Last month I attended, for the first time, a Church Meeting of my old city Church. There were some marked changes -- major changes. One of these was the absence of decisions by Church members -- only referrals to the Diaconate. Yet it is a Congregational Church, which is synonymous with members' decisions. While on the surface of it, it seemed like a participatory meeting, in reality it was not -- at least, not as one finds in Congregationalism. It was a system of referral, as one finds in Presbyterianism -- which is, referral to a "representative assembly", so called. This is what previous generations of the Church had hoped to avoid, by entrenching Congregationalism in the opening lines of the constitution. OBSERVATION: One might argue that there were no decisions to be made -- yet a Church runs on decisions. This is not just a matter of who holds power, but it is of core spiritual importance. There is more on this blog if one searches for "Congregationalism".
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