Your church policies

You and / or your church need policies on various things such as:

Baptism
Re-marriage of divorced persons when their former spouse is still living
The churchyard and garden of remembrance

It is probably helpful if those policies are written down and publically available. You may also have other documents that talk about how you will interpret and apply those policies.

Your policies need to conform to the law, including Canon Law, and you should have regard to the various guidence that the C of E or your Diocese might produce.

You may wish to inform the PCC or the whole church of these policies. Some things are for them to decide. The whole thing is probably best discussed with them and if you can formally all agree, brilliant.

One thing you need to decide is how much you will have a cast iron set of rules which govern all cases and are strictly implimented and how much you will have a set of guiding principles. How much discretion do you want in each case and who is the exercise it? There are pros and cons either way. You may want to pass the buck on some decisions, but then you are giving up your right to decide. It may be good to share the responsibility but again if you involve others they may not agree with you!

Whatever you do, you need to be fair and consistent and you need to seek to be seen to be so. You don't have to treat all cases alike, but you do need to treat all relevantly similar cases alike in the significant ways.

Happy writing!