Here’s the first draft of a Code of Ethics I’ve been commissioned to write for the Baptist Union of Victoria. Watch this site for shorter/revised versions

Rowland Croucher

BAPTIST UNION OF VICTORIA

PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS AND CODE OF ETHICS

Note: The following is a ‘developing’ draft / working document. There are some repetitions of phrases and ideas which have yet to be rationalised.

Are ‘all bases covered’? This document includes many ideas from about 20 other similar Codes of Ethics, and from half a dozen books on the subject. (These range in size from one page to a whole book! I am working on the assumption that this document should be no longer than about 15 pages – short enough for most to read but complete enough to cover most of the material needed).

Feel free to email comments and suggestions at this point to me –

Note that I have tried not to use any sexist or clericalist/elitist language to avoid discriminating against women on the one hand, and leaders who are not ordained as clergy/pastors on the other. These linguistic protocols are important, to ensure that our language reflects our theology in terms of the equality-in-ministry of women and men and indeed the ‘ordination’ of all of God’s people for ‘ministry’. Our churches’ pastoral teams are tending to include ministering persons with a wide range of pastoral/counselling/administrative roles and experience.

Rowland Croucher

January 2003

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For pastors, elders, deacons, deaconesses, youth workers, and other commissioned leaders in churches and organisations affiliated with the Baptist Union of Victoria

PREAMBLE

This Code of Ethics is to be applied within the context of the Constitution and Regulations of the Baptist Union of Victoria.

Our churches are communities of faith, hope and love. They are called into being by God through the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Their uniqueness consists in being the continuing embodiment of the living, dying, and rising Saviour.

Within and between our churches we are united in love, service, suffering and joy through our shared faith in Christ. We worship, pray, study Scripture and other sources of faith, offer pastoral care to each other, develop deep friendships, and seek to be mutually accountable.

This document is offered to enhance the dignity of pastoral/leadership ministries in our churches, and to give the public greater confidence that we are committed to standards of excellence and to a high quality of professional service.

This document does not answer all the ethical questions which arise in the course of a church’s life. Rather it seeks to offer some aspirational goals to challenge and guide us toward the highest ideals of a ministry informed by a biblical faith.

It is offered for the guidance of all church leaders, in urban, suburban, regional and rural areas. (However it is recognised that rural/ regional and isolated communities present particular challenges in terms of professional/personal relationships; and the availability of supervision and access to support).

It is offered also as an encouragement to pastors, who have not had a good press lately. Before the scandals about cover-ups of sexual abuse in churches, and before that abuses relating to money, sex and power by some of the televangelists, Western literature has given clergy mixed reviews – from John Updike, backwards through Walker Percy (The Thanatos Syndrome: ‘This is not the Age of Enlightenment, but the Age of Not Knowing What to Do’), Andrew Greeley (‘To be a good churchman meant you had to be a good hypocrite’), Willa Cather (Death Comes for the Archbishop), Sinclair Lewis (Elmer Gantry), to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Goldsmith and others.

It is not easy being a pastor/leader in the church today and competing with television and megachurches and U2. And it is not easy when church members bring their quandaries about medical ethics that seem to offer only choices between lesser evils. Or when professional people (and others) complain ‘Church has never had anything to say about what happens when I go to work.’ Or young people complain ‘Church is boring and irrelevant.’

Models of church government are becoming more fluid. Authoritarian leadership rarely works in democracies. Eugene Peterson in many of his books argues that the pastor is not called to be a CEO but a spiritual director of his or her people. Elton Trueblood said the pastor is the ‘resident theologian’ in the local church. Edward Schillebeeckx has helped us understand the two broad concepts of ministry throughout church history: ‘ministry’ belonging to the whole church; or prerogatives of ‘ministry’ being given by special ordination to some (priests/pastors) which are not given to others. Here we are assuming that the best biblical approach to an understanding of ministry is the first model. That is, pastors, for example, only have only one unique prerogative: to be a shepherd/servant-leader.

We are also wrestling with several major theological issues. For example, a growing number of Baptist Churches is moving towards some form of ‘Open Membership’, recognising the validity of other churches’ baptism. Views on the Bible and liturgy and sexual orientation now range right across the fundamentalist/liberal spectrum in our churches.

INTRODUCTION

1. GUIDING BIBLICAL AND BAPTIST PRINCIPLES

CHRISTIAN MINISTRY – of any kind – is all about increasing love for God and for others. This may involve ‘toil and struggle’ (Colossians 1:28-29), and perhaps persecution (Psalm 37:7, John 16:33). But we grow through trials (James 1:2-4), and Christ gives us the grace to be thankful in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:18). As we love, support and encourage each other (John 13:35, 15:17, Ephesians 4:32), we may sometimes need to admonish or discipline one another – but this is always to be done in love rather than judgmentally, and with an acute awareness of our own sins and failings (Matthew 18:15,17, 1 Corinthians 5: 11-13, Galatians 6:1). Pastors and others are called to be loving, sacrificial ‘servant leaders’ (Matthew 20:25-28, John 12:26, 1 Peter 4:8-11, Colossians 3:12-17, Matthew 25:31-40, Hebrews 13:16, 2 Corinthians 1: 3-7). Our character must be ‘above reproach’ (1 Timothy 3:1-7, Philippians 1:27) because we are both ‘living for the Lord’ and ‘living in the sight of others’ (2 Corinthians 21).

As BAPTISTS we believe –

a.. in one God – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – who is revealed to humankind in many and varied ways, but especially and ultimately in Jesus; b.. that the Bible – Old and New Testaments – is the inspired ‘Word of God’, and authoritative for faith and conduct; c.. that all humans are created in the image of God, and have infinite dignity and worth, but they have chosen to sin against God; d.. that we are saved through faith in Jesus Christ, in order to follow him in a life of love and obedience, doing in our world ministries of justice, mercy and evangelism as he did in his; e.. that as Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit was God’s agent in creation, so also Jesus shall come again ‘to judge the living and the dead.’ f.. that God’s family comprises ‘the Church’, and we are invited to join a local church (through baptism in water and in the Spirit), in which, nurtured by the Word of God, the sacraments and pastoral care, and led by pastors and others, we are all ‘ministers’, in unity with all who similarly acknowledge Jesus as Lord; g.. that because all people are created in the image of God we accept and love every individual – of any race, age, creed or gender – as Jesus did. Our churches should therefore aim to be ‘safe places’, free from any form of discrimination or abuse, where we can experience with others what it means to be empowered by the Holy Spirit to live in faith, hope and love.