In our opinion—this is the best one yet!
In order to best understand constituency meetings, we need first to understand what the conference is and how it works. A local conference is “a group of local churches within a defined geographical area” granted official status as a conference (Church Manual, p. 29). Often these groups cover roughly the area of a state. It is granted status; it is not an entity unto itself.
Similar to the Local Church but Scaled Up
Just as the local church is composed of a grouping of individual church members, has a church board, and its highest authority is its gathering in a church business meeting, similarly, the conference is composed of individual churches, the conference executive committee is its “church board,” and the conference constituency session is its “church business meeting.”
As the church in business meeting (or “miniature” business meeting) elects officers to serve in the administration of the local church congregation, so the conference, meeting in a constituency session, elects officers to serve in the administration of the conference. The local church usually has the pastor as chairman of the board. At the conference level, the conference constituency session elects a conference president to be chairman of the conference executive committee.
Unlike most congregations, the conference will have several employees. Pastors for local congregations are hired to staff the conference sisterhood of churches. The conference president in counsel with the conference executive committee directs all conference employees, including its pastors. The executive committee is also empowered to change church assignments of pastors as needed (p. 35). The local church does not employ its own pastor; the conference employs him and assigns him to serve in a congregation. The local church cannot fire its pastor; only the conference can dismiss him.
The conference executive committee (ExCom) represents the work in the entire conference.(p. 121). The local church has no authority outside its own body. It unites with other churches in the conference in delegating authority and responsibility to the conference officers and executive committee to carry on the work of the conference between constituency sessions. Conference officers are answerable to the conference as a whole and not to any one church (p. 121).
The three officers who carry most of the administrative burden are the conference president (similar to the pastor), the conference secretary (similar to the church clerk), and the conference treasurer (similar to the church treasurer). A fourth significant leader is usually the conference education director who oversees the schools operated by the conference and its staff of teachers. The administrative committee, or AdCom, is a subset of conference officers, usually the president, secretary, treasurer, and education leader. In some conferences it may include additional vice presidents. The world church asks that conferences not title the other administrative officers as vice presidents but some conferences s do so anyway.
Beside these workers you have several departments like ministerial, communications, religious liberty, human resources, personal ministries, and so on. Those departments carry on their work guided by the executive committee and the administrators mentioned just previously.
The actual buildings and properties of the conference are owned by a separate entity known as the conference association, which also handles trusts and wills, insurance issues, and other details.
Originating with the Constituency
As we have previously mentioned, a crucial idea is that “Administrative authority in a conference originates with its constituency.”(p. 120) That is, the authority rests in the members, the members elect representatives that form the majority of constituency delegates, and the constituency delegates elect the president, other leaders, and department heads. Furthermore,
In Seventh-day Adventist Church structure, no organization determines its own status, nor does it function as if it had no obligations to the Church family beyond its boundaries.(p. 29)
No conference is independent of the other parts of the global body. The administration of every conference impacts the global perception of what the church is, particularly to outsiders. If a conference in Germany advocates for immoral practices, it directly bears on the moral standing of the church in America, Chile, and Japan. For this reason local conferences are doubly answerable. They are answerable from the bottom to their own constituency, and, answerable from above to other parts of church organization. Every conference has obligations to the church family beyond its boundaries.
In this light, another Church Manual statement stands out:
No attempt should be made to set up standards of membership or to make, or attempt to enforce, rules or regulations for local church operations that are contrary to these decisions, adopted by the General Conference in Session and that are set forth in this Church Manual.(pp. 17-18)
This warning especially relates to the conference, since that is the level where individual persons hold membership. No conference is authorized to attempt to enforce rules for local church operations that are contrary to the decisions of the General Conference in Session.
The Conference President
There are two key paragraphs in the Church Manual relating to the conference president, and it will be useful to consider them both:
The conference president should be an ordained pastor of experience and good report. He stands at the head of the gospel ministry in the conference, and is the chief elder, or overseer, of all the churches. He works for their spiritual welfare and counsels them regarding their activities and plans. He has access to all the churches and their services, business meetings, and boards, without vote unless granted by the church, or unless he is a member of that congregation. He may, by virtue of his office, preside over any meeting of any church when necessary. He has access to all church records.
The conference president does not have authority to set aside the duly elected officers of the church, but will work in cooperation with them. They in turn are bound, in recognition of the ties of conference fellowship, to counsel with him over all that pertains to the welfare of the church. They should not attempt to exclude him from a proper discharge of his duties (p. 32).
Thus,
• A conference president can only be biologically male (since the church only calls and ordains biological males to the gospel ministry)
• Many who support women’s ordination insist that the church doesn’t believe in “male headship”—all while every conference president is fully aware that the Church Manual explicitly identifies the conference president as he who “stands at the head of the gospel ministry in the conference”!
• When the conference president “counsels” the churches in his conference, that does not mean he is authorized to bark orders at them or that they are compelled to obey him. The fact that the president is explicitly forbidden from voting unless the local church grants him voting privileges makes clear that his power is limited at the level of the local church body. Why? Because the authority rests in the membership; it is not in the president’s person as an elder or ordained minister, nor is it in his office as president or chair of the conference executive committee. The local church is where membership is rooted and thus where authority in the conference is rooted.
• The conference president has access to church services, business meetings, and board meetings. It is never implied that he has access to the intimate deliberations of local church nominating committees. He could only become engaged in nominating committee work if the local church where he holds his membership elects him as one of the members of its nominating committee.
I know of a case in a conference that has happened recently where a conference president interfered with the work of a local church nominating committee of a church where he did not hold membership. He threatened that if the church appointed certain members (who had been tried in a church business meeting and found innocent!) to serve, he would have that congregation reduced to Company status. He unilaterally declared to that congregation that if that congregation elected those same persons (which the church in business meeting had found to be innocent of the charges leveled against them) as officers, the church would be in a status of “rebellion against the conference.” Under these threats, that local church voted to disband the nominating committee it itself had elected! Not long after bowing to this satanic spirit, the congregation actually voted to reduce itself from church status to company status anyway. There was no due process.
There are occasions where one calls the “authorities” because there is an emergency. Your family member is having a diabetic episode and wandering around high on a roof and you call the sheriff. Sheriff comes, things go awry, confused family member is shot and falls to his death. Sometimes well-meaning church members call in the “authorities” from the conference or the union to “help” the local church, but instead, the local church is bruised even more. Since “the authority rests in the membership” especially at the local congregation level, it likely would have been best if that congregation had properly exercised the authorities entrusted to itself and worked with more determination to address its own problems itself. There are times when seeking the help of conference authorities is actually abdication from the hard work of making peace with each other.
The Conference Church
There is something called the conference church, singular, which is a way that members in distant locations in the conference where no local church body exists can hold membership (p. 57). The conference church exists as a congregation on paper only; it has no church board and it does not meet in a physical location for worship on sabbath. The “conference church” conducts its business under the leadership of the conference president as its elder, conference secretary as its clerk, and conference treasurer as its treasurer, with the conference executive committee acting as its board (p. 60). Members of churches which are expelled or changed so that they no longer hold church status have their memberships automatically transferred to the conference church, which is empowered ultimately to drop those persons from membership.
Right to Appeal
The Church Manual neither outlines any process nor offers any safeguards as to how conference leadership may declare a local church congregation to be in rebellion. However, “rebellion against the conference” (p. 41) and remaining “in rebellion” (p. 42) are given as reasons for which a local congregation can be removed from church status or dissolved as a body.
A local church can appeal to the union executive committee to arbitrate on behalf of the local church (p. 42). The Manual also states that where interpretation of the Church Manual is disputed, members can “consult with their union conference/mission for clarification”(p. 19). More than this, a process has been added to the Manual by which a local church or other church entity can appeal to the different administrative levels of the church in a disputed matter:
When differences arise in or between churches and conferences or institutions, matters that are not mutually resolved may be appealed to the next higher organization. If the matter does not get resolved at this level, the aggrieved entity may appeal to successively higher levels of organization. An organization to which an appeal is forwarded, may choose not to hear the matter, in which case the decision of the highest organization involved in the dispute shall be final (CM, p. 31).
Therefore, a local church congregation which is declared to be in rebellion by the conference of which it is part may appeal to the union to which the conference belongs. If the matter is not resolved at the union level, it may be appealed to the division and the General Conference.
The conference executive committee does not have authority to disband or dissolve a local congregation. Only a constituency meeting of the conference can take such an extreme step (p. 42).
Special Constituency Session
Every conference has a mechanism built into its Constitution and Bylaws document defining how a special constituency meeting can be called by the conference members. The criteria is usually something like if 20% of church boards vote to call for a special constituency meeting, the conference is required to hold one. When local churches begin voting to hold a special constituency meeting it tends to strike fear and consternation into conference officers, because at a special constituency meeting members can replace conference leaders whether they want to be replaced or not. To call for a special constituency meeting is a very important measure by which church members can bring substantial correction in their conference.
In my next presentation I plan to address one particular question which has arisen—a change recently voted into the Church Manual involving guest speakers. The presentation immediately after that will deal with constituency sessions.
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Larry Kirkpatrick serves as pastor of the Muskegon and Fremont MI Seventh-day Adventist churches. His website is GreatControversy.org and YouTube channel is “Larry the guy from Michigan.” Every morning Larry publishes a new devotional video.