Church Constitution

[Guest Dennis]

Our church constitution provides for quarterly business meetings. Recently in a regular business meeting, a motion was made, seconded, and adopted to hold monthly business meetings for the next six months. Is that allowable? The constitution has instructions for amending the by-laws. But this was not followed. Seems to me the motion should have been ruled out of order but there was so much tension in the room and the moderator went ahead with reservations.

[hmtcastle]

Is that allowable?

Your bylaws (aka constitution) can only be properly interpreted in their entirety, something that's beyond the scope of this forum.

But one of RONR's "Principles of Interpretation" is that, "if the bylaws authorize certain things specifically, other things of the same class are thereby prohibited".

Raise a point of order at the next meeting to the effect that regular monthly meetings are not authorized by your bylaws.

You might be able to hold "special" (i.e. non-regular) meetings each month. But that's a different question.

[David A Foulkes]

You also need to be clear about what the constitution says. If it says (by your organization's interpretation) that there can ONLY be quarterly meetings, that's one thing. If it says there must be "at least" a quarterly meeting, that may allow some wiggle room. You also need to pay attention to who (person or group) is authorized to call meetings, should inter-quarterly meetings be called. There may be a notice requirement as well. Only you can know for sure.

[Gary Novosielski]

Our church constitution provides for quarterly business meetings. Recently in a regular business meeting, a motion was made, seconded, and adopted to hold monthly business meetings for the next six months. Is that allowable? The constitution has instructions for amending the by-laws. But this was not followed. Seems to me the motion should have been ruled out of order but there was so much tension in the room and the moderator went ahead with reservations.

It depends on the language with which the constitution "provides for" these meetings.