July 2, 2025 • 24 mins
Many churches are stuck with outdated or overly complex bylaws that limit their effectiveness and create unnecessary conflict. In this episode, we unpack the top five issues with church constitutions and bylaws—and how your church can fix them.
Scott Ball and A.J. Mathieu of The Malphurs Group bring practical insights from years of helping churches navigate governance and leadership challenges. If you’re new to the podcast, we help churches get healthy and grow through strategic planning and leadership development.
In this episode, we cover:
→ [00:02:34] Why relying on bylaws instead of policies leads to dysfunction
→ [00:07:17] How complexity makes compliance nearly impossible
→ [00:11:26] What happens when bylaws are designed for the wrong church size
→ [00:14:03] The risks of outdated or unbiblical governance structures
→ [00:20:54] How vague or conflicting authority erodes trust and accountability
Resources & Links:
→ 🧰 HealthyChurchesToolkit.com – Start your free 7-day trial and access our course on building a biblical board, plus sample policy manuals
→ 📘 Read the full article: malphursgroup.com/297
→ 👥 Connect with us on Facebook and Instagram
→ 🌐 Learn more about our work: malphursgroup.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Constitution and bylaw problems. Exciting stuff today on
the Church Revitalization Podcast. Hello and welcome to
the Church Revitalization Podcast brought to you by the
Malphurs Group team where each week we tackle important
actionable topics to help churches thrive. And now
here's your hosts, Scott Ball and A.J. Mathieu.
(00:25):
Welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm joined by
my friend and co host, AJ Mathieu.
AJ Today on the podcast, we want your bylaw
problems to be bygone problems. Might watch a little
paint dry while we're at it, so stay tuned. You know, okay, you're
saying this, but this is the fly in the ointment for so many
(00:48):
churches. I hear this regularly.
I hear, hey, we need to update our constitution and bylaws or
we just updated our constitution and bylaws or do you know anybody who
does have help with constitution and bylaws? And
so we thought that this would be a good topic to cover. I don't know
that in 297
(01:09):
episodes, I'm not certain. I don't recall us ever doing an
episode on constitution and bylaws, so I. Don'T recall us
doing that. Yeah, all of the pent up demand for an
episode on this topic is going to be satiated today. I bet
it's just going to blow the, the
records out of the water. I'm sure, I'm sure it will give.
(01:31):
We're giving the people what they want.
All right. So we can dive straight into it. But before we do,
want to remind you of HealthyChurchestoolkit.com
Go there. Sign up free for seven days. We actually have a course inside of
the toolkit on building a better board, which is
not directly related to constitution and bylaws but is definitely
(01:54):
connected to it. Because having healthy governance
structures is really important when it comes to managing and
executing and having a healthy church at
the senior leadership level, executive leadership level. So you can go
to HealthyChurchestoolKit.com and sign up free
for seven days and access that course and it really will help you have healthier
(02:16):
principles, policies, procedures at that board
level. Whether you have a church council or elders or
an executive leadership team or a deacon team that functions in an executive
way, whatever that looks like at your church. It's designed to help that
group be healthy. That it will. There you go. Okay,
that's my passion. Let's talk. Let's
(02:38):
talk bylaws and constitution. Our first point we're going to talk about today
is the problem. The first problem we're introducing is relying on the
bylaws instead of policies. And so
you may or may not actually even have many if any policies in
the church. So maybe this is a new concept
(02:58):
of taking this perhaps one governance document that you have. And
I wouldn't refer to a policy manual as necessarily a governance document, but
certainly a procedural document, one that would outline
behaviors, operations, systems, processes.
And instead of having all of that heavy lifting go into your
constitutional bylaws, we probably could have also called this
(03:21):
like, you know, eliminating bylaw bloat. Because
a lot of the problem that you might find would be these
documents that were written. And over the years people have just stuffed and
stuffed and stuffed ideas and concepts in there and then you up with
this like, you know, behemoth document,
this gigantic thing, and instead it could be
(03:43):
broken down into some core elements and then
utilize a different tool for more day to day operational
things. Scott, maybe one, an example, this always
has stuck with me of a church that I worked with that their
bylaws or their constitution outlined
that their worship service had to occur, I think 10:30am on
(04:05):
Sundays. Like, I mean it was that specific. Like here's when we have church.
And so, you know, you enter into a strategic planning process
with an organization like the Malfurs group, Healthy Churches Global, and
you know, maybe they're thinking we need two services. So like, well one's got to
be at 10:30 because that's the Constitution. Yeah. So how are we going to
do this? This is the type of thing I think here in our first
(04:28):
point, Scott, that we're trying to help, maybe alleviate or move
away from. Yeah. So if you think the Constitution,
you know, provides some overall guidance on like what the
purpose of the church is and what the overall structure of the church is,
bylaws then kind of outline the rules by which that
organization must operate. And so as
(04:51):
you mentioned, sometimes churches put
too many of the their
policies and the way in which they're going to operate. They
formalize those things as rules in the
bylaws, which then the church is then
legally obligated to follow those. And the
(05:13):
problem is that, you know, things change. And so
when, when those things do change and there needs to be a change in the
bylaws, depending on what you've put in your constitution,
amending those bylaws may require a, you
know, 50 plus 1%
approval from the congregation or maybe even a 2/3 majority vote from
(05:36):
from the congregation in order to change those rules.
And what would be better is to limit
the rules and the bylaws to those things which are truly
foundational and fundamental. So,
you know, questions around financial
controls, you don't have to get into all accounting practices, but you can put
(05:59):
in some guiding principles in the bylaws and then the
specifics of how you're going to do things can be delegated down to a policy
manual. Because a policy manual then
you could even put in you, by the way, you could even put in the
bylaws that the, that teams must abide by the policy manual or
something like that. But then the policy manual can have a
(06:21):
lower threshold for change. It has to be approved by the
executive team or the elder board or the council
or, you know, the consistory or whatever, or the session, whatever your
structure is by a majority vote. So it becomes
easier than to change policies than it is to change
the bylaw. So thinking in that order, I've worked with a number
(06:43):
of churches where they just have too many rules
in, in their bylaws and therefore they find themselves
violating those bylaws on a regular basis or being out
of compliance, which actually can open you up to some
severe legal problems. And so
simplifying the bylaws is not just about,
(07:06):
you know, trying to make them easier to understand. It's
about increasing your ability to comply with them, which is actually maybe
a good segue to the second one. Yeah, yeah,
perhaps. Yeah. And it's making me think of more, you know, more
ways of viewing this as well. But yeah, let's go ahead and jump to our
second problem today. And that is complexity
(07:28):
ends up undermining compliance, which is what you were just getting into.
Um, yeah, we've worked with countless churches that are like the bylaws
say this, but here's kind of over the years, this is what we've ended up
doing. And then, you know, a lot of times that's what drives
the. Finally where they're like, all right, we just have to, we've been avoiding it,
but we know we got to redo this because we don't do that anymore.
(07:51):
And so which is an interesting conundrum. You
know, I mean, we have changed our behavior. We are out of compliance
with our current set of bylaws now. We don't have to modify it to fit
how we behave. I mean, most courts, at least in the US
don't want to touch these kinds of problems for sure. Yeah, yeah, it would be
extreme cases that it became like US legal court
(08:13):
issues. But there, there have been some high profile instances of this
exact exact thing happening, particularly in larger
churches. But the church doesn't have much of a defense.
If it's acting outside of its
bylaws, it can
open you up to some legal challenges and problems. It's not good.
(08:37):
And so, again, kind of reiterating what
we said in the first point, but emphasizing it here, I think one of the
reasons why churches don't follow
them is they don't even know them. And they can't
know them because they're too long. Um, I
genuinely wonder how many guys, when they first start the, the job
(08:59):
or even before they start the job at a new church, ask,
can I see the Constitution and bylaws. They may not even know what kind of
position they're setting themselves up for. You know, guy signs up to become the senior
pastor at a, at a. At a new church, not realizing that his position
is totally neutered. He's not. He has no authority, no ability
to make any decisions. He's. He's a hireling, you know, at the
(09:21):
hands of whatever board. Yeah, or.
Or maybe that's not the case in practice, but it is technically, according to
the bylaws. And so all of those things you want to know.
And what I found is that a lot of churches are not in compliance
with their bylaws because there's a lack of awareness. But there's a lack of
awareness because they're so complex. A lot of churches maybe don't even know where their
(09:43):
bylaws are. They probably have to, like, contact the state
and ask for a copy because the state's got them on file.
But, you know, maybe someone has even lost the file.
They may not have a digital version. They're in some file cabinet
collecting dust somewhere. Yeah. You know,
I mean, it's made me kind of think this is sort of a combination, a
(10:05):
comment, I suppose, between points one and two. But it's made me think, you know,
I mean, about. About even the Bible, you know, I mean,
God has given us this record of who he is and what
his pursuits are for humanity and
creation. There's some things that God is descriptive
in, and there's some things that God is prescriptive in. And we talk about this
(10:27):
in our process. You know, I mean, we're. We. We find the Great Commission
to be the mission of the church. And so this, you know, it's. It is
prescriptive. Like this is go make disciples and teach them
to obey everything I've commanded. But the functions or the,
you know, the, The. The flavor of everybody's
church, we have freedom in that. And I think the bylaws need to
(10:49):
be similar, similarly attacked in that way. You
know, I mean, there's some things that, yes, we gotta, we, we will set this.
We don't need to say that we only meet at 10:30 on Sundays.
We should have some freedom in making that kind of change because you don't want
your bylaws to necessarily restrict,
you know, updating vision in the church and being able
(11:11):
to modify ministries, you know, to be more effective for
the times. So. But that's what has happened in
a lot of churches. They've gotten so prescriptive and
they don't allow for variation where there should be freedom.
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's actually maybe a
good segue to the, the, the next kind of a problem. And a
(11:34):
reason why this, this, this happens, number
three, is that the bylaws were designed for a
church of a different size. I see this on both
ends of the spectrum, AJ I see churches that are
smaller than they used to be, you know, often what it will be
things like our church prescribes that
(11:56):
we have 16 or 15 standing committees.
Well, the church now only has 50 people in it, you know, and so
there's not enough people to staff all 15 committees
that are required by the constitution and bylaws to be
in operation. And so they're violating, going back to the things
we've already talked about, but they're out of compliance, not even out of
(12:19):
desire, but just out of the reality that there aren't the people there. And so
they need to restructure their constitution bylaws just to, to
adapt to the size that they are. I've also worked with churches where,
you know, they, you know, was a solo pastor kind of
model. Like the senior pastor is the functional head of everything.
(12:39):
And, you know, that worked when it was a church of a hundred people, but
now it's a church of a thousand people. And that doesn't make much sense
for, for the church to operate that way and for there not to be the
layers and levels of accountability that are necessary as a church grows.
And so they need to update their bylaws to, to account for the
size that they are now. So that is a key
(13:01):
mistake is that churches have
a, the wrong sized
structure and bylaws for the size of church they are
today. Yeah, yeah. Which is again, sort of a
segue into our fourth point as well. Outdated or
unbiblical governance structures noted or
(13:23):
described in the bylaws.
I don't know if people might push back, you know, on this one way or
another. I don't know that you necessarily need to be broad enough so that you'd
be like, well, we're going to have elders for a while. If we decide to
be congregational, we'll switch back to that probably is more so in the
space of having that noted generally what our highest
(13:45):
level of leadership looks like. But as the examples
that you were giving Scott, though, are very common.
You know, outlining committee after committee after committee
that not is not only affected by the size of the church,
but by even ministry structure. You know, I mean, a
discipleship pathway in a church that is really clearly defined,
(14:08):
with clearly defined primary ministries
might be. Might become very restricted by some
really specific committees that are making decisions about
discipleship areas or the way buildings are used and different
things like that that could have a direct effect on
the, you know, the quality of ministry happening or how effective it is.
(14:29):
So, yeah, governance structures I think definitely needs
to strike that balance of, of the most important things that
need to be noted and then allow for enough freedom
to modify ministry processes
and programs and such that the
Constitution doesn't. Doesn't prevent you from being able to make good
(14:53):
tactical decisions. Yeah, I can think of two
specific instances. I've worked with lots and lots, lots of
churches, but two, two instances in particular that I think are both
relatively common, but I've got specific churches in mind
that I thought, man, this is just so
(15:14):
unhealthy. I don't know, actually, when I pause
speaking, I can think of like dozens and more. But
one would be a church that I worked with a number of years ago. This
is true of a lot of churches I've worked with where the church has to
vote on everything over a certain dollar amount. It's very common.
And those dollar amounts have not been updated to account
(15:36):
for inflation, for one. Yeah, you know, so
$5,000 back in 1950 was a
lot more money than $5,000 in 2020. Yeah, that was like doubling the size
of the fellowship hall, you know, and now it's like replacing the van.
Replacing the van? What are you talking about? I mean, 5,000, that's like
replacing a seat in the van.
(16:01):
You know. You know, I don't shop the new car market over here at the
Matthew House. Replacing the van would be like
$50,000.
So anyways, can you can
imagine just how much that slows everything down? And so I
remember this. This instance I have in my mind, I had to hop on
(16:23):
Zoom to. To get the church to approve
a process that I was going to do with them. The leadership had already signed
off on all of it, but it needed, needed to pass the congregational vote.
And so I was on a zoom meeting that was being live
streamed into their sanctuary. This was a church, maybe
600 people and maybe 60 people
(16:46):
showed up to this meeting and
they had set up microphones around the room. I had to
kind of listen to their questions. And I'm answering their.
Again, I'm being, I'm being live streamed into the sanctuary
on a zoom call. And I just thought, this is
not good. And one of the, one of the people I'll never forget one of
(17:10):
the questions is an older lady, well
intentioned. I mean, she was sure a very nice lady. She said, well,
one of the things that we value is the fact that our congregation gets
to speak into every decision. And I said,
ma' am, I, I say this with all sincerity and kindness in my heart.
That's already not happening because it's
(17:33):
not possible. So what really happens? So while
everything might come for a vote, not everybody's making a decision.
But instead of like in reality, what's happening in that kind of a
context is you don't know who's actually making the decisions.
It's a small group of people that's unnamed in a back room. It makes
most of the decisions. And, and then,
(17:56):
so what I was proposing was the institution of an elder board,
because when you have an elder board, at least now you know who to hold
accountable. You know who's making decisions, and if
they're not doing a good job, you can hold them accountable. Wouldn't it be better
to have a transparent decision making process rather
than a hidden one? When you don't, where you don't really know who's making decisions?
(18:17):
I said, so it's a, it's a false dichotomy what you're presenting
because you think, you think the congregation is deciding on everything, but they're
not. There's a small group that you don't know who they are who are making
a lot of decisions, working the system out of necessity because
they have to, because it doesn't make any sense for a church of 600 people
to vote on everything. The other example is a church that I worked
(18:41):
with and, well, I won't say where, where. I
think this is fairly common too. They had two different boards. One,
one board essentially made financial decisions, and the other board was the
elder board. Well, the elder board could make directional
decisions, but it was this sort
of financial type board, this administrative type board that made financial
(19:03):
decisions. So. And because
directional decisions require funding, if the
administrative board didn't like what the elders were deciding, they could just not fund
it. And I thought, this is highly dysfunctional
because the elders are being placed based on qualifications,
but these admin people are being placed in those positions by default.
(19:26):
So you have unqualified people making decisions on whether or not to
fund the direction decided upon by the qualified people.
Yeah, this is really, really unhealthy. And that's pretty common.
Yeah, very common. And I'll just. Fiduciary committee. Yeah.
There were several instances of this causing little fires in the
church in conflict. And of course, it's a system set up
(19:50):
for failure or at least conflict. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. So I won't go in any more detail
than that, but I'll just say these are the kinds of things that sometimes
you look at the structures and you're going, what are. What are we doing
here? You're. You're inviting problems. And sometimes I'll just say
it, A.J. they're governed. They are guided
(20:13):
more by American principles than they are by biblical
ones. Yeah. You know, they're looking at how Congress is structured.
Right. You know, and I'm a firm believer that, for the most part, it's the
best system of human governance you can get when it comes to a
secular society. But we don't have to settle for that in
the church. We have biblical principles that can guide us,
(20:36):
and we can have higher standards. And so therefore, we can have different
models that are not, you know, built on the checks and balances
required for secular governance. Yeah. And God
is not a democracy, so. I agree. I totally agree.
Yeah. Were we on point four or five? Yeah, we were on blood. Over again.
Yeah. Sorry. The fifth point is vague or conflicting
(20:58):
authority and decision making based on what's. What is written
and documented. So we had kind of gotten into this
already, but yeah, I think you're absolutely right
that. Because practice ends up becoming different
normally. You know, I think. I think sometimes church
governance is like, you know, water or electricity finding the path
(21:20):
of least resistance. And sometimes there's a lot of resistance
baked into the Constitution and bylaws. And then in
practice over years, people are like, this is just not really workable. And
it finds its way to what is
manageable at least. Maybe not ideal, but what is manageable
and functional, you know, I mean, just. To get things done, that leads to lack
(21:42):
of accountability. It can. It absolutely can. You know, if you're
finding. If you're always finding the loophole around it out of necessity, because you're like,
what we have in here doesn't make any sense.
So then you end up finding the loophole where it's technically allowed, but. But it's
not great. Then it's less accountable and it's less visible and it
reduces trust. So why not just structure for a way that's
(22:05):
both efficient and accountable versus building something that's
inefficient and therefore, you know, people work around it and it
becomes unaccountable. Yeah. Yep. There you go. All right.
I bet one or more of these resonated with you today. And if it
did, this is not one of our core ministry
areas, but it is something that we have a lot of experience in. We can
(22:27):
help you with this. Yeah, we absolutely can. Sometimes we've done this
in sort of a separate ad hoc thing. We've also done this in. In
conjunction with a greater strategic planning process or
leadership. Yeah. So, yeah, we would
love to help you. You can reach out to us@malfresh group.com
Today's podcast and video and everything
(22:49):
is out there for your viewing and listening pleasure on your
favorite podcast platform or there on the YouTube.
Click a link in the description below. Wherever you're
consuming the podcast today. For more information or to
be able to contact us, we'd love to come alongside your church, help bring
some clarity to your leadership and your decision making so that you can
(23:11):
be more about the business of making maturing disciples
and less about fighting with each other about the color of the
carpet. Let's go there. Absolutely. Hey, guys, we
appreciate you. And don't forget to go to Healthychurchestoolkit.com get
those seven days free and watch some instruction on
healthy governance and biblical boards and all of that so you can help develop
(23:33):
those policies. Also, I didn't mention this before, AJ but in the
toolkit we also have sample policy manuals and things like
that. So if you're like, I don't even know what that would look like. We
have a lot of resources like that inside the resource library in the toolkit as
well, so you don't have to start from scratch. Go grab it. All right,
thanks, guys. We'll see you next week.
(23:59):
It.
Constitution and bylaw problems. Exciting stuff today on
the Church Revitalization Podcast. Hello and welcome to
the Church Revitalization Podcast brought to you by the
Malphurs Group team where each week we tackle important
actionable topics to help churches thrive. And now
here's your hosts, Scott Ball and A.J. Mathieu.
(00:25):
Welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm joined by
my friend and co host, AJ Mathieu.
AJ Today on the podcast, we want your bylaw
problems to be bygone problems. Might watch a little
paint dry while we're at it, so stay tuned. You know, okay, you're
saying this, but this is the fly in the ointment for so many
(00:48):
churches. I hear this regularly.
I hear, hey, we need to update our constitution and bylaws or
we just updated our constitution and bylaws or do you know anybody who
does have help with constitution and bylaws? And
so we thought that this would be a good topic to cover. I don't know
that in 297
(01:09):
episodes, I'm not certain. I don't recall us ever doing an
episode on constitution and bylaws, so I. Don'T recall us
doing that. Yeah, all of the pent up demand for an
episode on this topic is going to be satiated today. I bet
it's just going to blow the, the
records out of the water. I'm sure, I'm sure it will give.
(01:31):
We're giving the people what they want.
All right. So we can dive straight into it. But before we do,
want to remind you of HealthyChurchestoolkit.com
Go there. Sign up free for seven days. We actually have a course inside of
the toolkit on building a better board, which is
not directly related to constitution and bylaws but is definitely
(01:54):
connected to it. Because having healthy governance
structures is really important when it comes to managing and
executing and having a healthy church at
the senior leadership level, executive leadership level. So you can go
to HealthyChurchestoolKit.com and sign up free
for seven days and access that course and it really will help you have healthier
(02:16):
principles, policies, procedures at that board
level. Whether you have a church council or elders or
an executive leadership team or a deacon team that functions in an executive
way, whatever that looks like at your church. It's designed to help that
group be healthy. That it will. There you go. Okay,
that's my passion. Let's talk. Let's
(02:38):
talk bylaws and constitution. Our first point we're going to talk about today
is the problem. The first problem we're introducing is relying on the
bylaws instead of policies. And so
you may or may not actually even have many if any policies in
the church. So maybe this is a new concept
(02:58):
of taking this perhaps one governance document that you have. And
I wouldn't refer to a policy manual as necessarily a governance document, but
certainly a procedural document, one that would outline
behaviors, operations, systems, processes.
And instead of having all of that heavy lifting go into your
constitutional bylaws, we probably could have also called this
(03:21):
like, you know, eliminating bylaw bloat. Because
a lot of the problem that you might find would be these
documents that were written. And over the years people have just stuffed and
stuffed and stuffed ideas and concepts in there and then you up with
this like, you know, behemoth document,
this gigantic thing, and instead it could be
(03:43):
broken down into some core elements and then
utilize a different tool for more day to day operational
things. Scott, maybe one, an example, this always
has stuck with me of a church that I worked with that their
bylaws or their constitution outlined
that their worship service had to occur, I think 10:30am on
(04:05):
Sundays. Like, I mean it was that specific. Like here's when we have church.
And so, you know, you enter into a strategic planning process
with an organization like the Malfurs group, Healthy Churches Global, and
you know, maybe they're thinking we need two services. So like, well one's got to
be at 10:30 because that's the Constitution. Yeah. So how are we going to
do this? This is the type of thing I think here in our first
(04:28):
point, Scott, that we're trying to help, maybe alleviate or move
away from. Yeah. So if you think the Constitution,
you know, provides some overall guidance on like what the
purpose of the church is and what the overall structure of the church is,
bylaws then kind of outline the rules by which that
organization must operate. And so as
(04:51):
you mentioned, sometimes churches put
too many of the their
policies and the way in which they're going to operate. They
formalize those things as rules in the
bylaws, which then the church is then
legally obligated to follow those. And the
(05:13):
problem is that, you know, things change. And so
when, when those things do change and there needs to be a change in the
bylaws, depending on what you've put in your constitution,
amending those bylaws may require a, you
know, 50 plus 1%
approval from the congregation or maybe even a 2/3 majority vote from
(05:36):
from the congregation in order to change those rules.
And what would be better is to limit
the rules and the bylaws to those things which are truly
foundational and fundamental. So,
you know, questions around financial
controls, you don't have to get into all accounting practices, but you can put
(05:59):
in some guiding principles in the bylaws and then the
specifics of how you're going to do things can be delegated down to a policy
manual. Because a policy manual then
you could even put in you, by the way, you could even put in the
bylaws that the, that teams must abide by the policy manual or
something like that. But then the policy manual can have a
(06:21):
lower threshold for change. It has to be approved by the
executive team or the elder board or the council
or, you know, the consistory or whatever, or the session, whatever your
structure is by a majority vote. So it becomes
easier than to change policies than it is to change
the bylaw. So thinking in that order, I've worked with a number
(06:43):
of churches where they just have too many rules
in, in their bylaws and therefore they find themselves
violating those bylaws on a regular basis or being out
of compliance, which actually can open you up to some
severe legal problems. And so
simplifying the bylaws is not just about,
(07:06):
you know, trying to make them easier to understand. It's
about increasing your ability to comply with them, which is actually maybe
a good segue to the second one. Yeah, yeah,
perhaps. Yeah. And it's making me think of more, you know, more
ways of viewing this as well. But yeah, let's go ahead and jump to our
second problem today. And that is complexity
(07:28):
ends up undermining compliance, which is what you were just getting into.
Um, yeah, we've worked with countless churches that are like the bylaws
say this, but here's kind of over the years, this is what we've ended up
doing. And then, you know, a lot of times that's what drives
the. Finally where they're like, all right, we just have to, we've been avoiding it,
but we know we got to redo this because we don't do that anymore.
(07:51):
And so which is an interesting conundrum. You
know, I mean, we have changed our behavior. We are out of compliance
with our current set of bylaws now. We don't have to modify it to fit
how we behave. I mean, most courts, at least in the US
don't want to touch these kinds of problems for sure. Yeah, yeah, it would be
extreme cases that it became like US legal court
(08:13):
issues. But there, there have been some high profile instances of this
exact exact thing happening, particularly in larger
churches. But the church doesn't have much of a defense.
If it's acting outside of its
bylaws, it can
open you up to some legal challenges and problems. It's not good.
(08:37):
And so, again, kind of reiterating what
we said in the first point, but emphasizing it here, I think one of the
reasons why churches don't follow
them is they don't even know them. And they can't
know them because they're too long. Um, I
genuinely wonder how many guys, when they first start the, the job
(08:59):
or even before they start the job at a new church, ask,
can I see the Constitution and bylaws. They may not even know what kind of
position they're setting themselves up for. You know, guy signs up to become the senior
pastor at a, at a. At a new church, not realizing that his position
is totally neutered. He's not. He has no authority, no ability
to make any decisions. He's. He's a hireling, you know, at the
(09:21):
hands of whatever board. Yeah, or.
Or maybe that's not the case in practice, but it is technically, according to
the bylaws. And so all of those things you want to know.
And what I found is that a lot of churches are not in compliance
with their bylaws because there's a lack of awareness. But there's a lack of
awareness because they're so complex. A lot of churches maybe don't even know where their
(09:43):
bylaws are. They probably have to, like, contact the state
and ask for a copy because the state's got them on file.
But, you know, maybe someone has even lost the file.
They may not have a digital version. They're in some file cabinet
collecting dust somewhere. Yeah. You know,
I mean, it's made me kind of think this is sort of a combination, a
(10:05):
comment, I suppose, between points one and two. But it's made me think, you know,
I mean, about. About even the Bible, you know, I mean,
God has given us this record of who he is and what
his pursuits are for humanity and
creation. There's some things that God is descriptive
in, and there's some things that God is prescriptive in. And we talk about this
(10:27):
in our process. You know, I mean, we're. We. We find the Great Commission
to be the mission of the church. And so this, you know, it's. It is
prescriptive. Like this is go make disciples and teach them
to obey everything I've commanded. But the functions or the,
you know, the, The. The flavor of everybody's
church, we have freedom in that. And I think the bylaws need to
(10:49):
be similar, similarly attacked in that way. You
know, I mean, there's some things that, yes, we gotta, we, we will set this.
We don't need to say that we only meet at 10:30 on Sundays.
We should have some freedom in making that kind of change because you don't want
your bylaws to necessarily restrict,
you know, updating vision in the church and being able
(11:11):
to modify ministries, you know, to be more effective for
the times. So. But that's what has happened in
a lot of churches. They've gotten so prescriptive and
they don't allow for variation where there should be freedom.
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's actually maybe a
good segue to the, the, the next kind of a problem. And a
(11:34):
reason why this, this, this happens, number
three, is that the bylaws were designed for a
church of a different size. I see this on both
ends of the spectrum, AJ I see churches that are
smaller than they used to be, you know, often what it will be
things like our church prescribes that
(11:56):
we have 16 or 15 standing committees.
Well, the church now only has 50 people in it, you know, and so
there's not enough people to staff all 15 committees
that are required by the constitution and bylaws to be
in operation. And so they're violating, going back to the things
we've already talked about, but they're out of compliance, not even out of
(12:19):
desire, but just out of the reality that there aren't the people there. And so
they need to restructure their constitution bylaws just to, to
adapt to the size that they are. I've also worked with churches where,
you know, they, you know, was a solo pastor kind of
model. Like the senior pastor is the functional head of everything.
(12:39):
And, you know, that worked when it was a church of a hundred people, but
now it's a church of a thousand people. And that doesn't make much sense
for, for the church to operate that way and for there not to be the
layers and levels of accountability that are necessary as a church grows.
And so they need to update their bylaws to, to account for the
size that they are now. So that is a key
(13:01):
mistake is that churches have
a, the wrong sized
structure and bylaws for the size of church they are
today. Yeah, yeah. Which is again, sort of a
segue into our fourth point as well. Outdated or
unbiblical governance structures noted or
(13:23):
described in the bylaws.
I don't know if people might push back, you know, on this one way or
another. I don't know that you necessarily need to be broad enough so that you'd
be like, well, we're going to have elders for a while. If we decide to
be congregational, we'll switch back to that probably is more so in the
space of having that noted generally what our highest
(13:45):
level of leadership looks like. But as the examples
that you were giving Scott, though, are very common.
You know, outlining committee after committee after committee
that not is not only affected by the size of the church,
but by even ministry structure. You know, I mean, a
discipleship pathway in a church that is really clearly defined,
(14:08):
with clearly defined primary ministries
might be. Might become very restricted by some
really specific committees that are making decisions about
discipleship areas or the way buildings are used and different
things like that that could have a direct effect on
the, you know, the quality of ministry happening or how effective it is.
(14:29):
So, yeah, governance structures I think definitely needs
to strike that balance of, of the most important things that
need to be noted and then allow for enough freedom
to modify ministry processes
and programs and such that the
Constitution doesn't. Doesn't prevent you from being able to make good
(14:53):
tactical decisions. Yeah, I can think of two
specific instances. I've worked with lots and lots, lots of
churches, but two, two instances in particular that I think are both
relatively common, but I've got specific churches in mind
that I thought, man, this is just so
(15:14):
unhealthy. I don't know, actually, when I pause
speaking, I can think of like dozens and more. But
one would be a church that I worked with a number of years ago. This
is true of a lot of churches I've worked with where the church has to
vote on everything over a certain dollar amount. It's very common.
And those dollar amounts have not been updated to account
(15:36):
for inflation, for one. Yeah, you know, so
$5,000 back in 1950 was a
lot more money than $5,000 in 2020. Yeah, that was like doubling the size
of the fellowship hall, you know, and now it's like replacing the van.
Replacing the van? What are you talking about? I mean, 5,000, that's like
replacing a seat in the van.
(16:01):
You know. You know, I don't shop the new car market over here at the
Matthew House. Replacing the van would be like
$50,000.
So anyways, can you can
imagine just how much that slows everything down? And so I
remember this. This instance I have in my mind, I had to hop on
(16:23):
Zoom to. To get the church to approve
a process that I was going to do with them. The leadership had already signed
off on all of it, but it needed, needed to pass the congregational vote.
And so I was on a zoom meeting that was being live
streamed into their sanctuary. This was a church, maybe
600 people and maybe 60 people
(16:46):
showed up to this meeting and
they had set up microphones around the room. I had to
kind of listen to their questions. And I'm answering their.
Again, I'm being, I'm being live streamed into the sanctuary
on a zoom call. And I just thought, this is
not good. And one of the, one of the people I'll never forget one of
(17:10):
the questions is an older lady, well
intentioned. I mean, she was sure a very nice lady. She said, well,
one of the things that we value is the fact that our congregation gets
to speak into every decision. And I said,
ma' am, I, I say this with all sincerity and kindness in my heart.
That's already not happening because it's
(17:33):
not possible. So what really happens? So while
everything might come for a vote, not everybody's making a decision.
But instead of like in reality, what's happening in that kind of a
context is you don't know who's actually making the decisions.
It's a small group of people that's unnamed in a back room. It makes
most of the decisions. And, and then,
(17:56):
so what I was proposing was the institution of an elder board,
because when you have an elder board, at least now you know who to hold
accountable. You know who's making decisions, and if
they're not doing a good job, you can hold them accountable. Wouldn't it be better
to have a transparent decision making process rather
than a hidden one? When you don't, where you don't really know who's making decisions?
(18:17):
I said, so it's a, it's a false dichotomy what you're presenting
because you think, you think the congregation is deciding on everything, but they're
not. There's a small group that you don't know who they are who are making
a lot of decisions, working the system out of necessity because
they have to, because it doesn't make any sense for a church of 600 people
to vote on everything. The other example is a church that I worked
(18:41):
with and, well, I won't say where, where. I
think this is fairly common too. They had two different boards. One,
one board essentially made financial decisions, and the other board was the
elder board. Well, the elder board could make directional
decisions, but it was this sort
of financial type board, this administrative type board that made financial
(19:03):
decisions. So. And because
directional decisions require funding, if the
administrative board didn't like what the elders were deciding, they could just not fund
it. And I thought, this is highly dysfunctional
because the elders are being placed based on qualifications,
but these admin people are being placed in those positions by default.
(19:26):
So you have unqualified people making decisions on whether or not to
fund the direction decided upon by the qualified people.
Yeah, this is really, really unhealthy. And that's pretty common.
Yeah, very common. And I'll just. Fiduciary committee. Yeah.
There were several instances of this causing little fires in the
church in conflict. And of course, it's a system set up
(19:50):
for failure or at least conflict. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. So I won't go in any more detail
than that, but I'll just say these are the kinds of things that sometimes
you look at the structures and you're going, what are. What are we doing
here? You're. You're inviting problems. And sometimes I'll just say
it, A.J. they're governed. They are guided
(20:13):
more by American principles than they are by biblical
ones. Yeah. You know, they're looking at how Congress is structured.
Right. You know, and I'm a firm believer that, for the most part, it's the
best system of human governance you can get when it comes to a
secular society. But we don't have to settle for that in
the church. We have biblical principles that can guide us,
(20:36):
and we can have higher standards. And so therefore, we can have different
models that are not, you know, built on the checks and balances
required for secular governance. Yeah. And God
is not a democracy, so. I agree. I totally agree.
Yeah. Were we on point four or five? Yeah, we were on blood. Over again.
Yeah. Sorry. The fifth point is vague or conflicting
(20:58):
authority and decision making based on what's. What is written
and documented. So we had kind of gotten into this
already, but yeah, I think you're absolutely right
that. Because practice ends up becoming different
normally. You know, I think. I think sometimes church
governance is like, you know, water or electricity finding the path
(21:20):
of least resistance. And sometimes there's a lot of resistance
baked into the Constitution and bylaws. And then in
practice over years, people are like, this is just not really workable. And
it finds its way to what is
manageable at least. Maybe not ideal, but what is manageable
and functional, you know, I mean, just. To get things done, that leads to lack
(21:42):
of accountability. It can. It absolutely can. You know, if you're
finding. If you're always finding the loophole around it out of necessity, because you're like,
what we have in here doesn't make any sense.
So then you end up finding the loophole where it's technically allowed, but. But it's
not great. Then it's less accountable and it's less visible and it
reduces trust. So why not just structure for a way that's
(22:05):
both efficient and accountable versus building something that's
inefficient and therefore, you know, people work around it and it
becomes unaccountable. Yeah. Yep. There you go. All right.
I bet one or more of these resonated with you today. And if it
did, this is not one of our core ministry
areas, but it is something that we have a lot of experience in. We can
(22:27):
help you with this. Yeah, we absolutely can. Sometimes we've done this
in sort of a separate ad hoc thing. We've also done this in. In
conjunction with a greater strategic planning process or
leadership. Yeah. So, yeah, we would
love to help you. You can reach out to us@malfresh group.com
Today's podcast and video and everything
(22:49):
is out there for your viewing and listening pleasure on your
favorite podcast platform or there on the YouTube.
Click a link in the description below. Wherever you're
consuming the podcast today. For more information or to
be able to contact us, we'd love to come alongside your church, help bring
some clarity to your leadership and your decision making so that you can
(23:11):
be more about the business of making maturing disciples
and less about fighting with each other about the color of the
carpet. Let's go there. Absolutely. Hey, guys, we
appreciate you. And don't forget to go to Healthychurchestoolkit.com get
those seven days free and watch some instruction on
healthy governance and biblical boards and all of that so you can help develop
(23:33):
those policies. Also, I didn't mention this before, AJ but in the
toolkit we also have sample policy manuals and things like
that. So if you're like, I don't even know what that would look like. We
have a lot of resources like that inside the resource library in the toolkit as
well, so you don't have to start from scratch. Go grab it. All right,
thanks, guys. We'll see you next week.
(23:59):
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