INTRODUCTION:
When the Uniting Church came into being, preparation for Church Union had been thorough. Congregationalists had studied the Basis of Union, and had prayerfully sought the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ’s prayer “That they all may be one” seemed to be very much on all of our minds.
I am reminded of Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, ‘One Art’:
“The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent,
The art of losing isn’t hard to master”
In a way many Congregationalists followed Bishop’s recommendation, and practised loss. The art of losing is, after all, at the very heart of Christian discipleship. “The one who keeps her life shall lose it, but the one who loses her life, for my sake and the gospel’s, the same will find it,” stated the founder of the Church.
Bishop’s poem ends:
“. . . It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.”
And here was the crunch. From one point of view this was how union seemed. However Congregationalists held to our belief in the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we knew that we would be vastly outnumbered in the newly-formed Uniting Church. Still, we held on. Then, when the UCA was in place and nearly all Congregationalists found that they would lose their beloved church buildings, a second commitment to continue in the face of what looked like disaster was required of us.
I remember my mother, Rose Wilson, when the committee of architects recommended that the Congregational church which was the centre of her world should be sold, and that the joint congregation should worship in the Methodist church. She was pale with pain, but she squared her shoulders and said, “I believe that unity is the will of God, and that we must go towards it with courage and generosity. I will worship at the Methodists.” In my mother’s case, there was a happy resolution of her pain. Nineteen years later, at the age of 93, in the week before her death, she made the following statement: ”It was hard for us to lose the church that we had loved. It was very hard. But when we went to worship at the Methodists, they gave us so much.”
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I asked participants in the Last Congregationalists project:
Did you go into the Uniting Church? If so, how painful was the transition? How rich? Are you worshipping now in another tradition? How much of what you valued in Congregationalism continues? What else have you sought in worship?
More material was provided in answer to this question than to any other.
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LIKE A BREATH OF FRESH AIR: A FAIRLY EASY TRANSITION TO THE UNITING CHURCH
When I left home and began a teaching career at age twenty-two, my posting took me to towns where there were no Congregational churches. However, wherever I was stationed, I joined Methodist or Presbyterian choirs and fellowships. My parents had originally been Methodists and I married a Presbyterian so I never suffered withdrawal symptoms from Congregationalism. Consequently it was an easy move into the Uniting Church in 1977 and since then an involvement with church choirs, church councils and pastoral care.
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I believe [that] Congregationalism made changes easier for us on the whole because we were always encouraged to respect and be open to others’ opinions, and discouraged from becoming entrenched in any one position. Though coming from a tradition that was comparatively small in number, the proportion of Congregationalists taking on leadership roles in the Uniting Church was, and is, quite interesting.
Transition was fairly smooth. We had already had experience of the three participating churches and had been Meth-Pres in co-operation for a few years prior to actual union.
For me it was like a breath of fresh air that what had been hoped for had actually happened.
There were obviously some adjustments, and some people found it easy, and some found it uncomfortable; they continued to try and be what they had been.
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Despite being baptised at Black Rock Congregational Church, and growing up in it, I have never had a painful or negative attitude towards the uniting of three very similar denominations. Rather, a feeling that unity is far better than division and that everyone can learn from everyone . . .
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For other former Congregationalists, AREAS OF STRUGGLE were encountered after Church Union.
Yes, I am a member of the Uniting Church, and it wasn’t particularly painful at first because our Congregational Church at Epping was strong and people from Presbyterian and Methodist and Anglican backgrounds joined us. It became more painful as time went by when differences between a Methodist Church in our Parish less than ½ km away could never really be resolved and I believe that these were partly due to strong differences in churchmanship in the traditions.
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Our church voted twice on the issue, finally opting to join. I guess the decision was made with reluctance, knowing that without a minister and with no external support, it was too difficult for a small group to survive.
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Originally it was planned that the three congregations would merge, and there were many meetings to decide where they would meet. The Congregationalists felt railroaded and this led to anger. Then the Presbyterians said “Here or nowhere” and broke away, forming a Uniting Church themselves. Allegedly we are still on very good terms. Then the worshipping Congregational community joined the Methodists as a second Uniting Church.
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I was one who prayed and worked for fifty years (not at a high level) for union between the churches. Leading up to the 1977 event, we were aware that it was not going to be easy. But I must say that my experience in a certain city parish was a bit of a disillusionment. Young people in the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational congregations came together, not starry-eyed exactly, but full of enthusiasm. They had plans for the future, visions for the future; they had all sorts of ideas and were quite vocal in the meetings of the congregations.
But when it came to the pinch, particularly in relation to property, but not only in that way, there was resistance from the old guard. I have likened the result to an incendiary bomb. During the war we had demonstrations of how not to treat incendiary bombs when they fell in your territory. The last thing you did was to spray them with water. You needed to dowse them with sand and deprive them of oxygen. Because as soon as you put water on them, they exploded. They exploded into fragments, and each fragment was alive and burning and causing fires.
This is what happened with the young people, the visionaries, in the city parish we tried to form. One by one the visionaries left the inner city parish and took their support to suburban churches. This was great for the suburban churches, and they benefit from it to this day, but the city parish itself, its history since 1977, I regard as a sad story. In many places, including our own congregation at Bellerive, the Uniting Church is alive and well. But in other places it has become a little, shall I say, moribund.
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We went into the Uniting Church in spite of the objections of one powerful leader who sought to influence others, especially the young people. It was a painful transition as we lost this man, his family, and many young people who were his children’s friends—eight Sunday school teachers in one day. Our church never recovered and is still struggling today.
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I HAVE NEVER FELT COMFORTABLE: REAL PROBLEMS AND PAIN
Yes, I joined the Uniting Church and thought it was right at the time but when the church I attended for 29 years closed and I went to another which was of Methodist background, I have never felt comfortable. I guess I still have my Congregational background deep in my soul.
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Transition for me was personally a bit traumatic. I prefer order and predictability.
It was all stripped away, with fewer and fewer services in the old Congo church, more and more in the Methodist church, until the interim Church Council, and after union, the Church Council, voted to not offer the Congregational minister an extension of his tenure and voted to deconsecrate the Congregational church building. This was done. By 1984 the property was sold, the proceeds were invested with the Uniting Church, and by 1987 the old building was demolished.
I lost a supporting pastoral relationship with that minister, and when a new academic clergyman was appointed I found it almost impossible to find any common ground.
That was my experience; I imagine many other Congregationalists felt left out and ignored. Many former Congregationalists left and what happened to them only God knows.
Very sad, a very mixed introduction to the Uniting Church. Those putting pressure on the former Congregational minister to leave were wrong and unjust. But, as a gentle man knowing his and his family's limitations only too well, he simply left and found employment as a biscuit packer to help put his two children through high school. He died some years ago. His confidence may never have returned; I do not believe he ever led a Uniting Church parish.
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Our City Congregational Church joined the Uniting Church. I attended for a few months and couldn't seem to settle there. There was only one Congregational Church stayed out of the Union. It was Pilgrim Congregational Church, Bardon. I decided to move my membership there. It is a small suburban church, with a membership of around twenty or so. I had placed a memorial window in City Church in memory of my husband, so I transferred it to Bardon Church. This beautiful window, depicting our musical family, now stands behind the Communion Table.
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ON REFLECTION . . .
Much of what we value continues in the Leura UC to which I now belong: participation of lay people in worship and an equality seen in men and women’s contributions. My one real concern is in arriving in decision making by consensus. The effort we took in our Congregational meetings to arrive at consensus was always a strong feature of church life. There was the sense that we could all remain friends and have different, strong opinions in a meeting. We could separate people from issues in our regard for them.
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For me the greatest loss has been the move from an almost total oral tradition to a highly regulated organization . . . I regret that people have become more ‘regulation-minded’ than being challenged to think their way through both the small and large situations that occur. A cloud of orthodoxy and orthopraxis seems to have arisen and cast its shadow widely.
I have not allowed UC rigidity to interfere with my learned Congregational freedoms. I have benefited from some of the material provided in these matters, but I regret the strong leanings toward Anglican and Catholic procedures which permeate published orders.
[In the Uniting Church] much time and effort has been spent on emphasizing and refining the practice of Baptism and Confirmation with the gradual omission of Church Membership . . . It does seem to me that by this change in approach, the significance of belonging and working together and accepting one another at the local level has been diluted, and may be heading for the endangered species list.
The change from the Congregational Ministers’ Retirement Fund (“sufficient to keep a minister in cigarettes”) to the Uniting Church Beneficiary Fund has made retirement a more pleasant financial experience.
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We didn’t as Congregationalist push our history and our great heritage enough. Perhaps we got too caught up with our smallness and our survival. Most Methodists were brought up on Wesley’s sermons, the greatness of the Wesleys, and the reforms gained in their breakaway from the Anglican church. Presbyterians are so proud of Calvin, and the law, and their organized legal structures.
In the early days of the Uniting Church, we still heard a lot about the Wesleys, the Leaders’ Meetings and the Quarterly Meetings. The Presbyterians still have their Presbyteries and familiar Eldership. We lost the authority of the Church Meeting, and the local under-Christ-autonomy, and were so numerically weak in many places as to be almost ignored. In many ways, the emphasis of Denominational Past is diminishing—good in some ways, but in other ways, as we forget our heritage, and do not share its richness, we are losing much.
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The Church Meeting is lost. That gift to the Uniting Church has been lost through the new way of governance. I don’t feel now that we listen enough. We listen to economic reasons and can be convinced against our better judgement that this is the way things should be. Ownership of the local area is lost. Small presbyteries have become huge ones. Those without e-mails are left out; we have lost the continuity of communication. People won’t go to Presbytery Meeting because they are held too far away. They will become little power groups because people are not meeting together.
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On occasion it has been a bit difficult that some of the legalistic requirements seem to be more important than an individual’s needs, but I believe that this has been more difficult for Congregationalists ( used to autonomy) than to others who have been used to deferring to Quarterly Meetings, or Presbyteries, before making their decisions.
Over the years, we have had ministers from both Methodist and Presbyterian backgrounds, but no Congregationalists. We occasionally have to remind former Methodist and Presbyterian ministers that there are three participants in this alliance, as there is really nothing obvious from Congregational days, apart from the fact that we have always been good at co-operation, and Isaac Watts was not a Methodist.
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I must say, however, that I have never felt comfortable with UCA’s hierarchical structure of government (synods, presbyteries), with local congregations on the bottom of the pyramid. Nor do I see much value in persisting with different types of membership (confirmed, members in association, and adherents). I am sure that my stance on the above derives from my Congregational background- discipleship of equals.
The people paid for the local church, so they should have rights, but in the Uniting Church these are not being respected. In the UCA we keep having to get Presbytery approval. Presbytery is sometimes supportive, but synod is a problem. When a church is a stickler for the rules, this can block local initiative.
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AND IN CONCLUSION . . .
Perhaps we can find a way to help Congregationalists to reconnect with their heritage and share it with other members of the Uniting Church.
It seems that this would be a positive thing to do.
Next: Chapter 26. Church Buildings and Their Loss
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