This isn't a battle for our local church

The church is set up to have representative governance. As such, each level of the church  passes information on to the next level who then act as representatives to the level above, and so on. At this point, the levels higher than the local churches have not seen it essential to address this important issue until they have received requests from local churches to address the issue. If we are to have representation on this issue at any level of the organization on this important issue, it seems that the local church is the very place where it needs to start. It is when local congregations in one particular conference in Australia wrote letters to their local conference, and they in turn wrote to the Australian Union, that the Australian Union even began to consider it.