6. AUDITS
6.1 Provision shall be made for an annual audit of the Society’s books and the auditors shall be newly appointed at Grand Council to audit a financial statement for report to the next Grand Council.
6.2 The auditor need not be a professional accountant but cannot be a director, officer or employee of the corporation or associated with a director, officer or employee.
7. AMENDING PROCEDURE
7.1 Amendments to these by-laws may be proposed by any two voting members.
7.2 At least one of the movers of an amendment must be present in person for the amendment to be considered at Grand Council.
7.3 An amendment will be adopted when 75% of all voting members represented in person at a Grand Council vote in favour. Abstentions will be recorded but will not count in deciding.
7.4 Amendments to the Statement of Shared Beliefs (Section 2) and to the Ethics section (section 3) and this section require the consent of the National Grand Council of the Congregationalist Witchcraft Association Corporation.
8. OUTREACH AND RECRUITMENT
8.1 This Association will be primarily interested in recruiting those in need of our services rather than in replacing activities already underway. We will attempt to work with established groups as well.
8.2 We will provide networking services and meeting places for seekers and solitaires and will encourage new groups to form.
9. PROCEDURE AT MEETINGS
9.1 Roberts’ Rules of Order shall be the standard for procedure at all Society meetings, as modified through these by-laws and the Branch and Provincial Councils’ rules of order as from time to time adopted.
10. RULES AND REGULATIONS
10.1 The Provincial Council may prescribe such rules and regulations not inconsistent with these by-laws relating to the management and operation of the Society as they deem expedient, provided that they shall only have force or effect until confirmed at the next Grand Council and if they are not confirmed they will cease to have any effect.
10.2 In like manner, the Ordination Committee may adopt rules and procedures to govern its actions.
11. CORPORATE SEAL
11.1 The seal, an impression whereof is stamped in the margin hereof, shall be the seal of the Society.
12 - ORDINATION OF MINISTERS
Because of the traditional system of apprenticeship of Priesthood, and the requirement in many of the Traditions of our religion that some aspects of the training of Priesthood be kept secret from the non-Initiated, the details of the training and the exact reasons for decisions being made about Ordination of Ministers cannot be set down in detail nor published. The strong role of intuition and the Mysteries through which the Gods act to train candidates for the Priesthood cannot be systematized.
12.1 (a) One of the services that the Society wishes to offer to its membership and to the Pagan and Wiccan population of British Columbia as a whole is legal ordination of Ministers.
(b) Initiation is required for Ordination in our Society. An Ordained person is expected to engage in a public Ministry and to be associated with a Temple group.
(c) Any qualified person can act as Priesthood within the Society or at any of our activities or events save only those activities that require an Ordained Minister, chiefly public rituals, marriage and chaplaincy.
(d) Ordination does not give the Minister any greater power in the affairs of the Society except in those areas where an Ordained person is deemed to be required by Grand Council or the Provincial Council and in the area of training for Ordination and Ordination itself as elaborated below.
12.2 The first group of Ordained Ministers will be chosen by the founding members of the Society.
(a) Subsequent groups of candidates shall apply to the Ordination Committee of the Society. This committee shall be composed of the Ordained Ministers, the Chair, Vice-chair, and Pursewarden of the Provincial Council and a Members’ Advocate chosen at a Grand Council by the members-at-large. The Ordination Committee may strike a subcommittee to perform the evaluation of potential candidates for the Ministry and delegate whatever authority it deems appropriate to this sub-committee. This might be done in the case of a geographically remote potential candidate or for some other reason and must be done at the request of a Branch if more than three Ministers are associated with that Branch. A simple majority of the Committee must approve the candidate for her or him to begin the formal process.
(b) Candidates must establish a formal working relationship with one Ordained Minister of the Society within a reasonable time after being accepted as a candidate. They must be prepared to work under her or his direct supervision for a year.
When the Ordination Committee is informed in writing of this arrangement the year of formal preparation for Ordination will begin.
(c) An Evaluation Committee will be struck, under the authority of the Ordination Committee, consisting of at least three Initiated Witches. All of the members of this committee must be members of the Society but they need not all be Ordained.
The candidate and her or his mentor will select them and they will act as backup to the candidate and her or his mentor and keep generally informed about her or his progress.
(d) A Minister may mentor no more than three candidates for Ordination at a time. No person may serve on more than four concurrent Evaluation Committees.
(e) A candidate must do a public ritual prior to their final evaluation. At the end of a year the candidate will be examined privately by the Evaluation Committee as to her or his fitness to be an Ordained Minister of the Society. The committee will discuss privately and vote by secret ballot. The candidate must be approved unanimously. If any member of the committee requests it, a second vote will be held after no less than one hour of further discussion and prayerful deliberation. The vote will again be by secret ballot and approval must be unanimous.
(f) Decisions of the Evaluation Committee are subject to ratification by the subcommittee of the Ordination Committee that originally approved the candidate.
(g) Candidates who fail their evaluation can continue to study for another year with the same mentor or another. The same voting rules will apply.
12.3 For the general guidance of the Ordination and Evaluation Committees these criteria should be used in evaluating candidates:
(a) the person must be of good character - honest and sincere, with demonstrated good judgement and strong moral character, direct and trustworthy, possessing a creative intelligence, compassion for others, some counselling and teaching ability.
— Character is first because the Goddess is not a matter of information but of heart and emotions. It is our self that we offer to Her and in service to our community. And it is through our honest commitment to compassion, to mutual vulnerability and to the principles of our Statement of Faith that we can serve Her as clergy in the Society.
(b) the person must be able to found and lead a group and to train all of its members.
— That means she or he must be very knowledgeable about Paganism as she or he understands it - know the ritual forms, the festivals, the techniques of trance and ecstasy in her or his Tradition, the mythology, the deities and so on. He or she must be able to create and demonstrate ritual that works and to explain why it works.
(c) the person must have undergone a transformative experience that left her or him with a personal strong attachment and commitment to the divine.
(d) the candidate must be able to be a public spokesperson for the Society in specific and Paganism in general.
12.4 People who have been ordained by another provincial branch of the Congregationalist Witchcraft Association shall only need to be approved by a majority vote of the Ordination Committee to receive our Minister credential.
12.5 The person who authorizes Minister’s credentials and deals with the province around this is the Secretary of the Provincial Council.
12.6 Removal of Ministers
(a) A Minister shall be removed from the Ministry in the event that;
(i) she/he ceases to be a member in good standing, or
(ii) she/he is no longer ordinarily resident in the province of British Columbia, or
(iii) a petition for her/his removal signed by a majority of the members of the Branch of the Society that the Minister is associated with is presented to the Secretary of the Provincial Council, or
(iv) a resolution is passed at an Grand Council of the Branch she/he is associated with removing her/him, or
(v) she/he fails the regular review by the Ordination Committee and is not able or willing to correct whatever failings that she/he has within one year of the review.
(b) A Minister who has lost her/his credential may apply to be reinstated to the Ordination Committee no less than one year after losing the credential. Upon a simple majority vote in favour the Minister will be reinstated.
(c) A Minister who has been stripped of her/his credential two times may not reapply for five years after the second time.