By Rod Benson
One of the most significant principles in Catholic social teaching is the doctrine of subsidiarity. In broad terms, subsidiarity holds that responsibilities should be exercised by persons and smaller communities when they are capable of doing so, while larger institutions should provide support, coordination and intervention in pursuit of the common good. The principle is germane to modern Catholic social teaching, although its underlying concern is older: the protection of human dignity, participation and responsibility against unnecessary centralisation.
For the Uniting Church in Australia, subsidiarity provides a useful ecumenical lens through which to reconsider the relationship between Congregation, Presbytery, Synod and Assembly, and to reflect on the proper distribution of authority within a Church committed to both freedom and communion. The Uniting Church did not derive its polity from Catholic social teaching. Its structures emerged from the Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian traditions brought into union in 1977. Nevertheless, its theological tradition contains notable affinities with the principle of subsidiarity.
The Basis of Union describes the Uniting Church as governed through interrelated councils, each entrusted with particular responsibilities, each required to recognise the limits of its own authority, and each expected to give heed to the others. Most importantly, it declares that Christ alone is supreme in his Church, that Christ may speak through any council, and that the councils are to be united through “mutual submission in the service of the Gospel”. This implies a distributed ecclesial authority that is more theologically substantial than a simple preference for decentralised administration.
These questions have acquired renewed urgency through Act2, the most extensive national reconsideration of the UCA’s common life since Union. Initiated by the Assembly Standing Committee in 2020, Act2 proceeded through successive stages of consultation, theological reflection and structural analysis, culminating in Act2: The Gift of the Spirit in 2024. Earlier work identified threats to long-term sustainability, unequal resourcing, an “unduly complex and bureaucratic governance structure”, excessive administrative demands, and insufficient cohesion around national identity and vision. Act2 frames its task as ecclesial discernment rather than organisational efficiency. The central issue is how the Church might order its common life so as to participate more faithfully in the mission of God.
Subsidiarity and the authority of Christ
Subsidiarity is sometimes reduced to the claim that decisions should always be made locally. Catholic teaching offers a more nuanced account. A larger community should not take over functions that a smaller community can properly exercise, but it should assist smaller communities when necessary and coordinate their activity in relation to the wider common good. Some responsibilities plainly require common standards, specialist expertise, substantial resources or decision-making at a broader level. The central issue is not whether authority should be local or central in the abstract, but whether a particular responsibility is located where it can be exercised most appropriately and fruitfully.
This distinction is especially important in the Uniting Church. The issue is not a contest between congregational freedom and national authority, nor a simple question of whether power should move upward or downward. The more fundamental theological question concerns the proper location of responsibility under the lordship of Christ. No UCA council possesses sovereignty over others. Congregation, Presbytery, Synod and Assembly each exercise particular responsibilities within a larger communion, and each is called to wait upon God’s Word and seek obedience to God’s will in matters committed to its oversight.
Describing the Church in terms of four “levels” suggests a hierarchical ecclesiastical ladder in which Assembly stands at the top and Congregation at the bottom. Instead, the Basis of Union speaks of interrelated councils operating locally, regionally and nationally. The UCA is better understood as interconciliar: a communion of councils operating at different scales, each possessing genuine responsibilities and each accountable within the life of the whole Church. This understanding better reflects the theological character of the UCA’s polity.
The principle of mutual submission deepens this account. Subsidiarity warns larger bodies against unnecessarily absorbing the responsibilities of smaller ones, while mutual submission requires every council to remain receptive to the wisdom and correction of others. Congregations must attend to the wider Church, but Assembly must also hear the experience of local communities. Presbyteries require the support of Synods, while Synods depend upon the contextual knowledge and relational authority found closer to congregations. Authority is thus exercised within a network of relationships rather than transmitted merely through a vertical chain.
Congregation and Presbytery: local mission and relational oversight
The Congregation has particular importance because it is ordinarily the place where the Church becomes visible as a worshipping, discipling, witnessing and serving community. Act2 has strongly recovered this priority. The vision adopted by the 17th Assembly places life-giving communities of faith, discipleship and mission at the centre of renewal: communities that sustain worship, build one another up in love, form disciples of Jesus and participate in God’s mission while responding to God’s call in their particular contexts.
Subsidiarity supports substantial local freedom because mission is necessarily contextual. A congregation in western Sydney, an Indigenous community in remote Australia, a small rural church, an ageing suburban congregation and an emerging intercultural community cannot be expected to organise their common life in identical ways. Local communities need sufficient freedom to respond to their circumstances, develop leadership, shape appropriate patterns of ministry and discern how best to serve their neighbours. Such freedom is not a concession to diversity but an ecclesial recognition that Christian witness must take embodied form in particular places and cultures.
The congregation is nevertheless ecclesially primary without being ecclesially sufficient. It embodies the Church locally but is not the whole Church. Its freedom exists within catholic communion. Congregations receive ministers, theological resources, wider disciplines and forms of accountability that they could not adequately sustain in isolation. Their life is strengthened, and at times corrected, through participation in the wider Church. Subsidiarity within the UCA is best understood as local agency within communion rather than congregational autonomy.
Presbytery occupies a particularly important place within this ecclesial ecology because it is close enough to congregations to know their circumstances while carrying responsibilities beyond any one community. Its work in ministerial oversight, placements, congregational support and regional mission illustrates the positive dimension of subsidiarity. A healthy Presbytery should not unnecessarily manage the ordinary life of flourishing congregations, but neither should it lack the capacity to assist, mediate or exercise accountable oversight when required.
Act2 has highlighted the difficulties created when councils carry substantial responsibilities without resources adequate to fulfil them. This suggests an important principle for future reform: responsibility without capacity is subsidiarity in name only. Authority, personnel, financial resources and practical responsibility need to be aligned more closely if the Church’s interconciliar system is to function effectively. Act2’s concern with equitable resourcing and the stewardship of common wealth reflects precisely this problem.
Synod and Assembly: enabling the whole without absorbing the parts
Synods carry substantial responsibilities for functions that individual congregations and Presbyteries cannot reasonably reproduce. These include areas such as property, finance, professional standards, employment, risk management, institutional governance and major agencies, although the precise distribution of responsibilities varies among Synods. Such capacity is not contrary to subsidiarity. Larger institutions have legitimate functions precisely because some responsibilities require greater scale, expertise or coordination than smaller bodies can provide.
The danger lies in confusing assistance with absorption. Because Synods often possess greater professional and financial capacity, responsibilities may gradually migrate toward them even where they could properly remain elsewhere. Good administration is indispensable, especially in a complex regulatory environment, but administrative requirements can consume the time, imagination and energy of smaller communities. The relevant criterion is whether regional systems strengthen the capacity of Congregations and Presbyteries or unnecessarily replace their agency.
Act2 offers a useful corrective through its emphasis on common administrative services and reduced duplication. Shared arrangements for specialist functions can increase rather than diminish local freedom. Congregations do not need to recreate sophisticated systems independently for every legal, regulatory or administrative responsibility. Well-designed common services release people and resources for worship, discipleship, pastoral care and mission. This is not centralisation for its own sake, but an attempt to match functions with the level at which they may be most effectively performed.
Assembly has a distinct national vocation. Some matters necessarily require the perspective of the whole Church, including responsibilities relating to doctrine, worship, standards of ministry, theological formation, national mission and ecumenical relationships. Subsidiarity does not diminish these responsibilities; it helps explain why they properly belong at the national level. Without sufficient common identity, local diversity can fragment into ecclesial incoherence.
National authority nevertheless remains relational. Assembly is not simply the head office of a religious corporation. Paragraph 15 of the Basis of Union places every council beneath Christ, requires every council to recognise the limits of its authority, and directs all councils to give heed to one another. The Assembly serves the unity of the Church most faithfully when national leadership and local discernment remain in genuine conversation rather than existing in institutional isolation.
Common wealth, covenant and leadership
Subsidiarity must be accompanied by solidarity. Without solidarity, it can degenerate into institutional self-sufficiency, in which congregations look after themselves, prosperous parts of the Church preserve their resources, and communities lacking wealth or personnel are left behind. Catholic social teaching’s insistence that larger bodies assist smaller communities finds a strong UCA parallel in Act2’s vision for sharing our life and common wealth.
The 17th Assembly adopted a vision of “a network of deeply connected councils” responding to God’s call, exercising healthy oversight of ministry and mission, celebrating both diverse and shared identity, and becoming faithful stewards of the Church’s common life and wealth. It also called the Church to prioritise the sharing of resources for the benefit of the whole. These commitments move the discussion beyond structural efficiency toward a mature theological understanding of common stewardship.
This has significant implications for the future. A Church committed to subsidiarity cannot transfer responsibilities toward local or regional bodies while leaving resources concentrated elsewhere. Nor should inherited patterns of property ownership determine where future mission can flourish. Money, property, personnel and expertise may need to move across established institutional boundaries so that emerging, remote, intercultural or otherwise under-resourced communities can participate fully in the Church’s mission.
The Covenant with the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress enlarges the discussion further. A straightforward European account of subsidiarity is inadequate if it ignores Indigenous understandings of community, Country, relationship, authority and self-determination. The UCA must consider not only where decisions should be made but whose authority is recognised and whose has historically been displaced. The Assembly’s 2026–31 Strategy explicitly includes renewing the Covenant and enacting in the Church’s law and life the sovereignty and self-determination of Congress.
A similar challenge arises from the UCA’s multicultural and intercultural character. Diversity should shape not only the composition of congregations but also leadership, theological formation, worship and national discernment. The future UCA cannot simply reproduce structures and assumptions formed within the largely Anglo-European ecclesial and cultural circumstances of the denominations that entered Union. Interculturality must increasingly shape the structures through which authority is exercised and the theological imagination by which the Church understands its common life.
The formation of ministers and lay leaders is equally important. Structural reform will achieve little if the Church cannot form Christians capable of theological discernment, evangelism, pastoral leadership and mission. Act2 made theological culture one of its central areas of concern, describing it in terms of the practices, institutions and texts that sustain the UCA’s distinctive theological life. The present Assembly Strategy continues this emphasis through work on theological renewal, discipleship, worship, mission and evangelism, theological education and younger leaders.
Future ministry is likely to require greater flexibility, although its precise forms remain matters for discernment rather than settled Act2 policy. Many communities already depend upon combinations of ordained ministers, Pastors, lay leaders and regional arrangements rather than a simple one-congregation/one-minister model. Subsidiarity offers a useful criterion for developing such patterns: leadership should be exercised as close as practicable to the communities being served, while wider councils maintain theological integrity, appropriate formation, ethical standards and accountable ministry.
Act2 and the future shape of the Church
The pilgrim character of the Church makes structural change theologically possible. The Basis of Union portrays the Church as a people on the way to the promised end and anticipates continuing self-examination of its common life. Act2 deliberately returned to this vision, recognising that changing social and ecclesial circumstances may require new structures and practices if the Church is to remain faithful to its calling. Institutional reform is not a departure from the founding vision of Union but one expression of fidelity to that vision.
This becomes especially significant as the UCA approaches its fiftieth anniversary in 2027. The 17th Assembly did not simply reaffirm the existing four-council structure. It commissioned a feasibility study examining the consequences, risks and opportunities of both three-council and four-council models. The Governance, Resourcing and Administration Commission is undertaking this work collaboratively and is expected to report to the 18th Assembly in 2027. The Assembly’s 2026–31 Strategy continues to identify the feasibility of three- or four-council models, together with other ways of deepening collaboration, as an active area of work.
Subsidiarity does not predetermine which model should prevail. It supplies criteria by which any future model may be assessed. A faithful structure should locate discernment reasonably close to those affected, equip councils for the responsibilities assigned to them, reduce unnecessary duplication, sustain effective oversight, preserve theological and missional unity, allow diverse communities sufficient room to flourish, and enable resources to follow mission rather than merely inherited structures. These criteria are more important than the preservation of any particular number of councils.
The direction of Act2 suggests the possibility of a Church that becomes less layered and more networked, institutionally lighter but relationally stronger, although this remains an inference rather than an adopted blueprint. Some specialist functions may increasingly be shared. Regional oversight may require clearer responsibilities and stronger resources. Local communities may benefit from greater flexibility, while national structures may need to articulate UCA identity, theological culture and common mission with greater clarity. Act2’s adopted image of “a network of deeply connected councils” provides a strong theological foundation for exploring such possibilities.
Subsidiarity cannot operate effectively in a culture of suspicion. Wider councils must trust local communities sufficiently to permit meaningful responsibility, while local communities must trust wider councils sufficiently to accept common standards, accountability and the sharing of resources. This requires a culture in which councils expect to receive wisdom, support and correction from one another, and in which shared authority is understood as an expression of communion rather than institutional competition.
An elegant governance structure will achieve little if it produces merely a better-administered declining institution. The deeper challenge concerns the Church’s capacity to proclaim the gospel, form disciples and leaders, renew existing communities and establish new ones. The Assembly’s 2026–31 Strategy expresses this through the interconnected vision Uniting in Christ: Flourishing Faith – Thriving Communities – Liberating Justice. Its Thriving Communities goal expressly seeks structures that better serve local communities and release people and resources toward mission and discipleship.
Freedom within boundaries, diversity within unity
Employed carefully, subsidiarity provides an ecumenical vocabulary for principles central to UCA ecclesiology: the sovereignty of Christ, the gifts of the whole people of God, the limits of institutional authority, mutual submission, covenant, responsible freedom and stewardship of a common life.
Unity without sufficient subsidiarity risks bureaucratic uniformity, while subsidiarity without communion risks fragmentation. Oversight without adequate resources becomes ineffective, and resources detached from accountability may entrench institutional power. Diversity without sufficient common identity can become incoherence, while uniformity pursued at the expense of diversity can suppress gifts through which the Spirit renews the Church. The challenge is to hold these goods together rather than to maximise one at the expense of another.
The way forward is to encourage freedom within boundaries and diversity within unity. Congregations require genuine scope to discern their mission. Regional structures need sufficient proximity and resources for relational oversight. Wider councils should provide expertise and services that smaller communities cannot reasonably sustain. Assembly should guard and articulate dimensions of faith and order belonging to the whole Church. Resources should cross institutional boundaries when the mission of the whole requires it.
The fundamental issue is not whether Congregation, Presbytery, Synod or Assembly gains or loses institutional power. It is whether every part of the Church is enabled to fulfil its calling under Christ. A sound distribution of responsibility will distinguish between what should properly be undertaken locally, what requires regional oversight, what belongs to the national Church, and what can best be done collaboratively across several councils.
This is the deeper promise of Act2. Its success should not finally be measured by whether the UCA retains four councils or adopts three, reduces committees, consolidates services or rewrites regulations. Its success will be measured by whether the resulting Church is better able to worship God, proclaim Christ, form disciples, sustain faithful ministry, nurture communities, serve its neighbours, seek justice and participate in God’s reconciling mission.
As the Uniting Church enters its second half-century, its task is not simply to reproduce the institutional settlement of 1977 nor to abandon the theological vision that gave birth to Union. It is to reflect on that vision and distinguish enduring theological commitments from structures capable of change. A genuinely pilgrim Church must be willing to reform its order while remaining anchored in Christ.
Subsidiarity, placed in conversation with interconciliarity, mutual submission and covenant, offers a valuable spiritual discipline for the journey. It understands authority as service, freedom as vocation, diversity as gift, and unity as communion. Church councils need not compete for institutional power but recognise their proper limits, exercise their distinctive responsibilities and strengthen one another in the service of the gospel, while remaining grounded in the foundational affirmation of the Basis of Union: the supremacy of Jesus Christ in his Church.
Rev Dr Rod Benson is General Secretary of the NSW Ecumenical Council and a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia serving at North Rocks Community Church in Sydney.
Image source: CSIRO
All Told 