N.Y. Religious Corporations Law § 41: Certificate of incorporation

§ 41. Certificate of incorporation. If such meeting shall decide in

favor of incorporation and comply with the next preceding section, the

presiding officer of such meeting and at least two other persons present

and voting thereat, shall execute and acknowledge a certificate of

incorporation setting forth:

1. The fact of the calling and holding of such meeting;

2. The name of the corporation as decided upon thereat;

3. The county, and the town, city or village, in which its principal

place of worship is, or is intended to be located;

4. The day, either on Sunday or a secular day, upon which the annual

election shall be held;

5. The number of vestrymen decided upon at such meeting;

6. The names of the vestrymen elected at such meeting and the term of

office of each;

7. The names of the churchwardens elected at such meeting and the term

of office of each.

Such certificate, when accompanied by a certificate of the bishop of

the diocese within which the principal place of worship of the proposed

corporation is, or is intended to be located, to the effect that he

consents to the incorporation of such church, shall be filed in the

office of the clerk of the county specified in the certificate of

incorporation; but in case the see be vacant, or the bishop be absent or

unable to act, the consent of the standing committee, with their

certificate of the vacancy of the see or of the absence or disability of

the bishop, shall suffice.

On filing such certificate in the office of the clerk of the county so

specified therein the churchwardens and vestrymen so elected and their

successors in office, together with the rector, when there is one, shall

form a vestry and shall be the trustees of such church or congregation;

and they and their successors shall thereupon, by virtue of this

chapter, be a body corporate by the name or title expressed in such

certificate, and shall have power, from time to time to adopt by-laws

for its government. Such corporation shall be an incorporated church,

and may be termed also an incorporated parish.