Moving Forward Together: Why ACGC's 2026 Restructuring Matters
Last week ACGC sent out the 2026 Triennial Convention Business packets to AC churches throughout the country. Included in that packet is a series of proposed by-law changes that are being put forward by the Executive Council. Those proposed changes are derived from the work of a task force that assessed our denomination’s current structure and effectiveness in order to recommend any appropriate changes that needed to occur. As one of the co-chairs of this task force I would like to offer a few explanatory comments that may be helpful as we think through these proposals.
We face significant challenges as a denomination and these proposals are a necessary, albeit imperfect, step forward in addressing our problems.
Before I continue, it is important for you to know that the original report of the Task Force on Restructuring included a fair amount of explanation as to why these changes are recommended, but that explanation is absent from the official proposals. I would encourage you to read the explanations given as they will provide helpful context.
Second, we should consider the goals of the proposals. I would suggest there are three:
Reduce institutional and positional overhead;
Denominational Unity; and
Mutual Accountability.
The assessment of the task force was that all three of these goals are critical for the health and mission of our denomination. It is my opinion that the proposals leave us with one unfinished goal, but succeed very well in the other two.
Let’s begin with what is unfinished: reducing institutional and positional overhead. It has been brought to our attention many times in the recent past (ranging from doctoral dissertations, to convention presentation, to ACV articles) that our denomination is aging and facing numerical (churches, pastors, and membership) decline. Only two actions were recommended by the task force to address this goal: 1. to set a minimum number of churches (6) per conference; and 2. to set a minimum number of ordained ministers (3) on a ministerial committee. While the second change remains, the EC made the first one ineffective by adding the qualifying statement, “Any conference applying for membership,” to the six-church minimum. Although it is a useful clarification if a group of churches applies to be a conference in the future, it is now meaningless for our current situation.
We are in a dire situation, and yet we have abdicated the responsibility to functionally consolidate in even the smallest way. Thankfully, these proposals are very friendly towards conferences and regions pursuing some form of consolidation themselves, and I would urge all of our conferences and regions to seriously consider doing so.
But let’s not think that these proposals should be, due to one incomplete objective, opposed. Overall, the remaining two goals are, I believe, well achieved. They are also far more important.
We can debate how many levels of structure and how many boards and even board positions we ought to have throughout the denomination until we are blue in the face. Ultimately, though, those are matters of the application of wisdom and discernment. Unity and mutual accountability, however, are critical, according to God’s own Word, to the health and life of the church.
In his first letter, the Apostle Peter stated, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (I Peter 2:9; ESV)” He was speaking to a group of churches and referring to them corporately. Together they, and we with them, are part of this peculiar people, drawn out from the world of darkness, and brought into the marvelous light – together. That corporate identity in Christ is critical to see. And God’s holy nation is called to be unified as one in Christ (see John 17:22-23; Ephesians 4:11-15).
As congregationalists we tend towards hyper-individualism. That is, we often functionally apply the repeating refrain of Judges – everyone did what was right in his own eyes – to how we relate churches, conferences, regions, and especially the denomination to one another. Tom Loghry recently put it another way by rhetorically referring to us as the “Open Borders Denomination.”
To the contrary, congregationalism should shine forth the unity of the body of Christ more visibly than many other denominational structures, since our unity is voluntary, not forced.
Now, I am not going to digress into an explanation of congregationalism, yet there is one important aspect that I want to suggest: congregationalism is neither top-down nor bottom-up in its authority structure. Instead, it is a structure of parity. What do I mean by that?
Congregationalism is a structure in which churches mutually agree to be in fellowship with one another and to support one another. It is a relationship among churches where some degree of biblical unity is recognized so that we might be equally yoked together (see II Corinthians 6:14). Functionally, this means that congregational conferences, regions, and denominations should not be viewed as organizations outside of the local church, or as structural entities that are above or below the local church. Rather, these structures ought to be viewed particularly as extensions of the local church. Why? Because as individual churches, with their own authority, join together in unity they function together as something bigger, and more beautiful than they do alone. There is no authority above the local churches. The churches voluntarily join and work together in unity.
Consider: I am the pastor (technically “teaching elder”) of the Whitefield Christian Church. We have a board of elders and all of the elders, myself included, are equals who are accountable to one another. We are all ourselves members of this church who have been appointed by the members of the church, and we are accountable to them. Likewise, the members are accountable to us, the elders. Ideally, and I would say biblically, this relationship is characterized through a covenant.
So also, as churches unite within a conference, there ought to be a sense of unity and mutual accountability. The churches are the conference, and as those churches are unified together they become the local church of a larger area. This can then be extended to the full denomination: it is the churches, conferences, and regions that it is composed of, not merely some abstract entity. That only works, however, if there is unity and mutual accountability.
Without it, we are likely to devolve into disconnected and unrelated churches that associate in name only. In many cases, this is what we already see. You see, in our current structure there is nothing that officially binds us together in unity, and there is no sense of mutual accountability. Everyone does what is right in his own eyes. The result is disunity and disconnection.
The proposed changes help address this in a number of ways. I want to highlight two of them.
First, these changes set forth what Advent Christian pastors, churches, conferences, regions, and associate members are. This unity is defined by affirmation of the Advent Christian Statement of Faith, Declaration of Principles, Enduring Resolutions, and by mutual participation in the work of the ministry (see the proposed revision of Article I, Section 2). The statements that are to be affirmed are not statements that have been set forth by an authoritative body outside of the local churches, but rather have been approved directly by the representatives of the local churches that make up this denomination. They are of the church, by the church, and for the church.
An important note before I continue: these changes highlight the necessity of the proposed 2026 Declaration of Principles which both defines and describes who we are. It sets forth a unifying identity for us.
Second, the proposed changes replace the ACGC Judiciary Committee with the General Conference Ministerial Committee (GCMC). The ACGC JC was, to my understanding, a passive body that heard disputes that were unable to be resolved at other levels. There is great benefit to this, and that responsibility has merged into the new GCMC, while this new representative body adds active mutual accountability.
Notice the qualified description of the GCMC: it is representative. It is not a hierarchical, authoritative body that can hand out judgments and sentences. Rather, it will work, periodically, on behalf of all the pastors, churches, and conferences, and regions, consisting of their own representatives, to guide our continued unity. And instead of making judgments, the GCMC is set up to make recommendations – first to the appropriate pastor, church, conference, or region, and only under serious circumstances to the Triennial Delegate Body.
Consider an example:
The pastor of a church has been accused of adultery and drunkenness. Due to the formerly outstanding reputation of the pastor, neither the local church or conference chooses to take any action whatsoever (this could be for a variety of reasons: admiration, fear, doubt, confusion, apathy, etc). As the GCMC reviews the annual ministerial report of that conference, they notice a mention of this matter, but no action taken. The GCMC then begins a process of contact with the ministerial committee to make recommendations on how to address the matter appropriately. In some cases, this spurring on (Hebrews 10:24) would be enough to resolve the situation. But let’s consider the worst case: the pastor is clearly known to be guilty (and repeatedly guilty), continues in active ministry, and the conference chooses to do nothing. After all other avenues of mutual accountability are exhausted, the GCMC would then have the responsibility of recommending a course of action to the next Triennial Delegate Body. And it would only be those delegates – that is, the churches themselves that make up ACGC – that would be able to make any final determination.
Admittedly, these are incredibly difficult matters, and we pray that such things would not occur among us. But we are human, and we still struggle with the flesh. And for the people of God, regularly spurring each other on is a critical means of growing in sanctification personally, and in unity together.
I’m sure that is a lot to process for many of us, and this likely has brought about many questions from all sorts of directions. And so I would encourage you to:
Ask your questions. Put them in the comments. Write an article. Or directly contact myself or others who have worked on these proposals.
Keep thinking and praying about these matters. We are in a defining moment, a moment that I believe can set a firm foundation for us to build upon until Christ returns.