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Becoming a Church in the Eyes of the Law

From Dominick Brignola’s talkat Acts 29 Boot Camp

  1. Incorporate
  2. Adopt by-laws
  3. Apply for Federal recognition as church
  4. Apply for State recognition as church
  5. Get benefits available for ordained ministers
    • Housing allowance
  6. Religious Corporation Structure
    • If you sell things (bookstore, etc)
    • Define membership structure, board structure, voting age
    • With big decisions, there needs to be definition of how approval happens
  7. Association
    • Group of people joined together for common purpose
    • Leaves individual members of church to legal action
    • Sometimes associations can’t own real estate
  8. How to incorporate
    • Fill out paperwork (charter) with state
    • Need corporate name
      • Isn’t federally protected. to do that, need search at LOC
    • Need corporate management (trustees, etc)
    • Identify membership and rights vested in members
    • Define corporate purposes
  9. Draft set of by-laws
    1. Membership participation clause (including discipline)
      • Christian arbitration (you will not sue church)
    2. Non-discrimination clause
      • Have right to limit membership / involvement based on religious reasons
    3. How to replace elders (build something that will outlast you)
    4. Housing allowance
      • has to be renewed each year by IRS. By having in by-laws, you can say “treat money given to pastor the same as last year” so that you don’t get dinged at audit time.
    5. Have designated contributions clause
      1. Money’s given to church are distributed at the church’s discretion

Misc

  • Get IRS Tax Guide for Charities and Non-Profits
  • IRS has 15-month lookback
    • Created Jan 1, 2006
    • Paperwork comes back Jan 1, 2007
    • All donations given in 2006 are for sure deductible
  • Getting 501c3 makes things much, much easier when it comes to deductions
  • Have clause in by-laws to indicate that church works hard to confirm where money is going

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 8:58 am and is filed under Acts 29, Church Planting, Finances, Legal Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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