Toward a knowledge-based ecclesial practice through the oversight of the bishop and deans

This article explores how knowledge-based practice is understood and facilitated through the oversight of the bishops and deans in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway. Drawing on a mixed-methods case study, including interviews across three organizational levels and a survey of clergy in one diocese, we analyze knowledge arenas and three knowledge sources: research-based, experience-based, and user-based. The findings reveal the presence of an emerging but uneven infrastructure of central and local knowledge arenas. This infrastructure, which we term polycentric, remains fragmented and weakly related to everyday practice. We also find a lack of epistemic integration of knowledge sources: Experience-based knowledge dominates, research-based knowledge is underutilized and often perceived as distant from practice, while user-based knowledge is valued but gathered and applied unsystematically. Knowledge-based practice emerges as an orientation within the church context, but it has not been institutionalized as a coherent framework for professional work. This article conceptualizes knowledge-based ecclesial practice and discusses how its development depends on the interplay between polycentric knowledge arenas, the integration of knowledge sources, and epistemic leadership through interactive oversight.