentional than that, and the appropriate way would be to ask all council nominees to supply a prospectus of why they believe they are "gifted and called". Should we not do this, we run the risk of having "seat warmers" on the council.

This then also raises the question of how the election itself is to be run. I am assuming that the question of affirmative action in choosing 5 councillors to be under the age of 55 has already been addressed, and if so, that process needs to be broadened to take into account the need to fill all the roles mentioned above. I have some ideas on how to achieve this, but at this stage simply raise the question to see what other solutions might be "out there".

Here is my (rough) draft on the roles that I see for the 10 councillors:

  1. Chair (should be seen as separate in its own right, but the chair may well (should?) also be an additional (most important) member of one of the 4 mission groups).

  2. Outreach Mission Group
  3. Faith Development Mission Group
  4. Inclusive Community Mission Group
  5. Hub Mission Group
  6. Finance Committee
  7. Property Committee
  8. Communications Committee
  9. Pastoral Committee

That's 9, there may well be others. If we stick with the no more than one role per councillor, we are left with an allocation problem that I can tell you from professional experience is "computationally hard", if not intractable.

JohnHurst
Chair of Council

and Carolyn's response

Church Councillors/Elders have one role and one role only – spiritual oversight and leadership. So what is proposed by you above is not what I am proposing in my report at all. In fact it is exactly what I am suggesting we not do.

Church Councillors/Elders are elected for their gifts and calling in spiritual oversight and leadership, ONLY. Then they offer this spiritual oversight leadership in the council, and into the missional and task groups. They will pray about who will go where and discern God’s call to each of them and I think if they are listening to the Spirit, God will call them to the places where God needs them and will equip them for their tasks.

On co-options – the regulations allow for 2 co-options usually they are for secretary and treasurer but not always. The co-options are not automatically elders. There may be people gifted and called amongst those elected in which case the co-options can be used for another purpose.

I would suspect that nominees should come to a workshop to prepare as well as providing a profile indicating their sense of call. If we don’t get 10 nominees then so be it. I am happy for smaller. One person suggested in the interviews there should only be 4 elected (giving a total of 8) a number of others 8 (giving a total of 12). I went higher but I would be more than happy for it to be lower.

Blessings,

Carolyn

JohnHurst: I take Carolyn's point, and agree that I had a misconception of the philosophy. I await with eagerness the guidance of the Spirit in how this scenario shall unfold. Please pray with me for the future of our church (see also my "Prayers Of The People" for 17 Mar 2013).

CategoryChurch

ChurchRestructureProposals (last edited 2013-08-31 07:47:43 by JohnHurst)