Bylaws Progress! Good job Bellevue!

Many of you will remember that last week I sent a letter to Mark Dougharty, requesting a copy of Bellevue’s bylaws pursuant to the Tennessee state code. Today was the church’s deadline to respond. This morning I called the church, Mark Dougharty’s office confirmed that the bylaws were ready, and by this afternoon they had been picked up.

I want to take this opportunity to wholeheartedly applaud the leadership for this step toward transparency! Well done! I would like to take this as an indication that we are both heading in the right direction. I’m still not sure why requests dating back to March for these documents did not yield results, but at least information is starting to flow. Allowing the membership of Bellevue access to the church’s governing documents is the right thing to do.

Now that the administration has taken this first step, I would urge them to continue. There’s no reason why their show of trust in the congregation should stop here. I urge the church’s leadership to begin answering the numerous questions surrounding hiring and firing practices (after all, those who have been removed and those who have replaced them, are people who are to minister to us as a church body—should we have no say in who they are?). Further, I would urge the leadership to answer questions about undisclosed financial information—the congregation does have a right to know if its tithe and love gifts is being spent wisely in ALL AREAS, NOT JUST SOME.

Finally, I would urge that the administration carry out this first step to its fullest potential, and cease their opposition to holding a meeting of the congregation, at Bellevue, to discuss the direction of the church, answer questions from the floor, and put to rest damaging rumors. This is the congregation’s right, and it should not be forced to abdicate its role of self-governance to the deacon body whose job is not necessarily to lead, but to serve. Nor should it abandon that role and allow its leadership to operate without accountability and disclosure to the people in general. Leaders should only fear answering to a congregation if they have something they wish to keep from that congregation. We sincerely want to give the leadership the benefit of the doubt, but as secretive as they’ve been, it is difficult to do so.

Again, my sincere thanks to the leadership at Bellevue for, after six months of efforts, producing a copy of the bylaws. You’ve done the right thing. I’m truly proud of you. Now let’s keep doing the right thing!

Note: Now that a copy of the bylaws is available, I will work to give you all a summary of how they work to govern our church. Hopefully that will be available by the end of next week. I also hope to have the second Mark Sharp interview ready by very late tomorrow night, but it may be a tad later due to scheduling conflicts. I promise we'll have it up as soon as possible.