'Bishops all the way down': oversight in the UCA
August 24, 2022
This is a shortened version of a fuller article. Download the full version using the button at the bottom of this page.
written by Matthew Julius, Growing in Faith Circle Panel Member
A spectre is haunting the Uniting Church in Australia — the spectre of Bishops.
This reflection arises out of the recent conference, ‘The Basis at 50’, where people were invited to respond to the prompt: “How does the Basis enable and/or limit the UCA’s capacity to develop forms of church, ministry and mission which engage the contemporary context?” A common thread in many of the responses was related to the question of proper oversight within the life of the Uniting Church. Often, this question has been associated with whether the UCA ought to have Bishops. This piece takes the view: no, the UCA should not have Bishops; and this is because the ministry of oversight is a dispersed ministry throughout the life of the UCA.
In early discussions of the Joint Commission on Church Union (JCCU) — the commission responsible for writing the Basis of Union — it was proposed that a Uniting Church adopt the office of Bishop. This proposal was later dropped, and so the UCA came into existence without the office of Bishop to exercise the ministry of ‘oversight’ (Greek: episkopē) within the life of the Church.
For some this implies that the UCA does not have sufficient oversight within its life, and so fails to be as responsive as it ought to shifts in the Church’s context which requires new life to be birthed in “defunct” congregations and ministry contexts.
To address this, we might grapple with a fuller account of oversight in the Basis. Here, oversight is named as a responsibility of what is now the Church Council, and of the Synod, as well as a responsibility of Presbyteries (Basis, §15, (b), (c) & (d)). This dispersed oversight, entrusted to different bodies in the Church, flows in turn from the fact that, “the Uniting Church acknowledges that Christ alone is supreme in his Church, and that he may speak to it through any of its councils” (Basis, §15).
For this reason each council has a responsibility to “wait upon God’s Word, and to obey God’s will in the matters allocated to its oversight.” This accords with the broader claim of the Basis that, “all ministries have a part in the ministry of Christ” (Basis, §13); that is, all ministries are a sharing in the one ministry of Jesus Christ. So too, therefore, all oversight is a sharing in, and waiting upon, the singular oversight of Jesus Christ which is dispersed throughout all parts of Christ’s body.
In seeking to be Christ’s Church, living and enduring through the changes of history, the UCA confesses that it does so only as a community which responds to the Lord who, “comes, addresses, and deals with people in and through the news of [Christ’s] completed work” (Basis, §4). The Church’s perseverance is both freedom and responsibility. Freedom to constantly review and transform the Church’s life, because the Church’s endurance in history is not predicated on institutional forms, but in a trusting response to Christ’s continual guidance. And, at the same time, responsibility to ensure that this constant review of the Church’s life is a trusting response which “may increasingly be directed to the service of God and humanity…” (Basis, §17).
This freedom and responsibility can be seen clearly in the growth and transformation of the various agencies and institutions within the broad life of the UCA.
All this is to say that the question of Bishops, and more broadly the question of the ministry of oversight within the UCA, cannot be answered by an attempt at retrofitting an ecclesial office into the life of the Church. Rather, we must simply confess again what the Basis itself confesses, “that the faith and unity of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church are built upon the one Lord Jesus Christ.” (Basis, §3) And so it is that all must share in the one life and one ministry of this one Lord: who alone has true oversight of the Church.
In Philippians — the only Epistle addressed to those named as ‘overseers’ (Greek: episkopoi) — we get some insight into what it means to share in the one ministry of Jesus. The famous “Christ hymn” in Philippians 2:5-11 is offered as an account of the reality by which believers should live. This short passage is introduced by a verse that lacks a verb, literally reading:
This [same] mind in you and in Christ Jesus
Τοῦτου φρονεῖτε ἐν ὑμῖν ὅ και ἐν Χριστῳ Ἰησοῦ
The verb implied here is often supplied as, “to be” or “to have”. The sense, then, is that the Christian community shares in the work of Christ by adopting the same mind as Christ had: “to be in this same mind” or “to have this same mind” that Christ had.[1] However, there is a baptismal undertone to this whole section that a simple call to imitation obscures. For Paul, to be “in Christ,” reflects the core reality of our participation in the salvific work Christ accomplishes — which we mark in baptism. Insofar as we can have the same mind as Christ, for Paul, this can only be because we are “in Christ,” that is: because we participate in the ongoing salvific work of Christ, and so Christ’s ongoing ministry.
We are called, then, to exercise oversight in the Church not, first and foremost, as an imitation of Jesus’ model of oversight, but because we share in the new reality of Christ’s salvation. It is the new reality offered to us by Christ which in turn gives rise to all manner of ministries, including the episkopē dispersed within the Church.
The work of oversight finds its centre in the holding forth of the Gospel: it begins, and finds its end, in seeking more and more to align the diverse ministry of the Church with the vision of a just and reconciled world that Christ proclaims and enacts. So it is that we must at times challenge our siblings in faith for failing in their responsibilities: beckoning them back to the good way of love at the core of our tradition; and so it is that we must at times stoke the embers of creativity and adaption, as a sharing in the work of new creation itself.
The work of oversight is the work of recalling us to the joy and justice of God in which we all participate. This is a weighty responsibility, and one which we receive as a gift; and with this gift another:
“ … [the Church] has the gift of the Spirit in order that it may not lose the way.” (Basis, §3)
[1] See, Ralph Martin, Philippians, 1976, p.91-93.