Wednesday, December 8, 2021

Returning to Decisions

There is a principle of Church governance which I have followed routinely, and it is a good one. If a certain Church body takes a decision, that decision may only be reversed -- or altered -- by the same Church body. There may be one exception, namely temporary decisions due to an emergency. I have had a related rule, too: if decisions must be referred back to the same Church body, do is as fast as possible. OBSERVATION: In the Congregational Church, this dynamic basically rests on the view that common decisions are sacred. It is interesting that, historically, this view of the Church has had an influence on the sacredness of national constitutions. (It is surprising how often, in the Church, people will seek reasons to change decisions without going back to the same body which made them).

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