For those building up a community church, both the hierarchical approach and the congregational approach have their risks.

A weak hierarchical authority and a mentally-disturbed pastor allowed a con man to take over an enticingly rich Swedenborgian Church in Boston Massachusetts.

http://www.religionnewsblog.com/6439/a-tiny-church-a-pot-of-gold-an-ex-con-spark-a-bitter-feud

A Federal judge ruled that the national Swedenborgian church lacked authority to intervene. The dispute attracted attention from Federal authorities and the State attorney general, however, and ten years later they finally got the con man on criminal charges.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/03/06/convicted-con-man-mackenzie-sentence-years-for-swindling- church/9UsLnvPMURWImeaSd4BFpI/story.html

Moral– Don’t let your church get too rich and tempting. If your endowment is more than needed to service a declining congregation, give some of it away in good works. (Good advice also for the Knights Templar in France around 1300 AD.)

—–

The Roman Catholic church has taken a strictly hierarchical approach to property ownership. That deters schism. On the other hand it has left unrelated church institutions, eg parochial schools with clean records, and cemeteries, vulnerable to seizure in clergy-sex-abuse litigation.

I am not aware of an unrelated parochial school being shut down in these cases (the political pushback would be very strong), but at least one trust fund for cemeteries took a hit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/appeals-court-overturns-ruling-on-milwaukee-catholic-cemetery-trust-1425949192

“Time will pass. The graves of the odious traitors will be overgrown with weeds…”
—-A.Ya. Vyshinsky at the 1938 Bukharin trial (Moscow)

The president makes a decision whether or not to sign a bill–if the courts can twist the law like a pretzel, how would the president know whether to sign it or not. So far out interpretations undercut the President’s constitutional role in legislation.

With respect to regulations, recall that they are subject to notice and comment procedures. If regulations are interpreted in ways that really push the envelope, the notice and comment requirements are undercut.