How churches are actually organized

Most comparisons of denominations compare beliefs. This one compares property, money, clergy, name, and exit — the arrangements a congregation lives inside every week, and the ones that decide what happens when it wants to leave.

Start with a question

• Who owns the building?

  Whose name is on the deed, and whether anything above the congregation encumbers it. The single most consequential structural difference between these bodies, and the one least visible from the pew.

• How does a church get its pastor?

  Whether a congregation chooses its pastor, receives one, or something in between — and who can end the arrangement.

• Who is the pastor's employer?

  The test here is who hires and who can dismiss, not who runs payroll. The two come apart: a congregation can carry every burden of employment — salary, benefits, reporting, liability — while holding none of the power, and the payroll answer alone would make opposite arrangements look identical.

• What money leaves the congregation?

  The basis of upward payments — assessed, expected at a rate, freely given, or owed under contract. A body with no upward flow is not a failure to report; it is the fact.

• Who oversees the congregation?

  Not who appoints the pastor, but who the appointer is — whether oversight rests in a person or a council, how that office is obtained, for how long, and who can end it. A bishop with life tenure, a bishop facing re-election every six years, and a bishop appointed by an authority outside the country are three different arrangements that the word 'bishop' conceals.

• Who owns the church's name?

  Trademark and brand control — the quietest lever, and the one that does most of the work in newer networks.

• How does a congregation leave?

  The exit path the governing documents actually provide, and what the congregation takes with it.

Bodies described here

• Acts 29

  Partial — some structures are not publicly documented

• Anglican Church in North America

  Built from primary governing documents

• Catholic religious institutes

  Partial — some structures are not publicly documented

• Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

  Partial — some structures are not publicly documented

• Global Methodist Church

  Built from primary governing documents

• Hillsong Church

  Partial — some structures are not publicly documented

• Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

  Partial — some structures are not publicly documented

• Presbyterian Church in America

  Partial — some structures are not publicly documented

• Roman Catholic Church — dioceses and parishes

  Partial — some structures are not publicly documented

• The Episcopal Church

  Built from primary governing documents

• The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

  Built from primary governing documents

• The Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans)

  Built from primary governing documents

• The Society of Jesus (Jesuits)

  Built from primary governing documents

• The Southern Baptist Convention

  Built from primary governing documents

• The United Methodist Church

  Built from primary governing documents

Why networks are included

Acts 29, Hillsong, ARC, Calvary Chapel and their peers call themselves networks, families, or movements rather than denominations. This site classifies bodies by what they do rather than what they call themselves: if a body holds property, credentials or places clergy, takes regular money, licenses the congregation's name, or runs a discipline process, its congregations live inside a structure, and that structure can be described. Filing a network as a denomination here is a filing decision, not an accusation — the method page sets out the test in full.