Bylaws
Church Bylaws Landing Page!
Leading a church should be joyful. Yes, there are many courageous decisions that need to be made. But no one needs the “side-ways energy” that bad bylaws create. Bad bylaws cause good people to behave badly. So, here are a few resources to help you rethink your leadership teams so that you can 
maximize accountability and fruitfulness while minimizing politics and unnecessary pain.
Happy Church Governance: Failures, Fights, and the
bylaws to prevent them! After researching hundreds of church splits and disasters, what can we learn from them? What if we could structure our churches better? You can now download an early draft of this upcoming book here: HappyChurchGov2022_08 I.e., Please give me feedback before the final print! Help me make it better!
Church Bylaws and the Disasters that Created Them –
(A Free Companion Book for Happy Church Governance) This is an “Educational Set” of bylaws – with over 30 essays and cheat sheets to explain the “why behind the what.” I.e., What 
should a lead pastor look for in a board? What about search committees, church discipline, and other processes? Once again, you can download an early draft of this upcoming book here: Bylaws_Annotated2022_08
Bylaws with No Essays or Annotations – (for use as a template) These are the actual legal bylaws of Substance Church: Substance Bylaws_Final_2018_Dec
Trustees / Directors “Cheat Sheet” – How to be a Great Trustee! Trustees_How2BAGreatOne
Trustees / Directors: What Lead Pastors Should be Looking For? Trustee-WhatShouldPastorsLookFor
Trustees / Directors: How to Onboard them! Trustee-HowToOnboard
Overseers / Spiritual Advisors: What Lead Pastors Should be Looking For? . . . Overseers_WhatShouldPastorsLookFor.pdf
Peter Haas is the Lead Pastor of Substance Church – an international multisite church based in Minneapolis. Peter is also a dj-turntablist who produces & tours with Substance Variant. He writes comedy books on spirituality: “Pharisectomy: How to Remove Your Inner Pharisee and Other Religiously Transmitted Diseases” (2012) and Broken Escalators (2015). See www.SubstanceChurch.com – @peterhaas1 (twitter & instagram)
Click to visit one of Substance’s Church live services, or see our documentary film-style services on Youtube. To watch our worship vides, see Substance Input Output.
