Confessions, Covenants, and Constitutions: How to Organize Your Church

 

Which Documents & Why

 

Which Church Documents? And Why?
by Aaron Menikoff

Church Planters, Don’t Wait to Put Your Documents in Place!
by Joel Kurz

How Our Church Has Found a Marriage Policy Useful
by Nick Gatzke

5 Questions on Church Incorporation
by David Gibbs

 

Confessions & Covenants

 

Confessions: Old or New?
by Bobby Jamieson

Confessions: Thick or Thin?
by Jonathan Leeman

27 Ways to Use Your Confession and Covenant
by Garrett Kell

On the Thorny Matter of Signatures and Assent
by Brad Wheeler

 

Constitutions & By-Laws

 

Why I Love My Book of Church Order
by Guy Waters

Your Constitution Is a Theological Document
by Greg Gilbert

Seven Tips for Writing (or Revising) Your Church Constitution
by Andrew Nichols and Matt Schmucker

Two Pastors Who Chose to Renovate not Rewriter Their Constitutions
by Mark Vroegop and Curtis Hill

Not Them! Who You Don’t Want to Revise Your Documents
by Mike McKinley

Does Anyone Know Robert? Rules of Order in Church Members’ Meetings
by Bob Johnson

Dealing with Bad Documents
by Greg Gilbert

 

Editor’s Note:

“Scripture is the only document our church needs!” Have you ever thought that?

Okay, fine. But I have a few questions for you. First, who exactly would you say Jesus is, and can I get baptized in your church if I, like, totally disagree with you on his divinity?

Also, is it okay for me to call myself a member of your church and—you know—never, ever attend?

And—last question—who in your church, generally speaking, decides who the pastors are? I mean, does the church just kinda know? The Spirit tells them? Or, maybe, you personally speak for the Spirit!

Yes, Scripture should be a church’s sole authority. But the confessions, covenants, and constitutions of a church articulate what the members agree the Scripture teaches on what they should believe, how they should live, and how they should be governed.

Church documents are a prosaic topic, to be sure. But they facilitate unity. They protect a church from being governed by the passions of the moment. And they force a congregation and its leaders to be careful, deliberate, reflective, and, hopefully, biblical. Not bad, for a boring old administrator’s job.

To put it another way, church documents are kind. It is kind to tell people what you think up front. It is kind say what you will expect from them or how disagreements will be resolved.

Imagine a husband and wife, a year into marriage, realizing they have dramatically different views about commitment and faithfulness because they never bothered with vows. “Ah, that’s just paperwork!” Or, imagine your boss asking you to do one thing when you thought your job was something else because you never had a job description.

This is what church documents are for—letting everyone know what their job is, and what covenant faithfulness looks like.

Believe it or not, we at 9Marks get questions about church documents perhaps as much as any other topic. And my guess is that a lot of our pastor-readers are not surprised. They know how crucial good documents are.

For reasons like these, we offer this edition of the 9Marks Journal to help you think through different aspects of confessions, covenants, and constitutions, as well as a couple of other documents. If you have follow up questions, try the 9Marks Mailbag, or just ask an older, wiser pastor! We pray this is useful.

—Jonathan Leeman

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