ABSTRACT
The Statement of Principles of Christian Law (2016) has usefully bottomed out some of the areas of church practice and procedure that will only ever be contained in one place if we as Christians gathered in different church traditions learn to live with and accommodate our differences. Presbyterians may be precious about their courts, but it is possible to conceive of ways in which they could accommodate other forms of leadership. Presbyterians may well think that the eldership is a key vehicle to develop the ministry of the whole people of God, but it is not hard to think of how the strength of a Kirk session could be combined with other forms of corporate governance. And the idea of a church that embraces the widest possible spectrum of belief is, for many, a key requirement in a context in which spiritual experience is more relevant to the lives of ordinary people than the survival of religious institutions.
