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Perhaps you've set your sights on
starting a church
and you're now concerned with structuring its
governing documents. You can certainly
benefit from a set of
well-crafted
Christian
church by law documents. When
combined with a constitution, the by laws should
define, among other things, different
individuals’ roles and relationships to the
church. With the information gleaned from an
appropriate resource, you
can learn more about drafting your documents
in a way that will meet your specific needs.
Every new church needs a Christian church by law
document on which to base its own direction.
Simply put, most people have no understanding
about the purpose and usefulness of a
constitution and by laws. In a nutshell, it is used
to state the position that will be taken by the
church in a legal or business situation and is
used to define certain policies that fall
outside the spectrum of the church’s
constitution. When
combined with a constitution, which only makes
sense, a church can address legal, business and
religious, or biblically-based issues, all in
one document. This is important because, if a church can internally
handle its most important issues by
clarifying them in its governing documents, it
will not leave their resolution to the inherent
inefficiencies, and possibly biases, of secular
authorities.
A clearer definition of the
capabilities of
Christian church by law and
constitution documents can be found in
the amazing church-starting resource entitled
Building On Faith:
Everything You Need To Know About Starting Your
Own Church.
When properly drafted, they should include some of the most
important
doctrines of the church. However, it should
not be an exhaustive
document. In trying to include as much doctrine
as possible, many such documents have ended up
being exclusive. In other words, you
inadvertently subject your church to the charge
that anything not included was intentionally
excluded. And
this, of course, is what you want to avoid.
One of the biggest concerns that church leaders have in drafting a
Christian church by law
and constitution is whether they
should be structured in general terms or
with a high degree of specificity. While
there is no hard and fast rule, common
sense tells us that specific guidelines are
more limiting. And you should not attempt to
place such limitations on the ability of
your church leaders to act in sensitive
matters.
Let’s consider a by law provision in regards to the
discipline of a member for a specific
incident. When
stated generally, such as, “All
measures of discipline will be administered
with reference to the Holy Scriptures as a
guide...” the
likelihood that church leaders will run
afoul of their own guidelines, is
dramatically lessened.
Ordination
practices, ministry hiring procedures, and
membership rights,
if any, are among the important
ecclesiastical matters you will want to
set forth in a
Christian church by
law and constitution document.
You will find everything you need to
properly draft them in the comprehensive and
expertly written church-starting resource,
Building On Faith. Quite simply,
it's the gold standard in use today by
hundreds of church start-ups nation-wide.
It's written by Abe Hernandez, Esq., a
devoted Christian and church law expert. You
owe it to yourself and your ministry to take
a closer look.
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