Consensus Church Governance
Emmaus Abbey Church is governed by consensus. We have a Rectors council and a ministry board which oversees the administrative and finances of the church. Meaning, in our councils and parish, we seek God in all we due before making decisions. Parishes are a subdivision of our AOCC Dioceses. For example, Emmaus Abbey Church is part of the Diocese of Knoxville, overseer: Bishop Brett Travis. The Diocese is part of the Region of Southern Appalachia of the American Orthodox Catholic Church (AOCC-NA). Dioceses, which are the fundamental unit of church administration and governance, combine administratively though church members are rarely aware of administrative divisions between their diocese and their national church.
The AOCC Consensus Government
Term Catholic: This brings up the term “Catholic” in our name.” Catholic does not mean Roman Catholic. We are not from Rome as per Roman Catholics. We are American Orthodox Catholic Christians. The word “Catholic” comes from a Greek word meaning “regarding the whole,” or more simply, “universal” or “general.” I use to be a Southern Baptist pastor, I was a catholic pastor, regarding the use of the term “whole church. We all belong to God’s holy church, Catholic. No one owns the word catholic, it’s a universal term. For instance, the word church comes from the Greek “ecclesia,” which means “those called out,” as in those summoned out of the world at large to form a distinct society of believers. For example Methodists, Baptists, or Orthodox. So, the Catholic Church is made up of all Christians called out and gathered into the universal society founded through our Trinitarian baptisms in Christ.
In closing if you understand your bible and church history. The first decade of existence the church was made up exclusively of Jews in Jerusalem. But as the church grew and spread across the Roman Empire, in incorporated Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, Romans, freemen, and even slaves-men and women of every tribe and tongue. By the 3rd century, one out of ten people in the Roman Empire was a Catholic. Just as the word Trinity was appropriated to describe the nature of God, so the term catholic was appropriated to describe the nature of Christ’s mystical body, the Church. So, please let’s not tarry over biblical ignorance’s and get back to being one church under God! Acts 11:26.
Regions: The AOCC has Six Regions within the US and governed by our Patriarch, Archbishop Roger Paul Willingham, of the Cathedral of St. Stephens, Constable, NY and oversees churches in South America, Brazil, Philippines, Caribbean Islands and Central America.
The AOCC Consensus Government
The Patriarch’s Commission also presented the premise of Consensus Government:
“The Church is governed at all levels by leaders who choose men to serve on councils. The Councils shall operate according to the rules of Consensus Government. Councils shall review and advise in matters such as finances, activities, ministries, strategies, growth and development of the church, and other matters of importance that may come before them. Consensus requires, honestly, accountability and transparency. Consensus only works with accountability and transparency. The leader is accountable to his Council for the decisions made and resources used. “
Sometimes these regions are autonomous and sometimes they combine to form national churches which are autonomous. What it means for a region or national church to be “autonomous” is that there is no larger administrative unit that supervises it: no pope, no cardinals, no patriarch. Many parishes have only one parish church; some have more than one. There are many historical variations to this basic administrative scheme. Sometimes a diocese is divided into deaneries, or archdeaconries, and sometimes it is divided into archdeaconries which are in turn divided into deaneries. These divisions are not very important.
At the very center of the AOCC-NA church are its bishops. Every AOCC bishop has been consecrated by other bishops, who were in turn consecrated by other bishops. This process forms a chain that, according to scripture, leads back to the 12 apostles, who were the first bishops. There is historical proof of this, and our faith depends on it. Historians have traced the succession of bishops back to the early 2nd century AD.
The bishops are the spiritual successors of the Apostles, and the chain of consecration is called Apostolic Succession. The Greek word for Bishop is episkopos, which is the origin of the word “Episcopal”, and, for that matter, of the word “bishop”: in Latin it became “episcopus”, in Old English it was “biscop”, which came to be pronounced “bishop” and later spelled that way, too.
The AOCC-NA has Seven Bishops in North America and four in Foreign Countries with some100 Congregations.
The primary unit of organization and governance of the Orthodox church is the diocese. Presiding over each diocese is a bishop, who is called the diocesan bishop. Some dioceses have, in addition, other bishops, with titles such as Suffragan, Coadjutor, or Assistant Bishop.
When dioceses are combined into a province or national churches, there is another administrative layer. This next level is administered typically by an Archbishop or Presiding Bishop. However, the important point is not the name, but whether the presiding bishop has metropolitan powers, i.e. some jurisdictional rights over the bishops in his province and their dioceses, or whether he is only the chairman of meetings of bishops.
Another recent and controversial trend has been for presiding bishops not to have any diocese of their own. Each Province (i.e. North America) or national church has a periodic meeting of its bishops, which event has a name like “General Synod” or “General Convention”. At these events the church forms its rules, etc.
Ecumenical Relationship
Ordained clergy in the American Orthodox Catholic Church may participate in worship services and ceremonies with members of other religious faiths and Christian denominations if they hold to the Scriptures and do not lean into political correctness. So many churches today think the Bible is irrelevant to social issues, big mistake! IE, same sex marriage and other issues we cannot ecumenically walk beside churches who violate scripture.
Participation includes not only active leadership roles such as celebrant, con-celebrant, assisting clergy, preacher, and lector, but also participation as a member of the congregation or audience. While we respect those who embrace other religious traditions than our own, and desire to reach out to them with the love of Christ, we must ensure that our relationships with them honor and uphold our own religious tradition. Since AOCC clergy minister in relation to, and with the permission of, their ecclesiastical authority, the Bishops are the final arbiters of these policies and procedures.
AOCC-NA Organizational Structure
The AOCC-NA is an episcopal communion; meaning, its government is overseen by bishops. The word “Episcopal” is from the Greek word for Bishop in the New Testament: “Episkopos.” It is not intended to convey any other meaning except that. As stated above, The American Orthodox Catholic Church is not and has never been affiliated with any other denomination since the break from the Greek/Russian Orthodox church in 1924. We hold to eastern orthodox theological principles, but we are not ethnically, culturally an Eastern Orthodox Church, we are an “American Orthodox Catholic Church.” Our mission is to bring the richness of the early churches sacramental, liturgical, evangelical, charismatic faith back into the lives of every American in these United States. We believe that a valid, apostolic episcopacy is not an option but rather an essential part of the New Testament definition of the Church. However, AOCC bishops are not simply administrative overseers; they are chiefly pastoral.
Along with a governing episcopate, it is a founding principle of the AOCC that government occurs by consensus under the direction of the Holy Spirit. On the International level, the Patriarch’s Council and the International College of Archbishops confer on denominational matters chiefly through prayer; seeking the unity described in Acts 15 at the Council of Jerusalem. This same consensus process occurs within each provincial territory or national church, each region under the authority of its archbishop, each diocese under the authority of its bishop, and within each parish under the authority of its rector and his rector’s council. The denomination, as a whole, is governed by The Canon Law of the American Orthodox Catholic Church.
While subscribing to the traditional and biblical understanding of ordained ministry by the imposition of hands for the consecrating of episkopoi (bishops), presbuteroi (pastor/priest), and diakonoi (deacons), we also recognize the recovery, within the Orthodox movement, of the fivefold understanding of ministry expressed in Ephesians 4:11-13. That is, we believe that the gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher were designed for the edification of Christ’s Church until His coming again, and we anticipate these ministries, as well as other Gifts of the Holy Spirit, to be in operation–whether in the clergy or laity–in every healthy parish.