The first task of the newly elected board and officers is to produce bylaws for the chapel (even though it has not yet converted to a membership corporation). The aim of the effort is (1) to show the faithful the promise of good governance and (2) to be prepared to file the bylaws with your state agency when you either modify your present corporation or establish a new chapel, if the priest irrationally and undemocratically resists the will of the people.
Except for the charter, the bylaws are the most important document an organization possesses, for they protect the corporation and its members. Not only do bylaws define the organization's structure and spell out the rights and obligations of its members, they are the permanent law of an organization. In other words, well-written bylaws guarantee there will be no lawless one-man rule as long as members vigilantly defend their right to majority rule and self-determination. With bylaws, the priest cannot behave as a law unto himself or wantonly spend your money. Bylaws ensure the rule of law will take the place of the fickle dictates of a priestly Politburo controlled by greedy--and dubious--Chairman-Prelates bent on feathering their own nests at the people's expense.
Writing bylaws from scratch is challenging and time consuming. Therefore, to assist you, Pistrina has searched the web for good examples and cobbled together model bylaws that you can use to get started. You'll note that not only are there protections for the members and officers but also for the priest. Lay governance never proposes to make the Traddie priest a slave; instead, under it, he becomes a partner with the laity for the sanctification of souls. In fact, the effect of lay governance is to free the priest from abject slavery to Mammon. No longer need the priesthood be demeaned because the clergy feel obliged to substitute the petty chase after earthly goods for the pursuit of a heavenly crown.
Under lay governance, there can be no opportunity to squander chapel assets on "pastoral" junkets to France and Mexico, or on"pilgrimages" to exclusive spa resorts in the tony, desert Southwest, or on "penitential" gourmet restaurant fare of escargots in garlic-butter sauce paired, no doubt, with an overpriced Petit Chablis.* The elected board will oversee all expenditures. No longer will the priest's unrestrained wants be passed off as the faithful's needs. Considered deliberation will replace the arbitrary whims of one ill-formed man (or his masters). Decent bylaws erect a Chinese wall of sorts between your money and the outsized avarice of the clergy. As an added bonus, the laity will be free from the malignant influence of the sacerdotal security state with its secret denunciations and surprise expulsions:
The day when a coven of ill-omened clergy feeding off the laity's generosity will be finished.
*This last expenditure is particularly wasteful considering the clerical gang we have in mind. They would really prefer to scarf up a steaming paper plate of deep-fried cubed Spam smothered in canned bean dip and washed down with noisy swigs of well-iced red pop (from a plastic bottle, to be sure: they love it when the polyethylene body collapses inwardly with a sharp crack as they greedily chug the contents). However, to keep their hold over their hollow-eyed cultists, they have to pretend to be men of wide culture, exquisite taste, and rare connoisseurship. Too bad for your wallet. You have to pay for both repasts!
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