Constitution

Hi all. Please take a look at the updated version of our constitution. It is a merger of our current constitution and the latest model ELCA constitution. As a rule, congregations are asked to update their constitution every 3 years, which is how often the national church updates the ELCA’s model constitution. Most congregations have a lot going on and get to these updates more often every 9 years or so. We, however, have not updated our constitution in 25 years, so we are due.

Back when we last changed our constitution, the model constitution was a jagged patchwork of the ALC and LCA constitutions. The ways those two models interacted with one another was still being—to use an overused term from the merger days, “lived into”—and as such, sometimes there were multiple ways offered to do the same thing, or more of a problem, mutually exclusive ways to do a thing. So those issues have all been tidied up and clarified in subsequent years.

Additionally, since then, the ELCA simplified our Word and Service Roster. Instead of having AIMS, Deaconesses, and Deacons, all Rostered Ministers who are called to Word and Service ministry (as opposed to Pastors, who are called to Word and Sacrament ministry) are called Deacons. So, there is now a whole section about them, it starts at 9.21.

Other than that, there is a chapter (19) that allows for congregations to more easily work with other congregations through a “Parish” model, and another one (20) that can be built out to help a congregation navigate our overly litigious society. On top of that, the group of us who got together to update the constitution made some practical updates to some of the Spruce Run specific sections. Some of our resolutions are now a little less prescriptive, for example we described the council agenda format in 12.12.01 as “typical” instead of “the agenda should be.” We filled out the descriptions of committees that were incomplete, clarified practices where the meaning was unclear, and consolidated sections that either needlessly elongated the document or made better sense in different sections.

A special thank you to Judi Mansilla, Brad Cox, Jack Eustace, and Bev Hockenbury for walking through this detail heavy process.

Peace,

Pastor Chris