in Caversham The Methodist Church 4: Organisation and Government Church organisation and government There are two key ideas in Methodist understanding of church government. One is “representative democracy”. Decisions are taken by elected representatives, rather than by meetings of all church members. This is true at the level of Circuit, District and Conference. If you come from a Baptist or URC background you may find this a bit strange, because in those churches the whole congregation meets to take every significant decision. The other key idea is that of Connexion. We don’t have bishops in the way that some other churches do. That kind of authority is exercised, in Methodism, by the representative Conference, not by one individual person. All Methodist Ministers are said to be “in Connexion with the Conference”, which implies a two-way covenant of loyalty and service. This means that all Methodist churches work in essentially the same way, according to the same rules and procedures.