Serious topics

[Timothy Bonney]

I agree. I can't quite imagine why an autonomous congregation would need Valley Forge approval (or even regional approval) to withdraw from ABC. On the other hand, mortgages being what they are, I can see how a region or national could have an interest in the real estate. Maybe that's what Ed means. Also, it's possible that a church might have such a requirement written into its own by-laws.

ABC churches put often put in their bylaws property revisionary clauses which require any property to go back to the ABC if the church leaves. The reason this happened is that there have been instances of church stealing (for want of a better term) where the church goofs and hires a pastor without ABC credentials whose intention is to lead the church out of the denomination. Or, as almost happened to a church in Kansas leading to a lawsuit many years ago, a group join the church from another denomination and then show up at the business meeting and act as a voting block to basically steal the church from its original membership and denomination.

My previous Baptist experience is that church business meetings are so poorly attended at most churches that an organized faction could easily show up and vote a church out of the denomination if there was not a clause in the Bylaws to prevent such an action.

[Mrs Haruo]

I know of one church that got to the point where so many members had moved away or died or were in nursing homes and unable to attend a business meeting even if they wanted to. It got to the point where they had a hard time making a quorum to even do business at a church business meeting.

[Timothy Bonney]

I know of one church that got to the point where so many members had moved away or died or were in nursing homes and unable to attend a business meeting even if they wanted to. It got to the point where they had a hard time making a quorum to even do business at a church business meeting.

UMC churches are only required to have once business meeting a year (known as a Charge Conference) unless something comes up such as purchase of sale of property etc. There are enough elected officers and committee persons on the Church Council (often as many as twenty or more) that you get a pretty representative body of church members at the Charge Conference. Most of the time I think that works just as well as a congregational meeting though the DS can call it as a Church Conference and invite all the membership in if she or he wants.

In ABC churches I pastored most churches had quarterly meetings or less while the SBC churches I was in had monthly business meetings. I always thought monthly congregational business meetings was a waste of time. It just encouraged a few people to show up and try to micromanage the church when in reality month to month there often wasn't enough business to justify the meeting.