Reflections on Congregational Polity

Reflections on a Congregationalist Annual Meeting

On May 13 and 14, 2016, I attended the annual meeting of the Pacific Northwest Association of Congregational Christian Churches at Warden Community Church in Warden, Washington. This Association is the regional body of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches to which my church belongs. The Pacific Northwest Association covers the states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, and it consists at this time of seven small Congregational churches. Two are in Anchorage, Alaska. Two are in Oregon, and three are in Washington. One additional church, a church in Enterprise, Oregon, has applied for membership in the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. Upon its acceptance into the National Association it will become a member church of the Pacific Northwest Association as well. This Enterprise church sent representatives to this year’s meeting of the Association even though that church is not yet officially a member. All of the churches that belong to the Association are invited to send representatives to an annual meeting, always held at one of the member churches, and some of them do. The local church where the meeting is held is responsible for planning, hosting, and putting on the meeting.

I was, frankly, apprehensive about attending this meeting. I serve one of the Congregational churches that belong to the Pacific Northwest Association, namely, the First Congregational Church of Maltby in Washington State. I am, however, not myself a member of the church I serve, of the Pacific Northwest Association, nor of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. I belong to the United Church of Christ. I am a member of Kirkland Congregational Church United Church of Christ in Kirkland, Washington. My ordained ministerial standing in the UCC is maintained through a four way covenant between the Pacific Northwest Conference of the UCC, the Kirkland church to which I belong, the Maltby church which I serve, and myself. At the recent meeting in Warden someone said to me “I hear you used to be UCC.” I replied “I still am.” I have no intention of leaving the UCC, and my membership in and loyalty to the UCC explains why I was apprehensive about going to the National Association’s regional meeting in Warden.

Until several years ago Warden Community Church was a UCC church. It withdrew from the UCC. I don’t know exactly why it withdrew, but I have heard that it was because the church was dissatisfied with the UCC’s progressive stances on social issues, including but not limited to its Open and Affirming position with regard to LGBT folks. I am thoroughly committed to those progressive stances the UCC takes on social issues, especially Open and Affirming. I don’t want to endorse Warden leaving the UCC. Moreover, that church from Enterprise, Oregon, that sent people to our meeting has also left the UCC, to which it formerly belonged. I don’t know why they left, although I have heard that in their case it had more to do with the church’s perception of how the regional UCC body to which it belonged, the Central Pacific Conference of the UCC, treated it (or ignored it) during some recent difficult times the church was having than it did with Open and Affirming or other social positions of the UCC. Whatever their reason for leaving, once again I don’t want to endorse that decision. I love and am committed to the UCC, and, frankly, I’m not entirely comfortable associating with churches that have turned their backs on it. Still, I made the decision to serve a National Association church, and my church wanted me to attend that recent regional meeting. So I went.

My experience at the meeting was, I suppose, better than I was afraid it might be. It turns out that two member churches of the Association, First Congregational Church of Tacoma, Washington, and First Congregational Church of Anchorage, Alaska, are Open and Affirming. I knew before I went to the meeting that the Tacoma church is Open and Affirming and was pleased to learn at the meeting that the Anchorage church is too. Virtually without exception the people at the meeting seemed to be good, decent, nice people. I had no real problems with any of them. The pastors of the Warden and Tacoma churches are impressive men, each in his own way. I learned of difficult times several of the member churches have had in recent years, difficult times not dissimilar to the one my church in Maltby went through before I began to serve them. I was pleased to learn that the Warden and Tacoma pastors are well aware of the transition our culture is making from the modern to the postmodern world and what that transition may mean for the church. I’m quite sure that Ed Backell, the pastor in Warden, is theologically more conservative than I am, but he is an articulate, energetic, and entertaining man who, I don’t doubt, makes a good and engaging pastor. All in all attending the meeting was not a bad experience, although I can’t say that I got much out of it other than the chance to meet some people and learn a little bit more about the churches with which my church is associated.

I did form one strong impression of these churches and the denominational organizations to which they belong. The members of these Congregational churches are fiercely proud of being Congregationalists. They are strongly attached in particular to the autonomy of the local church that is a hallmark of Congregationalism. They give the impression that to them local church autonomy is all that Congregationalism is about. I didn’t hear much talk at all about Congregationalism’s history of taking progressive positions on social issues. There wasn’t much talk about Congregationalism’s value of individual freedom of conscience within a local church. I sensed that for these folks Congregationalism means local church autonomy and not necessarily much more than that.

They are so fiercely proud of being autonomous that they lose sight of the other side of the autonomy coin. Yes, autonomous church are free to run their own affairs as they see fit, and for the most part that is a good thing. (Local churches are autonomous in the UCC, which has a very Congregational polity, too, a fact of which these folks seem quite unaware.) Yet the reality of the churches in the National Association seems to be that they are so autonomous that they are almost totally isolated. The National Association has national offices located in Wisconsin. I know that that office occasionally offers a modicum of help to a church that needs it, although, frankly, that help seems not to have amounted to much a few years back when my Maltby church badly needed outside help. There is no office of the Pacific Northwest Association. There is no Association staff. There are no Association committees. Some of the churches, especially the ones in Anchorage, are geographically remote from any of the other churches. The churches are left, for the most part, entirely to their own devices when they have difficulties with which they must deal. The most the regional Association could to for them is that perhaps one of the other pastors in the Association might meet with a church and offer whatever help he could ( I say he because all of the pastors in the Association at the present time are men). I sense, however, that these churches are so proud of being autonomous that they may not recognize a need for outside assistance even when they badly need it.

Let me give an example of what I find to be the shortcomings of these little churches belonging only to the NACCC and the Pacific Northwest Association. Three of the six churches represented at the recent meeting are without pastors. All three are in the early stages of a pastoral search. In that search they get no structured help from the regional Association. As nearly as I can tell the only help they get from the National Association is that that organization has a website where both churches looking for a pastor and pastors looking for a church can post information about themselves. In the UCC assisting local churches with their pastoral searches is one of the primary functions of the UCC’s regional bodies. It is not function of the National Association’s regional bodies at all, nor does it seem to be much of a function of the national organization. At our recent regional gathering two of the three churches that are looking for a pastor asked those of us who are pastors to meet with them to talk about the pastoral search process. They simply don’t know where to look for candidates. Pastor Backell from Warden suggested they look to the American Baptist Convention. I suggested that they look to the UCC. There’s no point in them looking to the National Association, for all it will give them is that website I mentioned, and these folks already know about that website. The National Association does not train persons for ministry in its churches. It does not ordain people to pastoral ministry. It does virtually no screening of people looking for a pastorate. It has no list of people approved for ordination nor of ordained people looking for a call. The three little churches at our meeting who are looking for a pastor are pretty much entirely on their own, and they seemed to be at a total loss about what to do.

Not long ago I had a brief meeting with one of my predecessors as pastor of the Maltby church. He said, with no prompting from me, that he thinks the Maltby church should join the UCC precisely because in the UCC the local churches get, or at least are offered, some significant help with pastoral searches. I couldn’t agree more. Every institutional polity of course has its pluses and its minuses. There is no such thing as a perfect polity. Yet the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches has gone so far in in the direction of local church autonomy that it consistently falls victim to the shortcomings of that polity. I believe in local church autonomy. I’m a life-long Congregationalist; but I have lived Congregationalism in the UCC, and we at least avoid some of the shortcomings of extreme Congregationalism. The National Association does not. In practice the churches of the National Association end up calling as pastor anyone who is available and willing to come. That, frankly, is why Maltby called me. I learned of Maltby’s vacancy through personal contacts, not because I was looking for a call or because the church found me through some process of the National Association. That, I suspect, is often how it often works with National Association churches. Frankly, in my opinion, that’s no way to run a denomination.

I am committed to serving my Congregational church for the foreseeable future, but I really worry about what will become of them when I eventually step down as their pastor. In their current denominational affiliation they will be as on their own as those churches I heard of at our regional meeting are today. In the recent past my church called a pastor who was affiliated with a very conservative local community church. He was a terrible match for them. He was a lot more conservative than most of them are. He was no kind of Congregationalist, throwing around pastoral authority in ways no true Congregational pastor ever would. He nearly destroyed the church. I fear the same thing could happen again. There is nothing in the polity of the National Association that could deter such a bad result of a pastoral search. The UCC’s pastoral search process of course doesn’t guarantee a good result for either a church or a pastor, but at least there are policies and practices in place that make a bad result less likely. In the National Association, there aren’t.

So at our regional meeting I met some good people. I met a couple of good pastors. I heard people speak authentically about their personal faith in Jesus Christ. All of that was very good. Yet I came away from the meeting with real concerns for my church and the denomination to which it belongs. I pray for good results for those three churches in our region who are seeking pastors. I pray for good things for my church once I leave. I wish I could be more confident that those good results would happen.