Emmanuel Uniting Church Cairns

“The Church: Its nature, function and ordering”

The government of the Church (p. 145).

The aims and manner of her government will be controlled by her understanding of her worship, mission and service. She will derive her methods of government not from secular patterns but from her self-awareness as a ‘brotherly Christocracy’, that is to say, a brotherhood in which Christ reigns supreme. She will seek to make her laws conform to the law of Christ so that her law may be a perpetual reminder to her members of him who called them and whom they are called to serve. Government is given to her in order that she may maintain her life, and that of her members, in a sinful world.... Since law is the servant of the mission of the Church, where it serves that mission it is a good law; where it becomes rigid or chaotic and stands in the way of that mission it is no longer good law.

Barth maintains: “In the light of its basic law, the law to be sought and established and executed in the Christian community must always have the character and intention of a law of service. It must always be law within an order of ministry. The community of Jesus Christ, as the body of which He is the Head, exists as it serves Him. And its members, Christians, as members of this His body, exist as—united by the service which they render to their Lord—they serve one another. This first and decisive determination of all Church law has its basis in the fact that the Lord Himself, who rules the community as the Head of His body, ‘came not to be ministered unto, but to minister’ “ (Mk. 10:45).  (Barth, K. Church Dogmatics, Volume IV: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Part 2 (690).  

In the light of the faith of the Church built and grounded upon the one Lord Jesus Christ (BoU para. 3), it is now possible to speak of the ‘order’ of the Church for “The order of the Uniting Church grows out of and is controlled by its faith [in Jesus Christ].” That is, as Dr. McCaughey argues, “In approaching the doctrine of the ministry and the ordering or government of the life of the Church we are conscious of the need to remember that questions of faith precede those of order. Put it another way. The Gospel does not depend upon ministers, ministers are dependent upon, derive their authority from the Gospel. Moreover the doctrine of the Church precedes logically and theologically the doctrine of ministry.”  “That must always be so, for the church is the creation of the gospel, called into being by the gospel and given shape by the gospel. If order is divorced from faith, what then determines the order of the church? Expediency? The structures of big business? What its members think would be most efficient?”

(Refer document on  "The Polity of the UCA" by Dr. Hedley Fihaki).