The gathered congregation is the whole church, not a branch of one.
A local body of believers who have covenanted together has, by itself, every power the New Testament gives a church: to call a minister, ordain him, discipline members, and refuse instruction from any outside body. Synods may advise. They may not bind.
The Cambridge Platform, adopted by a synod of Massachusetts and Connecticut ministers in 1648, is the founding constitutional text of American Congregationalism and served as the effective religious constitution of Massachusetts until 1780. Its core is that the visible church of the New Testament is the particular congregation, and that everything a church can do it can do by itself. Councils and synods have a real role — they are called to advise, to install ministers, and to arbitrate — but their decisions carry only the weight the congregations choose to give them. The Platform accepted the doctrine of the Westminster Confession while rejecting its Presbyterian government, which is the precise Congregational position. It is a polity that maximises local liberty and provides no mechanism whatever for holding a denomination together, and both halves of that have been visible for four hundred years.
A Congregational church is by the institution of Christ a part of the militant visible church, consisting of a company of saints by calling, united into one body by a holy covenant, for the public worship of God and the mutual edification one of another.
The Cambridge Platform (1648), Chapter II (rendered)Condensed from the text adopted by the Cambridge synod of Massachusetts and Connecticut ministers.
The same ground, other faiths
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