A primary goal of the Presbytery is to support the worship, witness, and service of congregations, to unite our gifts and resources that reveal Christ to the world, and so to advance the mission of God to reconcile the world through Christ.

The primary way the Presbytery formally engages congregations is through the consultation on the congregation’s life and witness.

While the consultations are a required component of the Presbytery’s regulated responsibilities, we aim to utilise the requirement to deepen partnerships, increase awareness and understanding, so that we can shape support to meet specific needs of individual congregations.

Congregations have a wide range of evolving needs. While there is substantial overlap across the Presbytery, there are always distinctive needs driven by “capacity in context.” That is, each congregation is in a specific location with a specific group of people who bring together a unique combination of gifts and resources. That combination shapes how the congregation is able to engage its mission at that location. To the degree that each location is a different social context, and each congregation possesses a different collection of gifts and resources, each congregation’s opportunities and needs vary.

For an individual congregation, the goal of the consultation is to help to clarify both for the congregation and the Presbytery:

• what the context is (its demographics and the opportunities or challenges that information reveals),

• whether the congregation has the capacity for the work in that context, and if not, then what does the Presbytery need to provide to improve that capacity.

• In this context, “capacity” is a broad term and refers to everything necessary to productively engage the congregation’s mission and purpose.

  • It includes finances, building and property, but more importantly the spiritual dimension of congregational life, or its discipleship and how that is expressed in its worship, witness, and service.

  • The Presbytery aims to help clarify for a congregation where its opportunities and needs are across all of these aspects of the congregation’s life.

  • This in turn provides the Presbytery with a much clearer understanding of a congregation and therefore how the Presbytery needs to support that congregation in ways specific to those needs.

Stepping out from a focus on an individual congregation, when the Presbytery engages in consultations across all congregations, it is able to see what the larger trends are and anticipate congregational needs ahead of time. The Presbytery is always consulting this macro-level perspective as it considers how to develop resources and staffing that meet those emerging needs.

The Presbytery’s current consultation process has two levels of activity: one in which everyone engages, and then a second, in which only some engage.

Level 1: Three Surveys

The first is just like an annual visit to the GP. There’s usually nothing urgent, but there may be a few minor issues you’d mention. Mostly, the evaluation just brings together results from the assessments to help you stay aware of how you’re travelling and if you need to watch out for anything. Often, there may be a few things the GP gives you to consider to improve your health—medication, diet, and lifestyle recommendations, etc.

On this first level of the consultation process, everything is kept quite general and broad. We use surveys to create a way for individuals to offer their thoughts, and we avoid group dynamics where some voices can cancel others—this also provides people with an opportunity to voice any worries about the congregation’s health or future. Further, if during the process of collecting responses it becomes clear that there is an issue, then the presbytery moves to the second level. If there is not, then that’s the end of the consultation. And just like the end of any GP visit, there may be some observations and recommendations presented for you to consider.

• Survey 1—Admin: This one is really just a questionnaire about some basic data and can be filled out by anyone. If you employ an admin person, they’d be fine to do it, but anyone who has an idea of how things work would be fine (questions like, what time is the worship service, etc.).

• Survey 2—Council members: This survey is critical, and we really want everyone on the council to engage with the survey, but as individuals, not as a group. We’re asking each council member for a personal sense of the church’s mission, purpose, and future, etc. This one is the longest, but we feel that since it’s the council, we can ask the most important questions and get the best insights.

• Survey 3—Congregation: This survey is for anyone who’s a regular attendee, whether they're a member or not (no need to send it to people who are members but rarely come; council members can take this too, if they want). This survey just tries to get a sense of what attenders think about the congregation’s life, its worship, and witness. 

Level 2: Tailored Partnership

The second level is like when the GP wants to look further into an issue you have flagged, or notices something in an assessment that needs to be further evaluated. The GP’s response narrows the focus and increases specificity. This is when the GP might ask for some more tests to be done, for you to consult a specialist.

If the consultation has moved to this second level, then this is where we’d also propose more specialised support for you. Specialised support means that sometimes we will bring in someone else, whose speciality better meets whatever the need is, and other times this will be one of us doing something very specific with you. 

Those kinds of support are many and varied, but might be anything from helping the congregation to write a new profile, review and engage its mission statement, joining the congregation’s council for a while, or offering learning days or inviting the congregation to specific learning events, etc. Whatever the case, the intention is to join the congregation in the process, not to leave it to the congregation to work out what to do.

Congregations should always note that recommendations are just that; they’re not requirements. However, the consultation is not really something the Presbytery does; it is more of a missional venture in which congregation and presbytery participate to discover, challenge, and encourage each other to fulfil our calling and meet our respective responsibilities. These only work in partnerships, and the Presbytery has nothing to gain by trying to go it alone.

Consultations: Rationale and Models for Adaptation

Rationale

3.1.4 (b) The purpose of the consultation shall be to strengthen the life and witness of the Congregation, to assess future ministerial and lay leadership needs, and to review the records of the Congregation.

Historically, consultations have focussed mostly on the second part of this regulated responsibility (to assess future ministerial and lay leadership needs, and to review the records of the Congregation). The presumption has been that by doing so it automatically attends to the first part of the responsibility (to strengthen the life and witness of the Congregation).

If we were to ask a broad question: have consultations been effective in their task to “strengthen the life and witness of the congregation” and thereby alter or even improve the trajectory of congregations throughout the presbytery, Synod, or across Synods, generally the answer is probably no. The plain reality is that our congregations face increasing challenges with decreasing capacity to respond. The documented trends reflect this decline. The June 2023 Act2 report records approximately 1,672 local communities of faith, compared with 2,078 Congregations recorded by the 2013 NCLS, although these categories are not precisely equivalent. It reports a median attendance of 28, an average attender age of 68, with approximately 62% retired and only 16% employed full-time.

And these statistics mirror the lived experience of the leaders, particularly Presmins who are uniquely positioned to observe both the macro and personal levels of the damage this decline has had on our congregations’ capacity to fulfil their purpose and call, in many cases just to hold steady, let alone make headway. Presmins express frustrations around the task of consultations. In a discussion session on consultations with Presmins at the 2024 National Presmins’ Gathering, it was noted that there is little time for consultations in view of all the other work to be done. The countervailing question is whether we have the time not to—proactive consultations still require time and effort, but they also get ahead of emerging problems and help to avoid crises.

That is, due to the lack of capacity, Presbyteries try to attend to consultation tasks when possible but tend to reserve them for when problems or questions emerge within a given congregation. In that context, the consultation is a tool to explain what went wrong, take stock of the damage, and try to reset the congregation. MRP’s approach appears to be somewhat distinctive among Presbyteries. The consultation is not designed as a response to difficulty, but as an instrument for strengthening the health of congregations and the respective roles we each play in the Church’s mission. Conducting consultations proactively helps to normalise a culture in which congregations and Presbyteries attend intentionally to the health of their shared life and work.

As our approach has evolved, we have moved away from understanding consultation primarily as a structured institutional exchange between two domains of the Church (between congregation and Presbytery). Our current framing reflects more fully the necessity of the consultation being a relational process of shared discernment. Meaning, insight, and possible action emerge through the interactions of the people involved, rather than being pre-determined by the abstractions of organisational structures and authority. This is more consistent with our ecclesiology: we gather not simply to exchange institutional information, but to listen to one another, attend to the movement of the Spirit, and discern together how we are being called to participate in God’s mission. Insights from organisational psychology and complexity theory help to give language and practical form to this process, enabling the Presbytery to exercise its oversight and expertise within, rather than apart from, the relational and spiritual character of the Church.

In more straightforward terms, our consultations and how we go about responding to the needs and possibilities that emerge from them are guided by conversation that invites mutual understanding, trust, and thoughtful partnership. Note, though, that “guided by conversation” does not mean engaging in a casual chat. It means intentionally loosening our grip on predetermined paths and expectations, remaining humble about the limits of what we already know, and being open to what may be learned. It also means that we attend to what God may be doing beyond what our previous experiences have taught us to expect. From that new place, the congregation and Presbytery can creatively discern a path towards the Church’s missional purposes, given expression through the life of that particular congregation.

The apparent everydayness of this practice belies its challenge within a culture in which regulated institutional processes and abstracted forms of authority have often been treated as the most substantial realities. Given our trajectory and the culture and practice associated with it, a significant shift in perspective is required. This need not mean abandoning our organisational structures. But it does mean shifting our focus from completing a regulated process, as though completion were itself the goal, towards the missional outcomes the process exists to serve; that is, a completed process is not the same as a fulfilled purpose. Within that framing, our processes can remain agile, adapting and evolving as our understanding develops and we discern the way forward together. We want to always be able to answer “yes” to these questions: did this consultation enable honest, faithful discernment, did it privilege the movement of the Spirit, did it allow our personal interests and expectations to recede, did it hear the truth through the noise, did it strengthen the congregation, did it deepen our partnership, and did it advance the Church’s mission?

What changes?

Luhmann’s work (see below) helps to explain why meaning cannot be transferred intact from one organisational domain to another, and why each reconstructs what it encounters through its own communicative operations. Stacey (see below) then shifts attention from systems as the principal unit of explanation to the local interactions through which organisational patterns, categories, and norms are continually reproduced and transformed.

In this framing, for a congregation, the lived meaning of Presbytery emerges substantially through the local interactions in which the Presbytery becomes present to it. That emergence might be a bright positive that aligns with the Presbytery’s self-understanding, or it might be a dark negative undermining the possibility of the Presbytery’s being able to conduct effective work. That all depends on the character of those interactions.

For this reason, the consultation process is being oriented more towards how we engage congregations in those local interactions and away from presenting as simply an authoritative body assessing whether the congregation is doing its job. The previous process used an initial, long (three-hour) conversation with the council to form a substantial portion of the report. That discussion employed a broadly narrative and interpretive approach. Leaders and members were invited to articulate the congregation’s story, identity, and sense of purpose; that narrative was then considered alongside the congregation’s observable practices and circumstances. The resulting gap analysis compares the congregation’s narrated identity, mission, and purpose with its observable practices, circumstances, and present capacity. Recommendations then identify possible steps through which the congregation might move towards its own sense of purpose.

We view the more recent version as having two operational levels. The first level we liken to an annual physical with a GP. It is a somewhat broad spectrum approach where we gather information, experiences, thoughts, and perspectives through three separate surveys (one for admin, one for the council, one for the congregation).

The second level we view more like when, after having seen the GP, you’re asked to do a follow-up test or visit a specialist. Not everyone would need to engage this level, but for those that do, this is when the new model of the consultation is most keenly felt. Specifically, we use the narrative and information gathered from the surveys to develop specific questions or areas of interest around which we can begin to engage the congregation. That consultation is tailored and specific. It is intended to ensure we have heard the congregation clearly and are able to test our interpretation against the congregation’s lived context. From there, through dialogue, we tailor responses and resources that we then provide for the congregation. Such support might include walking alongside the congregation through an issue, providing specific teaching or training, or engaging a specialist consultant to partner with the congregation to address a particular need.

Notes on models undergirding consultations


Luhmann and the consultation as recurring structural coupling between “closed” systems

The Uniting Church has taken structural design measures to resist some of the fragmenting effects of institutionalisation, particularly through its vision of interconciliar governance. Nevertheless, organisations commonly develop increasingly differentiated and self-referential domains that function in practice as silos.

In this sense, it seems that the historical practice of conducting consultations can be viewed through Niklas Luhmann’s account of social systems and operational closure (see Theory of Society, Volume 1, Stanford, 2012, ch. 1). In Luhmann’s account, an operationally closed system reproduces itself through its own communications. It develops its own language, operative distinctions, decision premises, and patterns of communication, and interprets both itself and its environment through those internal processes. Events and perspectives arising outside the system may affect or disturb it, but they acquire meaning within the system only as they are reconstructed through its own communicative operations.

For us, the insight is that where these institutional patterns subconsciously prevail, a congregation’s experience or situation may be presented to the Presbytery for deliberation, but in the process, it will be translated into terms that reproduce the Presbytery’s own communicative order and self-understanding. More practically, whatever the congregation has experienced or attempted to communicate is transformed from whatever the congregation understood into something recognisable to the Presbytery’s operational structure, and for example, reframed as a matter of governance, finances, compliance, property, placement, or church safety. The Presbytery may then hear less of the grounded particularity of the congregation’s experience, but more of an echo of the congregation’s experience and voice shaped by the contours and patterns of our own operational norms.

So how do consultations fit in? The problem is not that this translation occurs, since, as subjective beings, we cannot encounter or interpret the world without mediation. The problem arises when the Presbytery mistakes its institutional reconstruction for a complete or adequate account of the congregation’s experience; that is, when it unconsciously treats its own interpretation as though it were an objective and unmediated apprehension of reality. In Luhmann’s framing, consultation can be understood as a recurring occasion of structural coupling. Its task is to sustain a dialogical process through which the Presbytery’s interpretations can be returned to the congregation, tested and corrected. The resulting encounter provides the Presbytery with a prompt to consider revising the categories and patterns through which it understands congregational life, thereby improving the effectiveness of its governance.

Stacey and the consultation as a complex responsive process.

Ralph Stacey’s account of complex responsive processes more closely reflects the direction in which our consultations are developing. Rather than treating congregation and Presbytery as self-contained entities that periodically exchange information, it directs attention to the interactions through which organisational identities, relationships, and possible courses of action are continually reproduced and transformed.

Luhmann’s model helps to explain why governance communication is difficult and can readily break down. However, when treated as the dominant account of their relationship, it can obscure a fundamental ecclesiological truth: congregation and Presbytery each participate in the life of the one Church and are united by the one Spirit. Paul’s 1 Cor 12 vision of the Church as a body of difference provides an analogy for institutional structure—its parts are varied in expression, function, and responsibility, while remaining one in purpose and mission.

Using Stacey’s framing, the Presbytery becomes locally present and meaningful to a congregation through particular interactions. Organisational charts and regulations establish formal relationships, authority, and responsibilities, but by themselves they cannot generate trust, nor shared understanding, nor effective leadership. The way the Presbytery facilitates the development of these aspects of our relationship is through continuing local encounters, in which participants are afforded the opportunity to meaningfully interpret one another’s gestures and responses, and to negotiate the practical meaning of their respective roles, and to discern what faithful actions might then be possible.

One does not simply walk into a congregation. A Presbytery representative enters a living community already shaped by its own history, relationships, expectations, and experiences of the wider Church. A Presbytery representative carries a formally conferred institutional function, but the practical and relational meaning of that function is not automatically settled within the congregation. It is enacted and continually reshaped through the character of the relationship.

This does not then imply that organisational structures or formal authorities are unimportant. The Presbytery’s authority is constitutionally conferred. What is critical is that we grasp that the Presbytery’s capacity to exercise that authority as meaningful ecclesial leadership depends substantially upon the quality of its participation in congregational life. Governance is therefore pursued through continuing processes of conversation and relationship, rather than through the managerial assumption that a Presbytery stands outside congregational life and can control it as a system. Such conversation is healthy and real when it includes difference, power, resistance, and uncertainty as well as trust and cooperation. It is within these complex processes of relating that shared understanding, practical leadership, and new possibilities for mission may emerge.

Referenced

Uniting Church in Australia Constitution and Regulations, Reg. 3.1.4.

Act2: In Response to God’s Call (June 2023).

Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Volume 1.

Ralph Stacey, Complex Responsive Processes in Organizations.

Stacey and Griffin, Complexity and the Public Sector.