“The Simple Majority”

The situation

Carl isn't a real man. He's a composite, built out of cases that come across my desk, and nothing in this story points at any one church or any one person. Carl is fifty-one. He runs a heating and air business out of a metal shop behind his house. Two kids, a mortgage with eleven years left on it, a truck payment. His wife, Dana, teaches the three-year-olds in the church preschool. He's been a trustee at that church for nine years. Two hundred and thirty people on a Sunday, a brick building, a gravel lot, and a confession of faith he could recite half asleep. On Monday the ninth, the board chair sends him an email. At the annual members' meeting on November sixteenth, a group of newer families is going to move to modernize the articles of faith. The marriage article comes out. A paragraph about welcome goes in. The chair isn't asking Carl to vote for that. He's asking for something much smaller. He wants every trustee to sign a one-page letter in Saturday's bulletin, urging the congregation to trust the process and keep doctrine off the floor until a listening year is finished. He needs Carl's answer by Friday at five. If Carl signs, nothing happens to him at all. If he doesn't, he is the man who broke the peace. He'll hear about it at the hardware store. Half his customers sit in that building. And Dana's preschool contract comes up again in January.

The technique

Carl thinks the fight is November sixteenth. It isn't. The fight was decided years ago, in a document nobody reads. The book, William Green's Rules for Radical Christians, describes five phases of capture, and four of them are already sitting in his bylaws. Start with who votes. Article Three says, and I'm quoting it word for word, "A member is any person who has attended services regularly for ninety days, contributes as able, and indicates general agreement with the purposes of the church." General agreement. The purposes of the church. Nothing about confessing the faith, nothing about examination by the elders. That is Phase One, Infiltration and Definition Control. You never have to change a doctrine if you can change who is allowed to vote on it. Ninety days and a visitor card is an electorate. Next, the statement of faith. It hangs framed in the lobby. In the bylaws it shows up once, in the preamble, called a historic expression of this congregation's heritage. It is not named as the governing standard for teaching, for membership, or for the use of the building, and no officer is named to interpret it. That's Phase Two, Normalization and Reframing. The confession becomes a souvenir of what the church used to think. Then the amendment clause. Article Twelve: "These bylaws, including the articles of faith, may be amended by a majority of members present and voting at any regular or special meeting, provided ten days' notice of the meeting is given." Read that last part again. Notice of the meeting. Not notice of the text. The doctrine of that church can be changed by half of whoever shows up on a cold Tuesday, and nobody has to see the wording in advance. That is Phase Four, the crisis moment, written into the rules and waiting for someone to use it. And the last page, the dissolution article, says the property goes to the regional association, or to whatever body the association names. So leaving isn't an exit. Leaving is a donation. There's a free bylaws check for exactly this. It's called Mission Lock, and it reads a church's, a school's or a ministry's governing documents for these provisions, at rules for radical christians dot com, slash bylaws.

The temptation

Friday morning. Carl is alone in the shop office with the letter printed out and a pen lying on top of it. Nobody is pressuring him in that room. The pressure is coming from inside, in four sentences that each carry just enough truth to work. The first one: it's just paper. Bylaws aren't Scripture. That's true, and it's exactly why the paper is dangerous. A church never votes on Scripture. It votes on the paper that says what the church will do with Scripture. The second: don't split the church over a technicality. Also true, as far as it goes. Unity is commanded. But Paul says unity in the faith, not unity instead of it, and a peace held together by nobody saying what they believe isn't peace. It's an agreement about who has to stay quiet. The third: you're a trustee, not a theologian. Stay in your lane and let the pastors handle doctrine. There's real humility in that, and the men running this are counting on it. A trustee holds the building, the money, and the documents. That is the whole lane. The fourth: God knows my heart. He does. He also knows your signature. Carl's name under a sentence telling two hundred people to keep doctrine off the floor is a public act, and the room will read it as one. Peter knew this ground. In Galatians the second chapter, Peter never denied the gospel. He just moved his chair. He stopped eating with the Gentile believers when certain men came down, and Paul writes that he was to be blamed, and that others were carried away with his dissimulation. Peter wasn't trying to break the church. He was trying to keep it calm. That's the sin on offer here, and it comes wrapped in peace.

Your move

Here's the counter from the book. Don't fight the November sixteenth motion on its own ground. They chose that ground, and on that ground every answer sorts people into loving or hateful. Change what the meeting is about. Move it off one doctrine, which divides a room, and onto the process, which almost nobody will defend out loud. So Carl doesn't sign the letter, and he doesn't write a speech either. He makes a motion. Short enough to say standing up, in proper form. That's the first move, and it sounds like this. I move that Article Twelve be amended so that no change to the articles of faith may pass except by two-thirds of the members at two consecutive meetings. That's all of it. Ask a man to vote against that, and he has to say out loud that he wants doctrine changed quickly, by half the room, with no second thought. Very few people will say that in front of their neighbors. Second move: find your second before the meeting, not during it. A motion with no second dies and is never recorded. So Carl calls two men he's known for twenty years, and on Monday he tells one of the elders exactly what he intends to do. That's pre-commitment. Once a brother knows, the three in the morning version of Carl can't quietly decide to skip it. Third move: ask the chair, in writing, that the full text of the amendment go out with the written notice of the meeting, thirty days ahead, to every member on the roll. Send it as an email so there's a record of the asking. Light before a vote is not an attack on anyone. It's the ordinary way honest bodies do business. And one plain word of caution. I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. Any amendment that touches property, the dissolution article, or employment should be reviewed by an attorney who knows your state before it ever goes to a vote. Fourth move: keep being excellent. Carl keeps the boiler running. He keeps showing up with his toolbox on Saturday morning. He does not become a man with one subject. The hardest brother in the church to call divisive is the one visibly carrying the building on his back.

Scripture & close

Jude, the third verse. "Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints." Once delivered. Not renegotiated every ten days by whoever happens to show up. Here's the takeaway. A church is never stolen at the meeting. It's stolen in the paragraph that set the meeting up, and that paragraph can be fixed while everyone is still friendly. This is the Religion Mountain. If this is happening to you, Ask: rules for radical christians dot com, slash ask. Your first one is free. And to know which of the seven mountains you are standing on, take the free assessment at rules for radical christians dot com, slash start. Stand your ground. We'll see you on the wall.