By Laws or "Bye, Laws"

Within each and every congregation there are a set of what are known as "by-laws". Originally, the purpose for this document was to set into place a means which the "church" could not only abide by the laws of the state, but also legally protect itself from outside "invasion". And for these reasons, they are absolutely necessary.

As I mentioned, every congregation has them. But not every congregation has them identically. Some are as simple as one page. Others are practically like an operator's manual for an F-47. So, we can go from one extreme to the other. And is it wrong to have a set of by-laws that consist only of one page? Is it wrong to have the F-47 manual? In my opinion, I can see different problems with both. But, length is not the true issue. The issue is CONTENT, and both the short and long versions are susceptible to this problem.

The one pager usually goes something like this:
Article 1. This institution shall be know as the Whatever It's Called Church
Article 2. We will follow what the Bible says.
Article 3. Article 1 cannot be changed without a majority vote by the congregation.

There's usually a little more to it to make is sound "official", but I'm sure you get the idea.

The problem here is that simply saying "We follow what the Bible says" leaves so much room for opinion. Granted, on some things we can have opinion, but some we can't.

Now, I'm not going to get into what could be contained in the lengthier one because it could include a rule for who unlocks the doors on Sunday morning. And that's the problem. There's a rule or regulation that covers every single piddly little thing so that you have to call in somebody with a law degree before you can plant a begonia in the flowerbed by the parking lot.

So you see, the short and long version can have their problems with content. But, it's not the content or lack of that I've already mentioned that creates the biggest problems. No. If it were only that simple. The worst and most wide-spread problem is that our by-laws, even though we do well at pretending they don't, typically supersede Scripture and/or are unscriptural.

But I guess the question is: why do well-meaning Christians construct and adopt by-laws which do not coincide with Scripture?

One reason that I can see is a lack of knowledge of the Scripture's meaning or intent. So, having no understanding, these by-laws are based purely upon human judgment, or at least mostly human judgment with enough understanding of Scripture to mess it up.

Another thing that I've seen has been setting up the by-laws according to human experience. An example may be that a preacher from the past was dictatorial or politically motivated in appointing elders that he could control that the by-laws were revised to prevent that situation from re-occurring. By human logic, this may make sense. But this is absolutely unbiblical! The Scripture tells us how God's Church is to operate, and if this is ignored because of "human" matters, repentance for overruling God's plan for His Church must take place.

To conclude: If we handle things in the Church which are contradictory to the way the One and Only God has given us to, we are wrong and willfully sinning! I do not say this lightly. We must repent of our arrogance and humble ourselves before our Lord.

Agape