Trinity Baptist Church

Each local church has to have a way of handling matters of business.  In some denominations, many of the more important matters, of far reaching effect, are handled at a higher level than the local church.  In others, such as Baptist churches, the congregation makes the ultimate decisions.

I recently heard about a congregation where a matter had caused a church to end up in a business meeting with a 50/50  percentage vote on an emotionally charged issue.  The issue was not of a moral or doctrinal nature, it was simply a matter of preference.  The inexperienced pastor said, “Since I’m the moderator of the business meeting, I’ll break the tie.”  According to church polity, he was within his legal right to be a tie breaker, but in a highly emotionally charged issue, he set half of his congregation against him.

How could the pastor have handled the above mentioned situation?  He could have explained that while the issue was no doubt important, it was not important enough to cause division in the fellowship, because Jesus said that house divided against itself could not stand.  He could have reminded his congregation that God is not the author of confusion, and that while they operated under a majority rule policy,  in this case the majority would be so such a small majority, that the matter needed further prayer and study.  He could have asked that congregation approve the selection of a committee, made up of people on both sides of the issue, to give the matter further study, and to then bring a recommendation to the congregation.  If the congregation seemed determined that he serve as the tie breaking voter, he could have asked them to agree by a show of hands that the minority is willing to bow to the wishes of the majority.

We must stand by the teachings of the Bible, and we cannot compromise that; however, there are many matters that are purely matters of preference, and on these things we must not sacrifice things of greater importance in order to achieve things of lessor importance.