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63 The three churches' traditional understandings of membership and how these were evolving were discussed in relation to several documents: the Churches Together in England 1997 booklet, Baptism and Church Membership; the section on Belonging in the report from the Church of England Statistics Review Group, entitled Statistics: a tool for mission; a Methodist discussion paper What should membership mean?; and a United Reformed Church discussion paper for local churches entitled Celebrating Church Membership.

64 The Methodist and United Reformed churches' understanding of church membership had much in common. Both understood membership in terms of mutual responsibility within the local fellowship and the wider church. Only members could exercise communal oversight. Nevertheless both churches also regarded baptism as the sacrament of entry into the Church. The Church of England's approach to "membership" was based on baptism and on its history of being the church for the whole community. However, in order to participate in the general government at parish, deanery, diocesan and national levels, it was necessary to be confirmed and to be on the electoral roll.

65 Some convergence between the churches had taken place under pressure from local ecumenical life. Members in good standing with the Methodist or the United Reformed Church who habitually worship in a Church of England parish church can now declare themselves also members of the Church of England. The Methodist Conference 2000 began the process by which membership of the Methodist Church can be granted to members in good standing in the other churches who are partners with them in a Local Ecumenical Partnership. The United Reformed Church has recently recognised that the Church Meeting (or equivalent) of a Local Ecumenical Partnership which is a local church of the United Reformed Church has the authority to receive into membership those who are members of the other partner churches in the Local Ecumenical Partnership.

66 In these changing times all churches were re-examining the various ways of belonging to the Church. Although for the Church of England baptism remained the basis of belonging to the Body, participation and commitment were receiving a new emphasis. For both the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church, traditionally gathered churches, a renewed mission emphasis in the face of numerical decline meant that any kind of participation or link with the community was being valued and the importance of the old, clear line between being a member and being an adherent was being questioned.

More work is needed on the question of the relationship of baptism to membership, and membership to the ministry of the whole people of God.

67 The Trilateral Informal Conversations were set up to respond to the fact that the United Reformed Church had expressed an interest in being part of the Commitment to Mission and Unity process. It had offered to that process two particular insights from the Reformed tradition, namely the conciliar expression of the apostolicity of the Church and the shared ministry of the Elders. (see 7 above) At the first meeting it was agreed that consideration of these two issues

"would be set within a developing understanding of the sort of visible unity required for effective mission and the experience of shared living already enjoyed." (see 12 above)

It was expected that the Informal Conversations would interact with the Formal Conversations. Both conversations were within the one circle of confidentiality and aide memoires were exchanged. Papers from the Formal Conversations came to the Informal once they had reached a certain level of maturity. The Informal Conversations played a privileged role in the reception of those papers and note was taken of their comments on them. The overlap in membership meant that those who were members of both could bring a sense of the nature of the Formal Conversations and could represent the views of the Informal Conversations to the Formal. However, it had not been anticipated how far the whole process would have had to be prolonged for the exchange of documents between the two sets of conversations to be really effective.

68 The members of the Informal Conversations had the opportunity to comment on a draft of the report from the Formal Conversations. They welcomed the particular place which the United Reformed Church was given in the report's recommendations. They also hoped that the consistently trilateral note of the recommendations at the end of this report would be heard as both reports are widely discussed and further steps proposed.

69 This pattern of two sets of conversations, proceeding in parallel in terms of meetings, overlapping membership and some exchange of papers, but being asymmetrical in terms of goal, partners and status, was untried. Whereas the Formal Conversations had the clear goal of producing an agreed Common Statement between the two churches, the Informal Conversations had, by their very nature, no such goal. They existed in relation to the Formal Conversations but there was a lack of clarity as to the nature of that relationship. As a result, there was a variety of interpretations within the group especially as to how far the Informal Conversations could expect to affect the outcome of the Formal Conversations. If such a pattern is proposed on another occasion, the mutual expectations of the two sets of conversations should be more rigorously explored before the meetings begin.