The conservative movement within the Uniting Church (UCA), The Assembly of Confessing Congregations (ACC), closed its ministry with a thanksgiving service on Sunday, April 30, 2023, at Faith Church, a former Uniting Congregation that has joined the Diocese of the Southern Cross.
“Your voice still calls men and women to come to follow you, to stand for truth and justice and to ministry within your church,” Rev Dr Robert Corrie began the service invoking the call of God on our lives. “And today, it is appropriate that we give thanks for the many men and women who answered your call and held fast to the faith over the centuries and particularly those strong voices within the Reforming Alliance and the Assembly of Confessing Congregations. The response was to your voice and for your glory. And so today, we honour you with our songs, praise and prayers, for you alone are worthy.
“As always, we must confess that there have been times when we have failed to listen, hear and heed your voice. Many times we have followed other voices which have taken us away from your side. We admit the sorrow we have caused and seek forgiveness for being so foolish. Thankfully, when we left your side, you did not leave our sorrow. As the good shepherd, you sought the lost ones, and your loving voice called us back to the fold and to repentance. Thank you for your mercy, grace, and forgiveness to those who humbly seek your face.
Welcoming people to the service, LuLu Sentituli, former UCA minister who has led his congregation out of the UCA and possibly into the new diocese, gave a short history of the ACC.
(The dissidents naming their body as the Assembly of Confessing congregations, mimicking the name of the UCA’s peak council called the Assembly of the UCA, has irritated some UCA leaders and, at times, confused media. In this story, Assembly means the UCA body.)
“On the 12th of July, 2006, immediately after the 11th assembly of the Uniting Church, a joint summit of Evangelical Members of Uniting Church, EMU, and the Reforming Alliance was held with the Queensland University. Over 150 people from around Australia attended this meeting at Kings College to discuss the Uniting Church in Australia’s failure to uphold the faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic church.
“Some of you here today and those back home watching online may recall that day. It was
the meeting in which it was declared that the decisions of the Assembly were a departure from the one holy catholic and Apostolic church. The Assembly had failed to observe its own prescribed processes from procedures on the issue of sexual relationships.”
Congregations (local churches) met to join the new body, the Assembly of Confessing Congregations.
The echoes of the later Gafcon movement within the Anglican Communion are unmistakable, sexuality as a presenting issue, frustration with the processes of the church, and setting up a parallel structure. Unsurprisingly, Faith Church and others within the ACC are joining the Gafcon Australia’s Diocese of the Southern Cross.
Senituli described the ACC’s long period of struggle within the UCA.
“Within the collapse of Western Christianity, at least within the mainline Protestant church, the church community both disliked the reformed evangelical, orthodox faith which rejoices in the splendour of the truth, the body of Jesus Christ. So church leaders desperately tried to fix the hole in the boat, only to be seen owning the bailing out …afraid of the wind of renewal and eager to shore up their authority.
“The captains and the senior crew of the Uniting Church received several “stop” warnings.
Uniting Church leaders have neither stood against the post-Christian forces raging around us nor pointed us to the one in whom the hope of the church and the world.
“As such, the ACC was called to be steadfast and loyal to Christ alone, the head of the church. The ACC called its members to remain in the church as long as preaching the gospel was not difficult. Until then, we encouraged churches to provide sound theological teaching and work to reform the church from within.”
ACC was the conservative group that stayed in. However, by 2006 when they were formed, several charismatic churches had left the UCA, many to create the Crosslinks network. ACC were those determined to say and fight.
For them, there was a moment “when it became clear that the ongoing change brought upon the church was relentless. The critical point departure was on Friday, 3rd of July, 2018, when the Assembly exercised authority to vary the marriage policy [to include] same-gender relationships.”
Senituli describes what happened to him.
“The clear evidence that the situation is untenable and unworkable is highlighted by the fact that two of our congregations were shut down, dissolved by the United Church and the Queensland Synod, removing Reverend Lulu and my recognition as United Church Ministers and terminating our placements. In reality, the Uniting Church has to shut us down because to accept religious and ethical diversity as the core overarching determining doctrine of the United Church .means that it must reject all the God and the traditional biblical belief that marriage is the exclusive union of one name and one movement.”
Hedley Fihaki’s Mooloolaba group and soon Lulu Sentituli’s Sunnybank congregations will have a new home in Gafcon’s Diocese of the Southern Cross. What was intended as a lifeboat for Anglican Churches who wished to leave progressive regions of the Anglican Church of Australia has become a home for dissident UCAers. It may be that the UCAers, for the time being, are the majority in the new diocese.
Dissolving the two Queensland congregations made it hard for the ACC to continue. But other evangelical groups, such as Propel, remain in the UCA.
The Other Cheek ran an update on Propel’s evangelical ministry and planting churches.
Correction: it was Lulu Senituli who gave the history of ACC. Date of service was april not may.
Nearly 46years ago my family which had been Presbyterian split with my mother’s younger brother and my father’s brother in law, both ministers of the Presbyterian Church of Australia left to become ministers of the newly formed UCA. Thankfully, my father, an elder, being one who voted against Union at the 1974 General Assembly of the PCA , the majority voting for Union, resulting in the division of the old PCA of which we remained a part of the “continuing” church and thankfully so. Subsequently I was ordained into the PCA and 2 of my cousins married men who likewise became ministers in the PCA. It is with sadness that I read that the UCA has steadily gone down the path of so many denominations, abandoning the Bible based faith on which all of us were founded.