Church discipline/polity/standards/rules... last update?

[steve-in-kville]

This is assuming your fellowship has it in written form, or course!

When was the last time your church updated it's "rule book"? Does it make "addendums" or revisions from time to time? Are there a lot of "commonly understood yet unwritten standards"?

Comment and discuss. I have no direction for this thread.

[steve-in-kville]

This is assuming your fellowship has it in written form, of course!

When was the last time your church updated it's "rule book"? Does it make "addendums" or revisions from time to time? Are there a lot of "commonly understood yet unwritten standards"?

Comment and discuss. I have no direction for this thread.

[Neto]

Periodic times of clarity where the unwritten changes or shifts are put down on paper, sometimes for approval. These occur at varying intervals, perhaps 5 to 10 years apart. The rest of the time there are no written records that a visitor or member could find available, or request. As one who has never been a part of the "ministerial meetings" (except for a few times when invited to give a report for the missions finance fund & projects), so I have no idea what "precipitates" these efforts to "document changes".

I may be wrong on this, but I attribute this to the type of "church government" which we have, specifically "non-congregationalist".

[I am contrasting the custom here against that of the MB congregation in which I grew up, and was a member of well into adulthood (although the last 13 years of that I was on the mission field, so not a part of this decision making process any longer). Decisions were made as a congregation in quarterly business meetings, and there were also long range plans, such as the building plan made in around 1966, the final stages of which took place in 1980. Most of these quarterly meetings dealt with "mundane" issues, but the major ones were handled in the same manner, by vote, in open "members' meetings", and conducted according to Robert's Rules of Order. That long range building plan? Yes, it was reconsidered and affirmed through the same process. (I was there at that time, after finishing college, and I voiced opposition to that stage of the plan, favoring the creation of a sister congregation as opposed to building a larger meeting area. But it was done by orderly congregational action and approval, not by "decree".)]