Maltby, the UCC, and Me

Maltby, the UCC, and Me:

Reflections on Denominational Relationships in the NACCC and the UCC

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson

March, 2016

I am aware that there is some concern in the congregation of the First Congregational Church of Maltby, which I serve as called pastor, that I am too open about my standing in the United Church of Christ and my previous pastoral experience, all of it at Monroe Congregational United Church of Christ. I know of at least one person who holds this concern, for he has expressed it to me quite explicitly. For that I sincerely thank him. I can guess at one or two others who may have the same concern. I don’t know if the matter is more widely held in the congregation or not, but even if it isn’t it is still a serious concern and one that I feel called to address.

The facts of the matter are these: The First Congregational Church of Maltby was founded in the Congregationalist tradition well over one hundred years ago. Monroe Congregational UCC was founded in that same tradition two years later. Both churches were formed in and belonged to the denomination called The Congregational Christian Churches until after the year 1957. In 1957 the Congregational Christian Churches at the national level merged with the Evangelical and Reformed Church to form the United Church of Christ. The UCC from the beginning adopted a congregational polity that honors local church autonomy. The churches of the E and R denomination gave up their more Presbyterian polity in order to become part of the UCC. Because of the congregational autonomy that is central to the Congregational tradition, each Congregational church had to make its own decision whether or not to join the UCC. The church then called The First Congregational Church of Monroe decided to join, becoming Monroe Congregational UCC. The First Congregational Church of Maltby decided not to join the UCC, eventually becoming part of the National Association of Congregational Churches, the denomination to which it belongs today that consists primarily of Congregational churches that declined to join the UCC.

When the Maltby church offered me the call as its pastor at the end of January, 2015, and when I accepted that call, both the leadership of the Maltby church and I were well aware of essential facts of our denominational affiliations. I knew that the Maltby church belongs to the NACCC and not to the UCC. The church knew that I hold ordained ministerial standing in the UCC and that I had recently resigned as pastor of a nearby UCC church. The church agreed in our pastoral call agreement to cooperate with me in maintaining my UCC standing while I served that non-UCC church, and it has done so without problems, a fact for which I am grateful.

Thus it can be a surprise neither to me nor to the Maltby church that I refer to the UCC and to my pastoral experience at Monroe Congregational UCC. The UCC is my church. I grew up in it. I have never been a member of any other denomination and have no desire to be a member of any other denomination if that meant I couldn’t be UCC. I have been educated in the UCC’s history and polity. I was ordained in the UCC and hold ordained ministerial standing in it. I served as pastor of one of its local churches for nearly thirteen years, that service being the only experience as a called pastor that I had prior to coming to Maltby. I serve and have served on committees within the local Conference of the UCC. I have health insurance and a retirement annuity through the UCC. The UCC is my church. I would not serve as pastor of the Maltby church if it were not possible for me retain my UCC standing while doing so.

While being so firmly grounded in the UCC myself, I am of course fully aware that over fifty years ago the Maltby church decided not to join the UCC. I don’t know why it made that decision, although I can guess that it was because of fear of losing its congregational autonomy, which, by the way, it wouldn’t have. No one at the church today was at the church fifty years ago, so no one can tell me about the church’s thinking when it made that decision. Still, since the church made that decision it is my duty as its pastor to respect that decision and to live with it and its consequences. I do that as fully as I am able. I would seek dual standing in the NACCC if that denomination had anything like what the UCC calls dual standing, namely a pastor having standing in two different denominations at the same time, but as nearly as I can tell it does not. I do not see my mission with the Maltby church to be bringing that church into the UCC.

There is, however, more I want to say about that issue. I believe that it would be highly advantageous to the First Congregational Church of Maltby to join the UCC, and I want here to explain why I think that is true. I fully recognize of course that any decision about the UCC, even a decision to hear more about it, is the church’s responsibility and the individual responsibility of each member not mine. With that being said and sincerely meant, here are some of my thoughts on how joining the UCC would benefit the Maltby church.

First of all, please understand that the Maltby church would not have to give up its standing in the NACCC if it joined the UCC. Many UCC churches belong to a second (and some even a third) denomination in addition to belonging to the UCC. In Washington state there are UCC churches that also belong to the Church Disciples of Christ, the Church of the Brethren, or the United Methodist Church. I understand that there are churches in other parts of the country that belong both to the UCC and the NACCC. Maltby would not lose its affiliation with the NACCC by joining the UCC.

Next, the Maltby church would not lose its congregational autonomy by joining the UCC. Article 18 of the Constitution of the UCC states:

The autonomy of the Local Church is inherent and modifiable only by its own action. Nothing in this Constitution and the Bylaws of the United Church of Christ shall destroy or limit the right of each Local Church to continue to operate in the way customary to it; nor shall be construed as giving to the General Synod, or to any Conference or Association now, or at any future time, the power to abridge or impair the autonomy of any Local Church in the management of its own affairs, which affairs include, but are not limited to, the right to retain or adopt its own methods of organization, worship and education; to retain or secure its own charter and name; to adopt its own constitution and bylaws; to formulate its own covenants and confessions of faith; to admit members in its own way and to provide for their discipline or dismissal; to call or dismiss its pastor or pastors by such procedure as it shall determine; to acquire, own, manage and dispose of property and funds; to control its own benevolences; and to withdraw by its own decision from the United Church of Christ at any time.

I sometimes paraphrase this paragraph as saying “local church autonomy is our most sacred of sacred cows, and thou shalt not even think about messing with it upon pain of eternal damnation,” not that most of us UCC folks believe in eternal damnation anymore. The polity of the UCC is deeply grounded in local church autonomy. It gets that polity from the Congregational tradition and shares it with the NACCC, at least in broad outline.

One area of church life in which the Maltby church could greatly benefit from membership in the UCC is around questions of the call and accountability of the pastor. Upon joining the UCC the Maltby church would be part of the UCC’s Pacific Northwest Conference. That Conference consists mostly of Washington state except the southwest corner of the state. It also has one church in northern Idaho and a couple in Anchorage, Alaska. In the UCC, questions of ordination and ministerial discipline are, for our purposes at least, handled by the Conference in cooperation with a local church. In our local Conference the qualifications for ordination include the candidate having earned a Master of Divinity degree from an accredited seminary. It can be any accredited seminary, it doesn’t have to be a UCC seminary, although such seminaries do exist. The UCC has a process for handling both pastoral searches by churches and church searches by pastors. It involves both the church and the person seeking a call to complete what are called profiles. They are essentially identical to the information files churches and pastors complete for the NACCC. Ministerial profiles are distributed through a Conference. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the Conference can stop a profile from being sent to a church, but it does mean that the Conference Minister, the ordained head of the Conference, can review a profile and express opinions about a candidate’s apparent fit for a particular congregation. The Conference Minister, or someone appointed by him or her, works with a local church’s pastoral search committee, giving advice and guidance but having no authority to make decisions for the church. This process doesn’t guarantee that a particular church and a particular pastor will be a good match, but it significantly improves the chances that they will be.

Then there’s the matter of pastoral accountability. In the UCC a local church pastor is accountable first of all to the church she or he serves, as a pastor is in the NACCC. Just as in the NACCC the local church calls its pastor and may dismiss that pastor at will. In the UCC, however, there is another layer of pastoral accountability that does not exist in the NACCC. The ordained ministerial standing of a UCC pastor is held by the local Conference (or Association, a subdivision of a Conference that we don’t have here in the Pacific Northwest) in which he or she serves. The Conference thus has authority not over a local church but over the standing of the ordained ministers who have standing in it.

Holding and maintaining standing requires that the pastor comply with pastoral ethics and boundaries among other obligations. In our local Conference we pastors must take ethics and boundary training for a full day every three years. There is no such requirement in the NACCC, although a local NACCC church could of course require such training of its pastor if it so desired. If a church or any of its members believes that a pastor has committed a violation of pastoral ethics or boundaries the church or a person who feels a violation has occurred may file a complaint with the Conference that holds the pastor’s ordained ministerial standing. In our local Conference, and in most Conferences of the UCC, those complaints are referred to the Conference’s Committee on Ministry. If on its face the complaint states facts that would constitute a violation if true, the Committee on Ministry will begin what is called a fitness review. If the review process establishes that the pastor has indeed committed an ethics or boundary violation the Committee has various options before it. It may reprimand the pastor. It may suspend the pastor’s standing and require the pastor to undertake some specified remedial actions before having her or his standing reinstated. Or, in extreme case, it may revoke the person’s ordained ministerial standing altogether. Many UCC churches have a provision in their bylaws that require their pastor to maintain standing in the UCC, but retaining a pastor whose standing has been suspended or revoked is entirely a decision of the local church. An imposition of suspension or revocation of standing means that the pastor in question no longer has standing in and no longer represents the UCC, but it has no necessary effect on the church the pastor serves.

In recent years the Maltby church has had at least one pastor who, as I understand it, committed ethical violations that would result in suspension or revocation of his standing had he had standing in the UCC and had someone filed a complaint. Because the church’s denominational affiliation is only with the NACCC, any complaint or request for assistance around issues of a pastor’s behavior had to go to the NACCC national offices in Wisconsin. I understand that the Maltby church made such a request and that someone came to the church from the national offices seeking to help. That help was, however, very brief; and there was no one in our region to whom the church could turn. That would not have been the case had the Maltby church had standing in the UCC. The church could have called the Conference office in Seattle. Either the Conference Minister or some other representatives of the Conference would have been available to provide ongoing assistance to the church. If the Maltby church had had UCC standing when it called the pastor of whom I am thinking, it is highly unlikely (although not impossible) that that person would have become the church’s pastor in the first place. These considerations around pastoral search and call and pastoral accountability are, I believe, major reasons why the Maltby church should consider affiliating with the UCC.

There are other reasons as well. As a member of the NACCC in this part of the country the Maltby church is essentially isolated. Yes, it belongs to the NA’s regional body; but that body stretches from Alaska to Oregon to Montana and includes only six churches. There is no regional staff. There is no local office. There is an annual meeting of the regional body, but it offers nothing like the programs that are offered at the Annual Meeting of a UCC Conference. Those meetings include presentations by representatives of the UCC’s national staff and workshops on a wide range of topics that are of interest to the local churches and their members. Having people participate in these Annual Meetings can be of significant benefit to a local church.

There are other activities of the Conference in which members of the member churches can participate. There are several Conference committees made up of people from the local churches. They include the Committee on Ministry on which I serve as well as committees dealing with global ministry, youth and outdoor ministry, church development, and Conference finances. The Pacific Northwest Conference of the UCC owns and operates two wonderful camps where retreats are offered for people of all ages. One of them, called Pilgrim Firs, is not far from Maltby, being located just outside Port Orchard. The other, called N-Sid-Sen, is on the shore of Lake Pend ‘Oreille in northern Idaho, a particularly beautiful setting for camp activities. Our Conference Minister Mike Denton has told me that the people of the Maltby church are welcome to participate in camp activities with us, but UCC membership would remove any doubt about their opportunity to participate and would mean that that opportunity would continue after I am no longer the church’s pastor.

Of course, on the whole, the UCC is far more liberal/progressive than is the NACCC. For the UCC’s strong voice on issues of social justice I say thanks be to God, but that voice may be an obstacle to some of the people of the Maltby church embracing the UCC. I think I get that, although I don’t agree with it. Here’s something about the UCC that may mitigate some of that concern. When the national or regional bodies of the UCC take a position on most anything all, it is said that those bodies speak to the local churches not for the local churches. Neither any UCC church nor any member of a UCC church is required to agree with any position taken by some other UCC entity. The UCC is thoroughly congregational in its structure, highly valuing both local church autonomy and individual freedom of conscience. There would be a small cost to the Maltby church from joining the UCC. The member churches owe membership dues to the Conference, but in a church as small as the Maltby church those fees are negligible.

So there it is. I am deeply and strongly UCC. The church I serve is not. I will not conceal my allegiance to the UCC. I will neither forget nor ignore my pastoral experience in the UCC. That allegiance and that experience are big parts of what makes me the pastor that I am. I will not expect the Maltby church to join the UCC nor will I push it to do so. I will merely be happy to be a resource on the UCC if anyone is interested in learning more about it. Local church autonomy and individual freedom of conscience are bedrock values for both the NACCC and the UCC. They are bedrock values for me and I intend to conduct my ministry in accordance with them.