I just stumbled upon a copy of our Church's Bylaws that we updated about 8 years ago, when I was new at this Church.
It's always interesting to me to read a Church's bylaws because they often reveal what previous problems that were in that Church.
Rather than deal with issues in a Godly manner, people tend to add a Bylaw prohibiting an action, or attempting to concrete a policy or directive.
One of the first things I like to do is to help a Church clean up their Bylaws, because they often inadvertently prevent the Church from being the Church by their unanticipated consequences.
Silly example --- one Church had a problem with the youth pastor using the Church van as his own personal vehicle.
Rather than deal with that problem by talking to him, they came up with a Bylaw prohibiting the Church van from being used unless it was occupied by at least 3 persons.
That meant that the Church's food distribution to the needy was handicapped unless the driver violated the "3 person rule".
What about picking up the elderly for Church services? The driver would have to get 2 others to ride along so he could go pick up senior adults?
Yeah, really silly.
The "Constitution & Bylaws" - the Constitution should state "who we are" and the Bylaws should state "how we do Church".
What brought this to my attention was the fact that the first 2 years I was here - somebody always seemed to bring up "Well, the BYLAWS state....."
God has been good, and has been blessing us, and there has been unity.... it has literally been YEARS since I've heard anybody mention "The Bylaws".
To me, that's an excellent thing!
It's always interesting to me to read a Church's bylaws because they often reveal what previous problems that were in that Church.
Rather than deal with issues in a Godly manner, people tend to add a Bylaw prohibiting an action, or attempting to concrete a policy or directive.
One of the first things I like to do is to help a Church clean up their Bylaws, because they often inadvertently prevent the Church from being the Church by their unanticipated consequences.
Silly example --- one Church had a problem with the youth pastor using the Church van as his own personal vehicle.
Rather than deal with that problem by talking to him, they came up with a Bylaw prohibiting the Church van from being used unless it was occupied by at least 3 persons.
That meant that the Church's food distribution to the needy was handicapped unless the driver violated the "3 person rule".
What about picking up the elderly for Church services? The driver would have to get 2 others to ride along so he could go pick up senior adults?
Yeah, really silly.
The "Constitution & Bylaws" - the Constitution should state "who we are" and the Bylaws should state "how we do Church".
What brought this to my attention was the fact that the first 2 years I was here - somebody always seemed to bring up "Well, the BYLAWS state....."
God has been good, and has been blessing us, and there has been unity.... it has literally been YEARS since I've heard anybody mention "The Bylaws".
To me, that's an excellent thing!
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