Frank Sommerville, JD, CPA — in partnership with Church Mutual Insurance Company — discusses harassment, hiring practices, terminating employees, and wage/overtime rules compliance. Do common employment laws extend to every employee? Sommerville: Some of the laws that we’re going to talk about apply even if you have one employee, while other laws that we’re going […]
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Employment Law Attorney Sara Ackermann, in partnership with Church Mutual Insurance Company, answers your most pressing questions about wrongful termination, harassment and discrimination lawsuits in churches. In churches, a prevailing mindset regarding wrongful termination, harassment and discrimination lawsuits is, It can’t happen here. What’s the reality? Are insurers, in fact, seeing an increase in these […]
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Many churches recruit interns as a way to provide ministry experience for students. Guidelines for unpaid internships have changed.
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By David O. Middlebrook Churches are some of the most creative places on earth. Every week, church staff is called upon to create sermons, songs, Bible and Sunday school lessons, music, books and teaching materials, and all other kinds of creative works. Churches routinely use media — such as movies and audio clips — to […]
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The purpose of bylaws is to reflect how your church operates, as well as to provide protection and structure. The bylaws contain a detailed framework of operations, and what seems important to the church in this season might not be in the next. So, you need to have a framework that can change.
Read More >I decided to do some research about what was happening at ministries around the country. The result of that search led to additional discussions and the following 4-step checklist when interviewing and potentially hiring family members of staff or of board members.
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All employers — even churches — must be aware that the Department of Labor (DOL) takes the default position that all employees are nonexempt. This means they are eligible for minimum wage and overtime pay unless the employer can demonstrate that an exemption outlined by the DOL and the Act applies.
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Church executives of all types know that the church is, in some ways, a business. Whether you’re a lead pastor, executive pastor, business administrator or denominational official, you attend to congregational business of facilities, finances, human resources, information technology, and a host of other issues on a daily basis. For example, take a quick test […]
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At our Ultimate Church Structure Conferences, I speak with many pastors who, unfortunately, have been misinformed about what 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status truly means and the impact it will have on their churches. Pastors often attend our conference in the hopes of clearing up doubts and questions that they’ve been riddled with regarding tax law and church compliance. For that very reason, I have listed below three of the most common misconceptions that I hear from pastors across the country regarding churches and 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.
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There are more than 400,000 churches in the United States, each with its own governance structure and decision-making model. With so many different models and terminology used to describe church governance structures — elders, deacons, trustees, directors, pastor and apostle — it can be quite confusing to determine what’s the best and most biblically-sound corporate structure for your own church.
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