Houses of worship are legal organizations and, as such, are subject to a wide variety of laws and regulations regarding taxation, charitable contributions, and liability issues. Alas, most congregants, and even a significant number of clergy, don’t pay much attention to the legalities of running such an organization. Richard Hammar, an attorney and certified public accountant who specializes in legal and tax issues for clergy as well as running Christianity Today’s Church Law and Tax Report, joins us to discuss a smattering of these issues.
We begin our discussion talking about the National Association of Church Business Administration (NACBA), which serves as an umbrella organization for a variety of churches seeking to share information about management issues facing religious groups. While we often think of churches or denominations existing in relative isolation, or only branching out ecumenically on theological issues, the existence of the NACBA is one example of a fairly large cross-denominational infrastructure that has developed to assist churches in navigating a variety of management issues.
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