The Leadership Team in the last several months has thoroughly reviewed the Riverside Constitution and By Laws to ensure that it meets the current and future needs of our church. During that process we found several areas where we need to improve or modify our current practices to ensure that we are following both the written word and the spirit of the constitution. We also found a couple areas that we feel should be changed to better serve Riverside now and into the future.
As part of that process we will present the changes at our June 2015 meeting for review and discussion. Then vote on the changes at our January 2016 meeting.
A current copy of our constitution and bylaws is here.
A full copy of the proposed changes is available here.
If you have any questions or concerns PLEASE contact a Leadership Team member and/or email the lt@rcovenant.org.
Highlights of the specific changes are below:
Bylaws
Article I Membership
Section 4. Children. Children of the church shall be nurtured under its spiritual care. They shall receive instruction in the Word of God, Christian doctrine, and the history of the church, normally using the confirmation/discipleship material of the ECC. After completing the confirmation/discipleship material, tThey may apply for church membership as outlined under Section 3 of this article.
Article II The Leadership Team
Section 2. Composition. The Leadership Team shall be comprised of not less than 5 nor more than 9 Leadership Team members, one of whom shall be the Senior Pastor (ex officio). The Leadership Team may appoint other pastors, staff members, or members as non-voting advisors, and may remove the same.
Section 11. Responsibilities of the Leadership Team.
e. be responsible for overseeing the preparation and submission of a proposed budget for each fiscal year to the membership for approval. Upon approval of the budget by the membership, the Leadership Team shall be responsible for seeing that the budget is carried out as approved. The Leadership Team shall have the authority to appropriately adjust budget items and amounts where ministry objectives necessitate but in no event shall total expenditures exceed the total authorized budget without prior notification of the membership. The Leadership Team shall appoint a member or staff member of the church as financial secretary (not necessarily a Leadership Team member) who shall be authorized to receive monies on behalf of the church and shall appoint a treasurer (not necessarily a Leadership Team member) to disburse funds for church purposes in accordance with standard accounting procedures for non-profit organizations. The Leadership Team shall annually appoint an independent review of the financial records of the church and report such findings to the congregation. Neither the treasurer nor financial secretary shall serve more than four consecutive years.