3. Autonomous church: These churches maintain all decisions from within the individual church (called the "local" church). Baptists use this form of church leadership. Individual churches voluntarily join together to form “associations,” associations join together to form a “convention” (such as the North Carolina Baptist Convention), and small conventions join together to form a large “convention” (such as the Southern Baptist Convention). The larger Convention makes policies; local churches can choose to accept those policies or not. Therefore, all decisions are made in the local church, and local church agrees (or not) with the Convention’s polices and thus are members (or not) of that Convention. But the Convention cannot force the local church to abide by the Convention’s decisions. If a local church disagrees, then it leaves the Convention. An example: if the head pastor dies in a church using this structure, the local church will decide on a new pastor; the associations or conventions play no role in choosing a new pastor. Another example: the local church owns the building; therefore, if the church members of a local church decide to leave the denomination, they can, and the denomination has no control over the physical property.

Exception, or maybe not: Many churches are independent. Nevertheless, they act in the same manner as autonomous churches and so they belong in that category. While independent churches claim no loyalty to a denomination, diocese, association, or convention, usually they link with other like-minded independent churches for the purpose of educating pastors, producing church literature, pooling money for missionary activities, etc. This falls into the category of autonomous church.