Scholars are in general agreement that the programs of reform collectively known as the Tanzimat focused largely on two issues central to Ottoman imperial governance: state-centralization and the organization of non-Muslim communities. In the case of state-centralization, the imperial government deployed a variety of tools to expand formal institutions of control throughout the country. While this theoretically necessitated only the expansion and rationalization of the bureaucracy, in practice it entailed a series of carrot-and-stick measures to rein in provincial powerbrokers. Meanwhile, reorganizing the non-Muslim communities consisted of promulgating some kind of legal document that introduced formal democratic checks on the prerogatives of the clergy. Yet, these two issues have been studies in isolation from one another. By looking at the career of Mkrtich Kefsizian, a clergyman who eventually became Catholicos of Cilicia (r. 1871-1894), this paper will demonstrate how the traversing of jurisdictional boundaries within the Armenian Church complicated programs of state centralization. Reorganization of the community went beyond placing checks on the clergy. Rather, it included creating and reinforcing jurisdictional boundaries that made the community more legible before the Patriarchate in Istanbul. This, in turn, made it possible for the reorganizing community to deepen its ties with the expanding bureaucracy and expand its role in governance. In crossing these boundaries, Kefsizian undermined the Patriarchate’s claims to authority. This paper argues that in doing so, he not only weakened the institutions of the Armenian millet, but also those of the imperial government. By crossing these boundaries, Kefsizian also made them more porous. This in turn made it possible for well-to-do Armenians to consolidate political power within the community, which they could then link to their economic allies, local Muslim powerbrokers. Ensuring the weakness of millet institutions was thus central to the preservation of elite power at the local level, counter to the aims of state centralization.