Reading the WHS Eldership Survey: Context and Questions

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Work in progress. This resource is still being refined, and there will likely be updates over the next week or so as people read it and I have the opportunity to help refine it. Part of the reason I’m putting it out now is to help that conversation start. If you spot something that needs fixing, sharpening, or rethinking, please let me know.
View the survey here: surveymonkey.com/r/WHSEldershipSurvey2026 — Closes 25 May 2026

The PCNSW is consulting on a proposed change to restrict future eldership to men.

The consultation is being run as a Work Health and Safety process, with a survey that closes on 25 May. If you’ve been sent the link and weren’t sure how to engage with it, this post is for you.

I respond to legislative and regulatory consultations regularly, and I sit on committees that do the same. When I read a consultation paper, I need to understand what I’m being asked and why. What does the evidence say? What are the risks? What are the alternatives?

The PCNSW survey asks important questions, but it doesn’t provide any explanatory context tohelp you answer the questions well. So I went looking for that context. This is what I found.

A few things worth saying upfront.

This isn’t an attempt to argue the theological question of whether Scripture requires male-only eldership. That conversation is being had elsewhere, by people more qualified than me to have it. What this does ask is whether the process, the safeguards, and the evidence are adequate for a change of this magnitude. Those are governance questions, not theological ones, and they deserve honest engagement with the evidence we have. It’s also not a committee document. I’m a member and lay leader at my own church. I don’t have standing in the Assembly, and this hasn’t been produced in consultation with the WHS Consultative Committee or any denominational body.

What I do bring is experience in governance across business, not-for-profit, and community organisations, and time spent working on child safety policy. That work has shaped how I think about authority, accountability, and what happens when institutions get the structures wrong.

One thing readers should know: the evidence on the questions this survey asks runs predominantly in one direction — toward caution about the proposed change. That’s not because I’ve been selective. It’s because the evidence we’d need to feel confident about this isn’t there.

  • No public systematic evaluation has been identified showing what happened after any denomination restricted or removed women from governance.
  • No baseline assessment, no transition measurement, no outcome evaluation has been published for any Australian state church that moved to male-only eldership.
  • No binding structural safeguards specifically designed for all-male governance have been identified in any complementarian denomination, anywhere.
  • The alternative participation mechanisms that exist — advisory committees, women’s ministry groups, “co-worker” roles — don’t appear to have been independently evaluated.

That evidence gap is itself worth weighing. It is usual to see that institutions that are confident the change had worked well have measured it.

Where things get more complicated is in our own context. Most PCNSW congregations don’t currently have women serving as elders. In many churches, sessions have been all-male for years or always. The Code permits women to serve as ruling elders — and has done since the 1967 GAA — but most churches have not exercised that permission.

For some congregations, the proposed change would formalise what is already the case. For the small number of churches that do have women elders, current women elders would continue to serve in that role, but no new women could be elected. The door closes permanently for everyone.

There’s a real difference, though, between a church that has chosen its current arrangement and a church that is prohibited from doing otherwise. The current Code preserves the freedom of each congregation to discern, under the guidance of Scripture and the Spirit. The proposed change removes that freedom denomination-wide. Even for churches that haven’t exercised that freedom, that’s a different thing.

What follows is structured around the survey itself. Each section gives you some evidence — research, the Royal Commission, the experience of comparable denominations, our own data — and a set of reflective questions designed to help you think through your own answer.

A note before you start: this covers a lot of ground. You don’t need to read it all at once, and you don’t need to do the survey straight away. Read a section. Sit with it. Talk about it with someone — a friend, your home group, your spouse, your minister. The questions are sharper when you’ve heard how someone else answers them. If your session is willing to host a conversation, this could serve as a starting point.

With thanks to Valerie Ling (Centre for Effective Serving), a registered clinical psychologist and supervisor, for sharing her clinical and doctoral research into psychosocial safety, governance, and gender in church contexts which helped inform the framing of the WHS evidence here.

A note on how to read this

We’re a Reformed church. We believe Scripture is the supreme authority for faith and practice. We also believe, as the Westminster Confession teaches, that God has given us reason, conscience, and the experience of the church across the ages as gifts for understanding how to apply Scripture wisely. The Reformers built Presbyterian governance on the conviction that all human authority is fallible and must be accountable. They insisted on plurality of elders, parity between ministers and ruling elders, and the right of appeal to higher courts — precisely because they took total depravity seriously as a reality that shapes how institutions must be designed.

The questions in this survey are governance questions. They deserve both spiritual discernment and honest engagement with the evidence. The two are not in competition. A church that ignores evidence is not being more faithful — it is being less careful.

What follows is written for churches in every situation: those that have women elders and would lose the option of electing more, those that have never had women elders and may see no immediate change, and those in between. Wherever your church sits, the question the survey is asking is the same: what are the impacts if the door is permanently closed?

What you should know before you start

The survey exists because changes to governance structures can create psychosocial risks — risks to the psychological health and safety of the people in our churches. Under NSW law, PCBUs must identify and manage reasonably foreseeable risks to health and safety, including psychosocial risks, in connection with proposed changes and on an ongoing basis, not only after changes have been implemented.

The PCNSW’s own WHS Manual acknowledges the denomination’s legal obligations as a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU) under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW). Volunteers, including elders, are legally defined as “workers” under this Act. The Manual opens by affirming both a theological duty of care (love your neighbour) and a legal duty of care (comply with WHS) as a single commitment. The denomination itself has linked these two frames. They cannot later be separated when it is convenient to do so.

Under section 48 of the Act, consultation about changes affecting health and safety requires that four elements are present: sharing relevant work health and safety information with workers; giving workers a reasonable opportunity to express their views and raise health or safety issues; giving workers a reasonable opportunity to contribute to the decision-making process relating to the health and safety matter; and taking workers’ views into account and advising them of the outcome in a timely manner. The survey includes free-text boxes and open questions, and the Consultative Committee has indicated it will summarise responses from the survey and other consultations. On the face of the survey and the public material, information-sharing is clear, but the wider consultation process is not yet transparent enough to assess how the remaining section 48 elements will be met. It is possible that further consultation steps are being undertaken by the Committee that are not yet publicly visible — this resource can only assess what is in the public record. SafeWork NSW’s guidance is clear that there is no set way consultation must occur — but it must be genuine, and workers must have a reasonable opportunity to express views and contribute to decisions.

In September 2025, SafeWork NSW issued a prohibition notice requiring the University of Technology Sydney to halt a redundancy process, not because redundancies are unlawful in themselves, but because the way the process was being managed created a serious and imminent risk of psychological harm. This appears to be the first publicly reported instance of SafeWork NSW using a prohibition notice to stop a redundancy or restructuring process on psychosocial safety grounds.

Why does this matter for your church? Professor Tuckey’s research with a major Australian retailer showed that when organisations change the structures that govern people’s working lives — reporting lines, authority, who has a voice and who doesn’t — the way they manage that change determines whether people are protected or harmed. When the retailer redesigned its conditions through structured risk surveys, co-design with affected workers, and measured follow-up, bullying dropped. When institutions skip those steps, the process itself can become the source of harm. The UTS notice shows that regulators will now treat poorly managed change processes as psychosocial hazards in their own right. The proposed change to the PCNSW Code would alter who governs, who is heard, and who has formal standing in every congregation. That is exactly the kind of structural change that requires careful management. If it proceeds without adequate risk assessment, without genuine consultation, and without safeguards in place, the people most likely to bear the cost are the women who serve faithfully, the volunteers who raise concerns, and the children whose safety depends on governance that listens.

Who carries the legal duty? The PCNSW’s own WHS Guidelines state that each congregation is a PCBU, and that “much of this responsibility falls on the Committee of Management.” Officers of a PCBU must exercise “due diligence” to ensure compliance. The Guidelines are explicit: “It is not a defence to claim, ‘We can’t do anything about it’ or ‘We’ve been doing it this way for years.'” Under the Act, an officer is anyone who makes, or participates in making, decisions that affect the whole or a substantial part of the undertaking — which in the context of a congregation includes elders, ministers, and members of the committee of management. The decision on whether to change the Code rests with the members of the Assembly and, under the Barrier Act, with the members of presbyteries who must ratify it. But every officer at the local level has a duty of care for the safety of the people in their congregation during the consultation process that is happening now.

Questions worth sitting with

  • Does your session know about these legal obligations? Have they discussed them with your congregation?
  • Has anyone in your church been given the opportunity to raise issues about this proposed change that go beyond the preset questions in this survey?
  • If you have concerns that aren’t captured by the survey questions, how would you raise them?
  • Have you considered what governance, due process, and complaint pathways will need to be in place at the local level if this change proceeds, and what psychosocial risks those processes may create for ministers, elders, staff, and volunteers?
  • Have you thought about what psychosocial hazards might arise in your own church from the way this debate and survey are conducted — for example, conflict, exclusion, distress, loss of trust, or fear of speaking up?
  • Have you ensured that people in your church can participate in the survey with enough information to understand potential impacts, and with genuine freedom to answer honestly?
  • Before this change proceeds, have you, in your role as an elder or leader, been meaningfully consulted about the WHS implications you will be responsible for managing — and have you had the chance to raise your own concerns?

Section 2: Church Environment and Culture

Survey Q1: “If women are unable to serve as elders, do you feel that quality of leadership will be affected?”

Evidence: Both sides of the theological debate in the PCNSW acknowledge that governance bodies comprising men and women working together show stronger governance inputs — better monitoring, greater accountability, and more rigorous challenge. The Elders and Deacons Committee’s own 2021 report cited this evidence. Research on corporate and nonprofit boards finds that gender-diverse boards show stronger monitoring, better attendance, and greater accountability (Adams & Ferreira, 2009; Buse, Bernstein & Bilimoria, 2016). Irving Janis’s foundational work on groupthink identified homogeneity of membership as a structural fault that makes groups stop questioning themselves.

An important nuance: Adams and Ferreira found that gender diversity’s effect depends on existing governance quality. In organisations that were already well-governed — with strong accountability, active oversight, and robust challenge — adding diversity provided diminishing returns and could even reduce performance through over-monitoring. But in poorly-governed organisations, where scrutiny was weak and challenge was absent, gender diversity added significant value. An ANU review confirmed that the average effect across all organisations is close to zero — but the governance-specific benefits (improved scrutiny, stronger challenge, greater sensitivity to ethical risk) are robust. The question for the PCNSW is: are all our sessions in the “well-governed” category? The denomination has never measured this.

Questions worth sitting with

  • If your church has women elders: has there been a time when a woman elder brought a perspective or noticed something that might have been missed by an all-male group? What would be lost if that voice were no longer at the table?
  • If your session is already all-male: how are women’s perspectives currently represented in governance decisions? Is that arrangement formal or informal, and does it carry real weight? Could your congregation be strengthened if a gifted woman were able to serve as an elder in the future?
  • The research suggests that sessions which already consult women effectively, handle complaints well, and take safeguarding seriously may not need the structural safeguard of women elders to achieve good governance outcomes. But sessions where consultation is thin, complaints are handled informally, and the minister’s authority goes largely unchecked are exactly where diverse governance adds the most value. The proposed change applies to both. Which category is your session in — and how would you know?
  • The current Code preserves the freedom of each congregation to discern whether women should serve as elders. The proposed change removes that freedom for every church in the denomination. Even if your church has not exercised that freedom, is there value in having it?
  • Presbyterian governance was built on plurality and accountability — the conviction that unchecked authority corrupts. The Westminster divines established the ruling elder as a representative of the whole congregation. If ruling elders represent the congregation, and the congregation includes women, what does it mean for that representation when women cannot serve?

Survey Q2: “Do you believe this proposed change could impact the church’s culture?”

Evidence: The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2017) found that the absence or insufficient involvement of women in leadership and governance in religious institutions negatively affected decision-making and accountability, and may have contributed to inadequate responses to child sexual abuse. The Commission identified clericalism — the elevation of ordained or ministerial status above laity — as a significant contributing factor. Recommendation 16.37 called for child-safety advisory mechanisms that include lay men and women with relevant expertise.

Organisational climate research: Professor Maureen Dollard’s Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC) framework — developed at the University of South Australia and studied across 38 research studies internationally (Amoadu et al., 2024) — demonstrates that the policies, practices, and procedures set by senior leadership determine the psychological safety of everyone underneath them. PSC is what researchers call the “cause of the causes”: when it is low, bullying, harassment, and burnout follow predictably. Governance changes that concentrate authority and reduce the diversity of voices at the top directly affect an organisation’s psychosocial safety climate. This is not a corporate abstraction — it describes the conditions that shape whether people in your church feel safe to speak, to raise concerns, and to trust that leadership will respond.

Experience of comparable churches: The Save the PCA “Functional Female Officer Report” (2025) surveyed 1,964 churches in the Presbyterian Church in America (not to be confused with the Presbyterian Church of Australia) — a denomination that has never ordained women as ruling elders — and found 9.5% had some form of functional female officer: 4.0% with women performing elder-like functions and 6.0% with women performing deacon-like functions. Practices included leading worship elements, sitting in session meetings as “elder advisors,” going through officer training, and being commissioned with public vows — all without formal office. Male-only ordination, in practice, can generate pressure toward informal workarounds that sit uneasily with the denomination’s own polity.

The Australian experience: Five of Australia’s six state Presbyterian churches moved to male-only eldership between 1984 and the early 2000s. Queensland was first in 1984; Victoria followed in 1997–98; Tasmania, Western Australia, and South Australia followed shortly after. NSW remains the sole holdout. None of these state churches conducted a baseline assessment before the change, measured impact during the transition, or evaluated outcomes afterward. Alternative participation mechanisms were created — women’s ministries committees, advisory groups, “fixed orders of the day” allowing women to comment but not vote at meetings — but none has been independently evaluated for effectiveness.

Our own denomination’s data: The Women’s Ministry Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Australia conducted a survey across the PCA in 2020 (484 respondents: 324 women, 162 men) and presented its findings to the 2023 GAA. The results came from our own churches. More than 50% of respondents could not affirm that women trust the elders with issues specifically related to women such as domestic violence and sexism. Fewer than 50% of women believed they were consulted by elders regarding church direction. More than 30% of women felt limited in what they could do in church. On every major question, there were statistically significant differences between how men and women perceived the same reality — a communication gap the WMPCA report itself identified as needing urgent attention.

Questions worth sitting with

  • The PCNSW has permitted women ruling elders since the 1967 GAA, though most congregations have not elected them. For churches that have: what would change in your culture if no new women could be ordained? For churches that haven’t: does the fact that the permission exists shape your culture in ways you might not notice until it is gone?
  • If the change proceeds, how would your church ensure that women’s voices continue to shape governance decisions? Would that mechanism be formal or informal? Would it carry voting power, or only advisory status? Is there a woman in your congregation who, under different circumstances, might be called to serve as an elder? What would it mean to her — and to your church — if that call could never be tested?
  • The Royal Commission examined what happens in religious institutions when governance becomes exclusively male. You may not think your church is at risk of those failures. But Reformed theology teaches us to build structures for the reality of sin, not the aspiration of godliness. What structures would your church need if this change proceeds?
  • Have you seen examples — in your own experience or in other churches — where the presence or absence of women in leadership affected the culture or decision-making of the community?

Survey Q3: “Do you believe the proposed change could have an impact on interpersonal relationships or team dynamics in your local church?”

Evidence: Research on volunteer organisations finds that when people perceive they have been excluded from decision-making or that their role has been diminished, their engagement drops and relationships within the team become strained (Allen & Mueller, 2013). This is not about theology — it is about how human beings respond when the terms of their participation change. In a local church, the proposed change would alter the relationship between women who serve and the governance structures they serve under. Women who have been elders, or who aspired to be, would need to find a new understanding of their place. Men who valued their female colleagues on session would lose those working relationships. The dynamics affect everyone, not just those directly excluded.

Experience of comparable churches: When the Christian Reformed Church opened all offices to women in 1995, 36 churches with approximately 7,500 members left the denomination. Governance changes on this question fracture communities in both directions. In churches where relationships are strong and consultation is genuine, the change may be absorbed without visible damage. But in churches where relationships are already strained, where women feel undervalued, or where the debate has been conducted without listening to the people most affected, the formal act of closing the door can crystallise tensions that were previously manageable. The proposed change applies uniformly to every congregation regardless of its relational health.

Questions worth sitting with

  • Think about the women in your congregation who currently serve in any form of leadership — as elders, as ministry workers, as volunteers who carry real responsibility. How would they experience this change? Have you asked them?
  • If your church has a woman elder: what is it like for her to serve on a session alongside colleagues who may have supported the overture to end her office? What does that dynamic do to the working relationship, the trust, and the ability to govern together during the transition?
  • Are there people in your church who might leave if this change is made? Are there people who might leave if it isn’t? What would either departure mean for your community?
  • Even in churches without women elders, the permission for women to serve sends a signal about how the church values women’s gifts. Removing that permission also sends a signal. How would the women and girls in your church receive it?
  • Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12 that the body cannot say to any member, “I have no need of you.” How does your church currently say to its women, “We need you”? Would that change?

Section 3: Wellbeing and Safety

Survey Q1: “Do you believe the proposed change will impact on your emotional or psychological wellbeing?”

Evidence: Research on volunteers consistently finds that burnout and disengagement are driven by role ambiguity, lack of voice, and exclusion from decision-making (Allen & Mueller, 2013). Psychosocial safety research shows that harm from organisational change often emerges over time rather than immediately. This is relevant here: for some women, the impact of this change may not be felt at the point of announcement but later — as the change is experienced in practice, in session meetings, in pastoral care decisions, in the gradual realisation that a door has been permanently closed. People respond differently to institutional change; the survey is asking about your response, and it is worth being honest about what that might be over time, not just right now.

Questions worth sitting with

  • This question asks about your wellbeing. Take a moment to sit honestly with that. Not what you think the right answer is. Not what you think your church expects you to feel. What do you actually feel when you imagine this change taking effect?
  • If you are a woman: does this change affect your sense of belonging in your church? Your sense that your contribution is valued? Your willingness to serve?
  • If you are a woman currently serving as an elder: how does it feel to know that your denomination is considering a change that says no other woman should hold the role you hold? How will it affect your experience of serving in a role that your denomination has decided should not exist for anyone who comes after you? Has anyone asked you?
  • If you are a man: how do you think the women in your church would answer those questions? Have you asked them directly?
  • Genesis 3:16 describes a distortion of the relationship between men and women as a consequence of the Fall. Complementarian theologians including John Piper and Al Mohler acknowledge that male authority, post-Fall, tends toward sinful domination. If that’s true — and it’s in our own literature — what governance structures guard against that tendency? Does this change strengthen or weaken them?

Survey Q2: “Do you currently feel safe and supported in your local church environment?”

Evidence: The PCNSW’s Breaking the Silence program has been in place since 1997 and is mandatory for elders, ministers, and those working with children or vulnerable people. BTS is more developed than many people realise. Foundations training runs on a three-year cycle with annual Read and Review refreshers for those working with children. The CPU conducts compliance audits. The online training requires an 80% quiz score for satisfactory completion. This is real work done by serious people.

The harder question is not whether BTS exists, but what public evidence is available that it changes reporting behaviour and outcomes over time. The quiz is a knowledge check — it tests whether you know what to do, not whether you can do it. It does not assess the ability to actually handle a disclosure, manage a conflict of interest, or respond to a vulnerable person in distress. In 28 years, no public independent evaluation of BTS effectiveness or published outcome data has been identified. The system may work well — the training, audit, and complaint-handling machinery is real. But no public independent outcome evaluation has been identified showing whether BTS improves reporting behaviour and outcomes over time, and that gap matters if we are about to remove another layer of structural accountability.

A 2025 peer-reviewed study in Child Abuse & Neglect (Hunt, Higgins & Willis) interviewed 20 Christian leaders across denominations about safeguarding training and found a compliance-focused mentality rather than genuine culture change, with cultural resistance from some leaders who see safeguarding as unnecessary external regulation.

What our own denomination’s data says: The PCA’s 2020 Women’s Ministry Committee survey asked questions directly relevant to whether people feel safe and supported. More than 50% of respondents could not affirm that women who experience domestic violence know who to talk to about it within the church. More than 50% could not affirm that women trust the elders with issues specifically related to women. There were statistically significant differences between how female congregation members and male ministers answered the question of whether women trust elders with these issues. If that gap exists now — in a denomination where women can still serve as elders — what happens when that possibility is removed?

Questions worth sitting with

  • This is a baseline question. Answer it for how things are now, not how they might change. The honesty of this answer matters because it tells the Assembly what the starting point is.
  • If a woman in your church experienced harm from a male leader — bullying, harassment, spiritual abuse — where would she go? Who would she trust? Is that pathway clear, accessible, and safe?
  • Has your session ever discussed what would happen if someone made a complaint? Not in theory. Practically. Who handles it? What process is followed?
  • Do you know whether your elders and ministry workers have completed Breaking the Silence training? Could you find out?

Survey Q3: “Do you believe the proposed change could influence the amount of conflict, bullying, or harassment?”

Evidence: Bullying and harassment in organisations are not primarily caused by bad individuals. Professor Michelle Tuckey’s research at the University of Adelaide has shown that the majority traces to how an organisation is structured — its governance, its reporting lines, who holds authority, and who can challenge it. In plain terms: when your church changes who sits on session, who gets a vote, and who has formal standing, it is changing the very structures that research shows either prevent or produce harm. Tuckey’s BRIDGES at Work framework identifies formal organising arrangements as one of four subsystems that determine whether an organisation is safe. The proposed change directly alters those arrangements in every congregation.

What this looks like in churches: Research consistently shows that women in church settings already experience higher rates of burnout and lower confidence that leadership will respond to their concerns. Emerging evidence suggests women may be disproportionately affected when the organisational climate around psychological safety is poor (Amoadu et al., 2024). If the conditions are already difficult for women in churches, a governance change that reduces their formal voice does not make those conditions better.

The experience of comparable churches: These are not distant examples. The Royal Commission found that in some religious institutions — institutions led by people who believed they were serving God faithfully — the absence of women in governance negatively affected accountability in child-safety contexts. The Southern Baptist Convention’s Guidepost report (2022) documented over 700 accused abusers under exclusively male governance. The Presbyterian Church in America’s 2023 General Assembly — an all-male body — voted down all four abuse-prevention proposals put before it. The question is not whether our people would do the same. It is what structures we have in place to make sure they don’t have to.

Questions worth sitting with

  • Has your church experienced conflict, bullying, or harassment? If so, how was it handled? Would the proposed change make that handling better or worse?
  • The Reformed tradition teaches total depravity — not that every person is as bad as they could be, but that sin touches every part of human life, including the exercise of authority. We build structures — plurality of elders, higher courts, the right of appeal — because we know that good intentions are not a sufficient safeguard. Does this change add accountability or remove it?
  • The Royal Commission heard from more than 4,000 survivors of abuse in religious institutions. Its findings about male-only governance are not theoretical. They are based on evidence from institutions that believed they were serving God faithfully. How should those findings inform your answer?
  • Think about specific scenarios: a woman experiencing domestic violence, a child safety concern raised by a female volunteer, a complaint about a male leader’s conduct. Under the proposed arrangement, who hears these? Who decides what happens next?

Survey Q4: “Do you believe that this could impact the willingness of staff or volunteers to report issues such as conflict, bullying, or harassment?”

Evidence: The Presbyterian Church in America’s Ad Interim Study Committee on Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault (2022) documented significant concerns about women’s ability to trust male-only elder bodies with issues like domestic violence and sexism. Advisory member Ann Maree Goudzwaard noted that substantial work remains before women in the American PCA can have assurance their case will be shepherded well. Murray Capill, Dean of Ministry Development at the Reformed Theological College in Melbourne, acknowledged that “from my experience and observation, lots of us don’t do that well” at consulting women — and this in a denomination that already has male-only eldership.

Governance research: There is a reasonable concern, supported by governance and institutional abuse research, that when the people receiving complaints share the demographic profile of the people being complained about, reporting confidence is affected. When there is no one on the governance body who shares the complainant’s experience, trust may diminish. The PCA (Australia)’s own 2020 survey data — where more than half of women could not affirm trust in elders with women-specific issues — is consistent with this concern.

Questions worth sitting with

  • If you needed to report a concern about a male leader’s conduct, would you feel comfortable bringing it to an all-male session? Would the women in your church?
  • Is there currently a woman in your church’s governance who would be a first point of contact for women with concerns? If the proposed change proceeds, who fills that role? What standing would they have?
  • Craig Tucker’s paper notes that dealing with complaints by women against male leaders is “particularly problematic when the case is heard by a group in which only men get a vote.” Do you agree? Does your church have any mechanism to address this problem?
  • The survey itself directs people who are feeling impacted to “reach out to your Minister, Elders or leadership.” For some respondents, these are the very people they find it hardest to approach. Does your church have an alternative pathway?

Section 4: Support and Recommendations

Survey Q1: “What additional support or resources do you believe are needed to cultivate a safe and healthy environment if the proposed change is made?”

This is an open question, and it is your opportunity to name specific, concrete measures rather than general sentiments. The evidence suggests several areas that would need to be addressed if the change proceeds. You may find these helpful as starting points for your own answer:

From advisory models to demonstrated safeguards. Alternative models for women’s participation have been proposed and in some cases Assembly-endorsed. The GANSW 2022 resolution encouraged sessions to establish women’s advisory groups, appoint women to “co-worker” positions with associate-style privileges, include women in complaints and disciplinary processes, and appointed a Women’s Engagement Working Group. The national WMPCA deliverances (2023 GAA) went further with similar recommendations at presbytery and Assembly level. This is real work. But the mechanisms are advisory (“encourage each Session to consider”), not binding. Uptake has been slow — a growing number of churches have established women’s advisory groups, but implementation is uneven. No binding, denomination-wide, independently evaluated mechanism has been demonstrated as an effective safeguard alongside this proposed change. The model on offer is partial, and its effectiveness has not been tested. The experience of other denominations suggests that advisory and associate-style mechanisms, without formal standing, often do not deliver the voice they promise.

Independent evaluation of safeguarding training. BTS has an 80% knowledge quiz and the CPU conducts compliance audits — but after 28 years, the denomination should also be able to demonstrate publicly that its training changes behaviour and outcomes. Competency-based assessment (testing the ability to handle a disclosure, not just know about one), independent external evaluation, and published outcome data would allow the denomination to know — in a measurable sense — whether its safeguarding system works.

An adequately independent complaints pathway. The PCNSW does have a Conduct Protocol Unit and a contact-person pathway intended to provide independence from the local church. The live question is whether that pathway is sufficiently independent from the denomination itself, sufficiently visible to women and volunteers, and sufficiently trusted — particularly for complaints about male leaders heard by all-male bodies.

Measurable implementation of Healthy Complementarianism. The GANSW 2022 resolution encouraged sessions to establish women’s advisory groups, appoint women to “co-worker” positions, and include women in complaints and disciplinary processes, and appointed a Women’s Engagement Working Group to bring further recommendations. At the national level, the PCA’s Women’s Ministry Committee presented a detailed strategy to the 2023 GAA with 15 deliverances along similar lines — relevant context, though national deliverances do not bind the PCNSW. Dr Murray Smith, one of the architects of the overture, has acknowledged that if the church says ‘no’ to women in eldership without also saying ‘yes’ to all the ways men and women complement each other, it has only done half the job. Whether the GANSW’s own 2022 encouragements have been implemented at session level is the question the NSW Assembly should be able to answer before voting on the overture.

Learning from complementarian denominations that have tried. The Presbyterian Church in America’s DASA report (2022) is the most comprehensive safeguarding framework produced by any complementarian denomination for all-male governance. Its 220 pages cover abuse response, whistleblower protections, and mandatory background checks. But the report is non-binding, and efforts to implement even its background check recommendations have met resistance. Nowhere in the Reformed world has a denomination produced binding structural safeguards specifically designed for all-male governance. The gap between complementarian theology — which teaches that authority should protect the vulnerable — and complementarian institutional design remains vast.

Questions worth sitting with

  • Which of these measures does your church currently have in place? Which are absent?
  • Should any of these be required before the change takes effect, or are you comfortable with them being developed after?
  • Even if your church does not currently have women elders, the proposed change closes the door for every congregation, including those where women’s gifts in governance might be most needed — small country parishes, churches in vacancy, congregations where the work of eldership falls on very few shoulders. What support would those churches need?
  • The Reformers insisted on building structures before granting authority. Knox and Calvin did not consolidate power and then design accountability later. They built the accountability first. What does that principle suggest about the sequencing of this change?

Survey Q2: “Do you have any recommendations for your local church and denominational leaders regarding health and safety as it relates to diversity and inclusion?”

Questions worth sitting with

  • What would you need to see from your session and presbytery to have confidence that this change — if it proceeds — will not diminish the safety and wellbeing of women in your church?
  • Are there practical steps your church could take now, regardless of the outcome of this vote, to strengthen the voice and safety of women in your community?
  • What would “doing this well” look like, even if you support the change? What would “doing this badly” look like?
  • If your church has never had women elders, have you considered why? It may be because your session holds a theological conviction that eldership should be male-only. It may be because the congregation discerned it was not right for your context at this time. Or it may be because the question was never asked. Each of these is a different starting point, and the proposed change affects each differently — the first formalises an existing conviction, the second removes a future option, and the third closes a door that was never opened.

Section 5: Final Comments

The survey gives you an open field. If the structured questions did not capture what you most want to say, say it here. Some things worth considering:

Questions worth sitting with

  • Is there something about this issue that keeps you awake at night? Something you haven’t been able to say to anyone in your church? This is the place for it.
  • If you are uncertain about the theological question, you are allowed to say so. The survey is not asking you to resolve the exegesis. It is asking what happens to real people in real churches if this change is made.
  • If you support the change but have concerns about how it is being implemented, this is the place to name those concerns. Supporting a theological position and questioning the process are not contradictory.
  • If your church has never had women elders, the proposed change might feel like it changes nothing for you. But consider: is there a difference between a church that has chosen its current arrangement and a church that has had the choice removed? What does that difference mean for the kind of denomination we want to be?
  • If you have experienced harm in a church setting — from male authority exercised without accountability, from complaints that went nowhere, from being told your concerns didn’t matter — your experience is evidence. It matters. You are not required to share it, but if you choose to, it will inform the Assembly’s understanding of what is at stake.

Section 6: Contact and Demographic Information

The survey’s contact details (name and email) are optional. However, the demographic and identifying questions earlier in the survey — your church name, your role, your gender, whether your church has female elders — are not marked as optional.

The committee has stated that when presenting results to the Assembly, it will aggregate the data so that no individual responses can be identified by anyone outside the survey process, including by the Assembly itself.

It is still worth being aware, however, that in smaller congregations a combination of church name, role, and gender may be enough to make a respondent identifiable within the survey data itself — even without their name attached. If the survey is asking whether you trust the current governance structures to keep you safe, and your answers could be connected to you by those with access to the raw data, that may affect how freely you respond. This is not a reason not to complete the survey — your voice matters. But it is worth knowing.

The survey notes that “certain State or Federal legislation may require the denomination to share these details.” This is a standard data-handling disclosure. If you have concerns about confidentiality, you may choose not to provide your name or email while still completing the substantive sections.

If you are feeling particularly impacted by this issue, Jericho Road provides access to counselling services. You do not need to go through your minister or elders to access this.

A note on the consultation process

The Assembly has charged sessions with responsibility for engaging in this consultation properly. That charge should be taken seriously. If your session has not discussed this survey with your congregation, has not made time for conversation about its questions, or has not explained how your responses will be used, you may wish to raise that directly.

Consultation that meets the legal and moral standard our denomination has set for itself requires more than distributing a link. It requires making space for people to be heard, especially those who may find it hardest to speak. In some churches, that will mean actively reaching out to women, to newer members, to those who serve faithfully but have never been asked what they think about how the church is governed.

The survey closes 25 May 2026. surveymonkey.com/r/WHSEldershipSurvey2026

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Andrew is the CEO of the Real World Group, a family of IT and telecommunications companies based in Sydney, Australia. Andrew loves Jesus, his wife Bess and his four awesome kids.

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