Yesterday, I read this self-evidently true piece of analysis by Mic Wright concerning a “secret” memo sent by Angela Rayner. He notes:

It’s a “secret memo”. That’s the line the Daily Telegraph is keen to push about its front page story today. The document sent by the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government to the Treasury in March, ahead of Rachel Reeves’ Spring Statement, was only “secret” insofar as the memo wasn’t written for public consumption. It’s not surprising that the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, favoured tax rises over benefits, but the Telegraph wants to pretend that it is.

He goes on to say:

Whoever was behind the leak, the paper’s spin on the contents of the memo is almost the definition of over-egging the pudding. Riley-Smith writes:

The contents are eye-catching. Eight specific tax rises were floated in the Rayner memo… Ms Rayner’s memo was an attempt to get the Treasury to switch focus from spending cuts to tax rises on wealth. The revelations shatter the image of the Cabinet as a nest of birds singing in harmony on economic policy. In fact, the distinct sound of discord can be heard coming from the top table.

The words “floated” and “attempt” are key here. The ideas that came out of Rayner’s department were rejected by Reeves’ Treasury, and the Deputy Prime Minister lined up behind the cuts put forward in the Spring Statement. No one seriously believed that there were no disagreements in Starmer’s Cabinet, but ministers still loyally marched behind the banner of benefit cuts.

Wright comments this way about the story:

The leaked memo is catnip for the Telegraph because it feeds into the impression that, despite the Chancellor’s public pronouncements, Labour is secretly planning to hike taxes and wage war on the paper’s beloved high-earners. The fact that none of the proposals in the Rayner document were taken up by the Treasury doesn’t matter; this is like a scary bedtime story for Telegraph readers.

The article is more about the Daily Telegraph analysis and reporting of the matter than anything else. Wright is essentially arguing that the Telegraph are trying to confect a story that will play to the biases of their readership. You can read the rest of it yourself and see how he gets there.

The thing I found interesting was the interplay between the apparent peace and harmony of the leadership and the “secret” reality behind the scenes. Are the Labour Party trying to present a united front whilst there is bickering behind closed doors or is it just evidently the case that different people will have varying views on particular policies and will make a case for their position as policies are proposed whilst, typically maintaining a united front? You can judge for yourself whether the Telegraph or Wright have got it right.

This piqued my interest because I think sometimes we can view church elderships this way. Much like the cabinet, there is a sense of collective responsibility on an eldership. Elders must discuss issues, reach decisions and then present them to the church. It simply won’t do to have a utterly divided eldership. At some point, something must be done and the final decision must be agreed upon by the elders. There are all manner of ways that decisions might be reached and there are all sorts of ways differences of opinion might be addressed so that a united front can be presented to the church. I don’t intend to get into that here. Just to note, decisions are reached collectively and then presented to the church.

Views of the eldership, then, are likely to fall across the particular line in the Mic Wright article. Either, you view the eldership as having “secret” talks and almost feel misled if it turns out that any elder has a differing view to the collective decision presented to the church or you recognise that to reach collective decisions you may well have disagreement – with respective cases made in private – before the formal collective decision is made.

Some churches will resolve those things with a majority vote of the elders, others will give a weighted vote to the pastor, some will just talk it out until there is consensus. There are some other ways of doing it still. I don’t want to get into the rights and wrongs of any particular means of attaining a collective decision here. Rather, it seems worth highlighting (not least because many don’t seem to realise it is so) that whatever means you use, the likelihood is somebody, somewhere, at some point on an eldership will make a case that is not ultimately adopted collectively and will have to submit to whatever alternative position is adopted formally. That is as true of your pastor (even if the pastor’s vote is weighted like a metro mayor) as it is of other elders on the eldership.

Not only should that be self-evident – because it is pretty much always true of any group of people making a collective decision – it should also do two other things for us. First, it shouldn’t trouble us if, for some reason, it becomes evident an elder held a different view to the one being presented (more on which in a minute). If they are supporting the formal, collectively agreed position of the eldership but by some non-malicious or non-problematic means you discover they held a different view, we really shouldn’t be troubled by that as though there are “secret” disagreements and then a false pretence of unity.

Eldership, by its nature, is collective and involves discussion, sometimes disagreement, and then reaching an agreed formal position. If one is to remain an elder, they will sometimes have to submit to the collective view of the eldership if total consensus is not reached. By the same token, the collective view of the eldership may agree with them sometimes and in such cases become a matter to which others will sometimes have to submit. Unless there is utter consensus (which sometimes just isn’t there) this is inevitable and not, in itself, a problem.

However, second, it is a problem if a collective decision is reached and an elder is regularly making known he absolutely does not agree. This is particularly a problem if he stirs up dissent against the formal position. Collective decision-making cuts both ways and means you formally support what is agreed even when it goes against you knowing that other will support what is formally agreed when it goes in your favour against them. If an elder cannot, on principle, go along with the formal collective position of the eldership, he has no choice but to resign as an elder and probably as a member of the church unable to submit to the decision. Before taking that step, any elder should be asking whether this really is such a matter of principle and, if he was prepared to worked with these other elders at all, why a majority of men he considered godly all disagree with him on this point.

But what is not acceptable is for a formal collective decision to be reached and for an individual elder to then work against that decision. It is inappropriate for an elder to consistently make clear he held a different view and if he had his way this decision would not be taken. Certainly, it is not tenable to do that whilst remaining an elder. That sort of behaviour inevitably leads to dissension in the church and stokes ungodly division.

We all have an order to priorities. One priority in the church is the principle of co-equal, plural eldership. I believe God designed the church this way to avoid one man being burdened excessively with leadership, to put some brakes on individual sin running rampant and to give the church the benefit of a council of godly counsellors. But if those things are at play, inevitably we will make cases for positions that are ultimately not adopted. We will have views that ultimately do not become the formal collective position of the eldership. If we have any sense whatsoever of the importance and priority of a genuinely co-equal, plural eldership, these things are inevitable. They are, in fact, a feature of the kind of order God has instituted for his church. If a feature of the God-given design, it shouldn’t shock or surprise us if and when the curtain is occasionally lifted (whether purposefully or otherwise) and we recognise that feature at work.