When I teach church planting, I always talk to the students about basic church documents. A new church needs some basic documents that provide it with a good, solid foundation. Older churches need these foundational documents, also. Ok, what are they? All churches need a statement of faith, a church covenant, and a constitution and by-laws. Why so?
Statement of Faith
Churches should be certain of their beliefs, and they should be able to point prospective members to a statement of faith. A statement of faith will guide the preachers and teachers in the church as to what constitutes sound doctrine. A clear statement of faith will help seekers decide whether they want to unite with your church. Of course, many churches simply use the current Southern Baptist Statement of Faith and Message. This is what our church does. Other churches prefer to write their own. Working through the process of composing a statement of faith is a good way to teach biblical doctrine. Another advantage of a statement of faith is that it provides an objective measure for judging false doctrine. For example, imagine that a Sunday school teacher in your church begins teaching false doctrine. When you confront him, he says, “I’m not teaching false doctrine.” “Yes you are.” “Who says so?” You can extrapolate this conversation. However, if your church has a statement of faith, you can point to that for confirmation. In my life I’ve taught at several of our SBC seminaries, as well as the International Mission Board. All of these required me to affirm a statement of belief and promise to preach and teach in accordance with it.
Church Covenant
The church covenant describes how the members of the church will conduct themselves in their Christian lives and how they will relate to each other. It is a “covenant,” that is, a sacred agreement between parties. You could say it is a spiritual commitment the church members make to each other. Many churches still use the old Southern Baptist church covenant. It used to be printed in the Baptist Hymnal, and many rural churches kept a large, framed copy in the foyers of their buildings. (William Thornton will remember this.) Other churches find the language and emphases of that covenant outdated, and they have composed new covenants. A good resource for writing a church covenant is the Broadman Church Manual. Our church in Texas just celebrated its 100 th Anniversary, and we seized the opportunity to write a new church covenant. The members were all encouraged to sign it. Some churches have an annual covenant renewal ceremony, often on the church’s anniversary. I believe a church covenant is a good way to teach and reinforce the responsibilities of church membership.
Church Constitution and By-laws
The constitution and by-laws prescribe how the church will govern itself. This document explains how new members can join or be discharged. It lists the officers of the church, and the way in which the church will call a pastor. It explains how the church will conduct its business meetings, and many other details of church administration. If you church plans to incorporate, then it must have a constitution and by-laws. Your church must be incorporated in order to own its own property. Of course, laws pertaining to incorporation vary from state to state. So, your association and state convention can advise you on this and provide examples from other churches. You may find it helpful to consult a Christian attorney. conform to modern practices. Certainly, it is good to review this document periodically to ascertain where changes are needed.
So, a statement of faith describes what a church believes. A church covenant describes how church members should behave, and the church constitution and by-laws prescribe how the church will conduct its business.
What has been your experience with these church documents? Have you revised any of these in recent years? How did that go? Do you have any advice for others?
A few random thoughts:
Statement of Faith — my practice in the past has been to have a simplified summary of beliefs on the church’s web page that covers the fundamentals and baptist distinctives and then at the bottom a short statement that we affirm the BFM2000 and provide a link to it. This allows people to read a shorter statement to get their initial questions answered but also an option to go into more detail and as an additional way to show that we are an SBC church.
Constitution and Bylaws — A lot of churches need to rethink their constitutions.
* Church plants should pay more attention to this and be careful not to just cut and paste from a template without knowing what’s in it.
* I would avoid putting Robert’s Rules in the bylaws but write your own governing rules — RR causes more problems than it solves IMO.
* Many church’s Constitution need revision. Many churches do not operate by their own rules and should change the constitution to reflect their actual practice. Others are outdated and call for committee structures that are no longer feasible. Some constitutions have provisions that are reactionary to a bad situation and are very restrictive so as to hamstring the progress of the church. Some churches don’t even realize they have a constitution.
Covenant — I think that having a church covenant that is known and talked about might go a long way toward our current cultural trend of membership-aversion. More and more I find people that do not like the idea of “joining” a church. When I reframe membership as a covenant relationship rather than a legal status I find much less opposition to people joining the church
Dr. Barry McCarty has a Parliamentary Guide for Church Leaders. I highly recommend it:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1433671506/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
After all, this is the man with the power to silence anybody at the SBC’s Annual Meeting!
On topic, though, take this seriously. It would be nice to be able to just throw open the doors and declare the only thing we worry about is the New Testament. But the world we live in does not work that way.
I served in church that shockingly did not have a constitution (as confirmed by founding members). In its stead, they had a haphazard collection of job descriptions, elders notes, doctrinal papers and ran in accordance with their unwritten constitution (which simply dictated that two women would tell their husbands, serving as elders, how the church should respond to any given scenario). I simply could not believe that they did not possess a constitution, but I suppose many things are possible within the realm of church autonomy. Especially since the church is only about 20+ years old and thus born within the modern era.
I helped rewrite a church constitution recently that was outdated. We filled it with the Secretary of State. We need to include language that clearly states our doctrinal beliefs on subjects we did not need to defend years ago. We are all in danger of being sued over issues concerning homosexuality, same-sex marriage, abortion and other issues.
This is pretty good. I’m curious when Mark or anyone else began to see the church covenant as a legal document?
I hear a lot of scare stories about churches being sued over certain doctrinal and moral stances but I don’t see a lot of facts on that. Last lawyerly meeting I attended on church docs the advice in part was that it would be a mistake to try and shoehorn in all the church moral stances into governing documents…but I may not be current on all this.
I spoke with several lawyers about this issue and they said it was necessary to be specific on all moral stances. I’m sure every SBC church has variant procedures on receiving new members, but if the Church Covenant is specific and all-encompassing on moral stances, those who agree with it upon membership cannot sue the church.
Example, if people are openly talking about sin in church discipline issues in front of the body, the member in question could not sue the church for slander.
Another, if a member initially agrees to Traditional Marriage, but is later excommunicated because of homosexuality, he/she could not sue the church because they broke the agreement (the church covenant).
Other thoughts?
The church covenant was what got you thrown in jail in Old England, William Thornton — so it was an illegal document before it was legal.
My general advice on covenants is that you shouldn’t say what you don’t mean in your governing documents, and most churches don’t really intend to enforce them as “covenants” — which means an “agreement,” and nothing less. For most churches, they really mean it’s like a set of shared ideals, or else the unspoken assumption is that nearly all the breaches will be forgiven. If tattling, backbiting, and lack of family devotions were disciplined on every occasion, Baptists would spend most weekdays holding court and hearing penance.
So, by all means, adopt an agreement about membership ideals, but be very careful about what you say about it in your Constitution or Bylaws. You want your corporate decisions (like who’s a member and who’s not a member) to be clear, which is difficult to do with a document you don’t intend to enforce.
We use the old Church Covenant, still available from LifeWay. We don’t use it to hit people over the heads, just to point them in the right direction.
https://www.lifeway.com/en/product/church-covenant-card-P001149060
David R. Brumbelow
William, I do not see the church covenant as a legal document, but I believe it is helpful for guidance. Now, some churches take that farther and use it as a basis for church discipline. If a church decides to make that its practice, then it would be good to have the members sign it. In regard to legal matters and incorporation, a church must have a constitution and by-laws in order to become incorporated. In my experience most churches need to update their constitutions and by-laws. I believe Ron has made a good point about official church policies in regard to gay marriage and other vexing issues. It is good to have those in place before an issue arises.
TWW has been writing about the problems with church covenants for years. Sadly, these covenants, whether you believe it or not, are legal documents. They were designed to be that in the 90s. I now call them church contracts and believe that individual churches must do more to convey that to members who are being asked to sign them.
I do not know if I am allowed to link to posts on the matter so I will just say we wrote “Membership Covenants Are Primarily Legal Protection for the Church” along with many others. We have thoroughly documented the reasons why these are truly contracts, no matter what churches like to claim.
I have had pastors write me saying that they did not intend for them to be used in such a manner. I tell them that it doesn’t matter what they ” believe,” they are still contracts. If a situation were to arise, he would find that he does has a legal document on his hands.
As for me, I won’t sign one of them because they are legal documents. Thankfully, I belong to a church denomination that does not require us to sign one. We just needed to say we believed in Jesus as our Savior and that we affirm the our church is Biblical in its practices.
Here’s the link: http://thewartburgwatch.com/permpage-church-membership-covenants-legal-contracts-that-are-not-biblical/
The information and perspective is helpful. It isn’t an endorsement by Mark Terry or any SBCV editors. The old standard covenant is perfectly acceptable for me, though I didn’t insist on a signature. I think in some churches some other stuff has been added for the protection of elders, not so much for the welfare of the church.
…been a while since I’ve looked into this.
Dee’s comment is news to me. I have never heard of a covenant being used as a legal document, but that does not mean it has never been done. (There are lots of things I’ve never heard of.) One aspect of this is that laws vary from state to state. Perhaps one of our readers who is an attorney could comment. If you are concerned about this, it might be good to consult an attorney. As to the “old” or traditional Baptist church covenant, the only thing I have against it is that the language is somewhat dated. I still believe that the members of an SBC church and those requesting membership should understand their responsibilities as members and commit to fulfill those. It seems to me a covenant can help in that regard. When I taught at Southern Seminary, the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism surveyed growing SBC churches. That research produced Tom Rainer’s book, High Expectation Churches, in which he stated that churches with high expectations of their members are more likely to grow.
This article is a bit dated, but may be helpful: https://brnow.org/News/June-2015/Lax-policies-leave-churches-open-to-lawsuits
Not to beat a dead horse but I do think this info is important. We have reviewed a number of church covenants on our blog and named the churches that produced them. Many of these contracts stated that members cannot leave the church if they are *under church discipline.* This is categorically false.
Church membership is viewed as a voluntary association by the laws in the US. A church member can resign at any time, including if they are *under discipline.* Church which attempt to enforce this clause end up in court and lose.
When this was attempted on Karen Hinckley by The Village Church, we had more lawyers calling and offering to take her case. Thankfully, for TVC, Karen accepted the apology of the church and walked away. She will graduate from law school this year.
I believe we are one of the only blogs who have written extensively on the legal issues with church covenants. Here is a post we wrote “How to Resign From a Church Whether or Not You Are Under Church Discipline”
Dee, what I have seen is that members cannot simply resign membership if they are under discipline.
This comes from a time when the recommendation of church membership from church to church/church letters mattered.
Let’s say Billy Bob and Sally Sue are in an adulterous relationship and we bring them under church discipline. The hope (if discipline is done well and I will not argue that it is often done poorly) is that restoration will be the outcome. the secondary hope is if they do not repent they will not simply go to another church without dealing with their sin.
So, once the disciplinary process starts, it must be completed. If the people leave, the end will generally be that they are dismissed from membership under discipline, in which case they would not be recommended to another church until they have resolved the issue.
You deal in a specialized field (is that a fair way to state it?) and it tends to bring out the worst in people. When accusations of abuse are made things can get ugly. Especially difficult is the use of discipline to bring in line those who are “insubordinate” or rebellious or whatever. There is such a fear there of the abuse of authority – all those things that you’ve written about and been both lauded for and well, not-so-lauded for.
We have never brought disciplinary action against someone for failure to acquiesce to the brilliance of the pastor’s leadership. I have seen men use the threat of discipline against people who disagreed with them or opposed their agenda. Shameful in my book.
All of that to say I understand how that can be abused, but there is a genuine principle. Once discipline begins, it should end with either reconciliation or repentance. Resignation is really not one of those biblical ends.
That is the ideal. The real is often more messy.
Hi Dave
You said “What I have seen is that members cannot simply resign membership if they are under discipline.” There are two issues here.
1. As a church, you can say whatever you want such as “a member cannot resign while under discipline.”
2. However, a church cannot legally enforce *no resignation allowed* if the member resigns.
I am a Christian and I believe that adultery is a sin. I believe that an adulterous person, if they wish to remain members, needs to be disciplined. In fact, I wrote a post on such a case in one of my former churches, Pete Briscoe’s Bent Tree Bible, which was handled appropriately
However, a member may, according to US law, resign their voluntary association with the church at any time. You need to read the details about a famous case in which a woman, in an adulterous relationship, resigned her membership and the church continued to announce her discipline from the pulpit. She claimed harassment and sued. The church lost the lawsuit and the verdict stands.
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/19/us/church-vows-to-appeal-390000-award-in-woman-s-privacy-suit.html
In this case, the woman had officially resigned from the church. Whether or not one agrees with the actions of the church, one must understand that the law allows her to resign. At the moment that occurs, the church is liable for continuing to pursue her and must be prepared for a civil lawsuit that will highly likely be decided in favor of the person suing the church.
The website, Church Discipline reviewed this case in 2008. Here is a point they made that must be understood by churches. Let me repeat. I believe that adultery is wrong and must not be tolerated by churches. In this situation, this woman withdrew her membership and I believe the church should have been satisfied with that since they were planning to excommunicate her anyway.
“By voluntarily uniting with the church, she impliedly consented to submitting to its form of religious government, but did not thereby consent to relinquishing a right which the civil law guarantees her as its constitutionally protected value. The intentional and voluntary relinquishment of a known right required for a finding of an effective waiver was never established.”
http://church-discipline.blogspot.com/2008/01/marian-guinn-vs-church-of-christ.html
If churches wish to continue to pursue former members, they must be prepared for a lawsuit. Maybe, it is worth it to them. That is not for me to decide.
I truly hope this comment is helpful to your readers.
I think you are talking about legal issues and I am speaking about biblical processes.
Dee Parsons — do you believe pastors should pay $400,000 if they tell the church something true, like “Ms. So and So has admitted an adulterous relationship, and has resigned from the church?”
Is that the right rule? I think most would say a good-faith attempt to follow Matthew 18 shouldn’t result in legal punishment.
I am not really sure I like living in a world where church membership has to be decided by LEGAL ACTION.
Anyone know if FBC, Mayberry is hiring? Andy, Barney, and Aunt Bee are sounding appealing.
We have a church covenant. We have all new members sign the church covenant in front of the congregation at the end of corporate worship. I explain that the covenant is a sign of our commitment to one another in the church. Signing your name is a way we express commitment in our culture. They are committing to us as they sign the covenant and we are committing to them as we watch. The covenant is not a legal document. If someone were to want to resign from our church during a process of church discipline, we would let them go (we couldn’t force them to stay anyway), but they would leave not in good standing. They would not be welcomed back without repentance, nor would we recommend them for membership in another church.
Both Dee and Dave have written good things here that should be considered.
I think the conclusion I have is about where you are, Adam: you can resign and be done with us, but we’ll not “send your letter” onward. We will state that you are not currently a member of our fellowship.
I have a dear friend who is having trouble with a church/group of churches in another denomination because she resigned her membership so they listed her membership as “terminated through church discipline,” which is inaccurate. Their claim is that her resignation of membership permitted them to simply cut her out through discipline without her side of the story.
It is far better to let the people who want to go, go—you don’t have to give them a plaque (almost misspelled that with a “g” instead), you don’t even have to lie and claim they were in good standing–just let them go. These are people, not employees, and certainly not prisoners. If they want to go, let them go.
That’s actually how we handled a situation once: someone very clearly behaved in the wrong (long story, not going to tell it again here). He was given the option of sharing his repentance with the church or he could resign as a member and go elsewhere. He went elsewhere. He joined another Baptist church by statement, and I have no interest in calling his new church and warning them what committees he should not be on. It was not criminal, it was sinful but fixable. So the consequences were fixed by others, and he was given those options.
Jon
I am not talking about whether a law is correct or incorrect. I am also not talking about my views on Matthew 18 and the church discipline process. I am simply saying *what is.* I leave the debate on this matter up to theologians and lawyers.
Churches that decide to pursue a parishioner who has resigned should be made aware of the possible liability they will incur. Far too many churches think they are protected by a church covenant/contract. Think of my comment as “a public service announcement.” What I think about the law is irrelevant.
Forgive me for beating a dead horse.
Whatever else, this is not a dead horse. Litigious response to ecclesioligical practice is a reality
I am sleep deprived from international travel, but it appears that we are deciding whether a legally based Or a biblically system if discipline applies.
The church discipline system does not have all of the rights and privileges of American jurisprudence.
One of the purposes of a church covenant is to establish the procedures the church will follow.
Dee — Guinn doesn’t address a church covenant situation, does it? Ms. Guinn said she’d never heard the church’s teaching on discipline, and the Elders didn’t deny it.
And doesn’t the Guinn case say a member can make an “intentional and voluntary” decision to give up their right to disassociate freely from a church?
So, while, it’s true that a church could never get a court order forcing you to attend worship services, a Court might recognize that you agreed to let the church talk about you after you resign. True?
Actually, there is much doubt about that situation you propose. The US law allows you to dissociate from a voluntary association at any time. Given what I have read on the matter, I would not want to be the church who attempted to do so.
The Karen Hinkley situation is a case in point. Her covenant said she could not leave while under discipline at The Village Church. They continued to harass her via texts, emails phone calls, etc. They sent letters to all of the 6,000 *concerned* members regarding her supposed refusal to listen to them. She had resigned in writing.
We had more lawyers wanting to take on that case. We are talking about expectations of a huge settlement . Chandler got so worried he ended up flying across country to apologize to her along with some other things I cannot talk about.
I know churches like to think they can control their members but this is the US and the US law gives people the right to leave any group which is a voluntary association. Slavery was outlawed in the 1800s.
Here is the bottom line. If a member has done something so bad that they wish to continue in that behavior, your church would end up excommunicating them anyway. Are you proposing a scenario in which the church responds to a letter in which the member says “I quit” by responding “You can’t quit until I throw you out?”
Finally, you would have to set up a legal contract in which the prospective member is told that this is a contract in which they are going up their rights as an American citizen by joining this church. The member should be advised to consult an attorney prior to signing such a legal document. Courts frown upon groups that try to get signatures on a contract without advising people that are signing one. My guess is the average person wouldn’t sign it, their lawyers would say not to to sign it and the courts would not enforce it.
However, go for it. I will find the ensuing court battles fascinating. I will not bet on the church prevailing.
Dee — Well, as long as we are agreed your prior statement about “categorically” is hyperbole, I won’t belabor it much further. But, yes, I think there can be good reasons for a church to talk to its members and (sometimes) other churches about what they know about a member’s departure, even if the reasons might be embarrassing. I suspect in some cases, you’d even agree it’s wrong to stay silent.
Your rule about voluntary associations isn’t a full statement of the law. Yes, if there are no other rules, you can leave a voluntary association at will. But if you’ve agreed to reasonable rules about resignation from a voluntary association, you’ll normally be held to them. Of course, no one can be forced to physically attend a church against their will, no matter what they agreed, but otherwise, holding someone to their own agreement isn’t like slavery at all.
As far as I am aware, in cases where a church sets out its policy clearly before the incident, the courts have more-often-than-not sided with the church, regardless of the members’ attempt to resign. In Texas, especially, Westbrook v. Penley comes down very strongly for the church. Of course, if a church misapplies its policy or says something untruthful about the member (even accidentally), that’s a different ball of wax. I’m not sure whether TVC thought the Hinkley situation differed from the Westbrook case, or if it even got that far.
So, the bottom line seems to be that making your church discipline policy well-known — whether in the bylaws, or part of a covenant, or agreement — is likely to be legally helpful if your actions are ever challenged. That doesn’t excuse pastoral misuse or abuse, and doesn’t require signed covenants if you have a theological objection to them. But, that’s a long way from calling such rules unlawful or useless, I think.
I will excuse your beating of this dead horse, if you’ll excuse mine.