Protecting Your Ministry, Part 2

This is family policy matter programs produced by the North Carolina family policy Council of profamily research and organization dedicated to preserving the family and up from the studio here is John Rustin, Pres. North Carolina family policy Council, thank you for joining us this week. Family policy matters. It is our pleasure to have Eric Stanley back with us on the program. Eric served as Senior legal Counsel for the alliance. Defending freedom in its Kansas City regional service center where he heads up the alliance defending freedom church project. Eric is with us to continue an important discussion we started last week about a new must-have legal manual that ADF has produced for churches, Christian schools, and other ministries entitled protecting your ministry will be picking back up with our discussion of this new resource with Eric, including why it is important in where ministries can go to obtain a free copy Eric welcome back to the program greatly with you described the protecting your ministry manual is a must have. It really is must-have for churches and other ministries, including Christian schools.

Why is this a resource that every ministry should not only have but put to use. Well, one of things that we've seen in and I think the marriage decision from the Supreme Court is probably debated against example of this is there is a rise in the conflict between what the conflict we term the conflict between religious freedom and sexual license and we seen this develop over the years where with the application and and the Creation of these nondiscrimination ordinances that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. We see this in a number of different contexts over the years with payment recently with the florists in the cake makers. The teacher printers and even some others you know and in the professional realm Christian counselors and attorneys and and others who really had the right to live out our faith is is something that is being endangered by the sexual revolution in and in its most recent aspect itself at this. This battle has confronted churches, religious organizations are Christian school and will continue to confront them in the future and felt really now is the time to take proactive steps that are necessary to make sure that your state is very strictly defined very clearly defined, I should say and that you your all of your volunteer policies dealing with these issues are in place so that there's a legal issue that arises you are most protected. It may not forestall a lawsuit. We can't stop people from suing, but it may help your church or your Christian school or your Christian ministry to get out of a lawsuit faster if you got your policies and documents in order now. ADF also advises ministries to enact religious employment requirements unexplained for us if you will what the employment policy should include and how such a policy will help protect ministries for. This is really something that every religious organization Christian school, church needs to take the time to do is to have a job description for each position in the church and to specify in that job description. How this particular position carries on the faith and mission of the church or the religious organization.

So I want example I always give you know that the pastors of the church are very easy but what about the church receptionist, the person answers the phone will you would might want to put in that job description that this person is required to take calls to answer to answer questions about the church's religious beliefs to potentially pray with the callers to call in to potentially offer some initial crisis counseling, you know, according to religious principles of the church. Essentially, how does the out of these positions out of every position in the church or religious organization. How does it carry on the state of mission of the church as a take some time to do that because what that allows lawyers to do it. If there's ever an employment dispute to someone as well as should be allowed to work here even though I don't like the church's religious beliefs.

What that enables us to do is to argument. Know your position is something that is required to carry on the faith and mission of the church and sewed their great constitutional protections and and we shouldn't be forced to have an employee who disagrees with us and that's it. That's vitally important it.

There is no real magic language here, and there's nothing that you have to put this particular language and it's just a matter of making sure that that's covered in making sure that that job descriptions covered. Another thing we tell churches to do is have your employees find that they have read and agree to abide by that statement of faith that you have and that you can update with this statement on marriage and and gender in human sexuality that's just another level of protection again to make sure that this is not just any other employment decision. This is an employment that is infused with the religious beliefs of the organization of the church and so it needs to be treated differently than just any other job for the legal manual also includes a discussion of local ordinances and you talk about this already couple times and I want to dig into little bit deeper.

These local ordinances that create special legal protections based on an individual's sexual orientation and gender identity or gender expression, and we come to know these public policy circles is so G ordinances are synergy laws smell these types of ordinances are being pushed and enacted in an increasing number of localities across the country and in fact we recently placed an effort by the Charlotte city Council to implement just such a policy in Charlotte. Fortunately, that effort was defeated and North Carolina is not covered with cities and counties that have adopted so G ordinances but we have heard of more more more efforts to try to get these types of policies enacted on the local level. Tell us about these ordinances and how they could be used to threaten the religious liberties of churches and other ministries. In particular, will really what these ordinances are in and you're right on that.

There's been an uptick in these and in some of them have been around for many years but they prohibit so-called discrimination in different areas and usually these ordinances prohibit discrimination and employment decisions and housing and and what they call places of public accommodation. The prototypical place of public accommodation would be a restaurant or hotel any place that's open generally to the public know where the problem comes in is that the sum there are some legal questions about your date in the church service open to the public is at a place of public accommodation is a Christian school, a place of public accommodation. What about a religious organization that has a marriage retreat and opened it to the general public are those considered places of public accommodation. It also comes in the play in the employment context where someone who made you decide to that to apply for a job opening at a Christian organization but is engaged in a homosexual lifestyle unit is that is that organization going to be forced to hire that person works or not to fire that person that they maybe come out during their employment. So those order those ordinances pose a specific incredible threat to churches, religious ministries, one of the things that we seen it and that we will see it it it generally there's been a push to pass these at the statewide level so that the state like North Carolina would be covered by that the whole state. There are some state like North Carolina that have not done that and where that is the case, the battlegrounds moved to city by city and county by county and were seeing that in in other states. I will say I just read a strategy document from a homosexual legal advocacy group this last week who is wanting in the wake of the in the aftermath of the Supreme Court marriage decision to pour millions of dollars into city by city getting these so G ordinances adopted and their goal is to is in this is explicitly stated their goal is to prohibit religion from being used as an is what they call an excuse to discriminate and they want to do that by passing the 30 ordinances sold these things have to be stopped in their tracks like happen with Charlotte or if there adopted in a bin is when the steps that were saying in protecting your ministry manual does need to happen because those those issues are going to arrive, especially with churches and religious organizations, and I would just caution the listeners that the Charlotte ordinance was proposed there.

The definition of public accommodation was extremely broad so it's not just restaurants, hotels, libraries, but it appeared to be just about any type of organization or entity, including schools and others so definitely something that that our listeners need to be very aware of and sensitive to and if they hear any rumblings of such an ordinance effort being made in their community to contact the North Carolina family policy Council and let us know so that we can be on top of that, but suffice it to say that the threats of these efforts and activities are very real and we all need to be on guard and make sure is ADF is helping folks to do to be prepared to have the strongest defense against those efforts and attacks by individuals who do not share our belief that marriage is only the union of one man and one woman. Now Erica manual includes a number of sample policies for ministries to use as a god which I think is extremely helpful.

It is not that the ministries and churches will have to develop these policies out of thin air, but you give them great examples of, the proper policies audio policies that they can develop give us a few examples of those policies.

If you would sure yet and that's one of the things that we really wanted to do it to encourage churches and Christian ministries to passive policies that one of the things that we seen over the years is that a lot of other organizations that don't know where to start and so we provide beast. The sample language. It dear art, as I said, there's no magic language here. These are just starting points, but you can feel free as a church or Christian ministry to adopt these policies and fall as they are written as a sample language or you can modify them anyway. The point is not the necessary language, but that the issue itself is covered so we talked about statements of faith on marriage and gender in human sexuality.

One thing that we also recommend as a statement of the final biblical authority for the church or Christian ministry, and this would become a catchall provision of who makes the call when the statement of faith does not explicitly speak on that issue.

So if there's unites it's hard to come up here in the future and and know what may come up and then draft in advance of that.

So this would again become a catchall provision to say if there's an issue that not clearly covered by the statement of faith, then we as a ministry are going to designate maybe it's the pastor or the board of elders of the deacon board.

Or maybe it's the Board of Directors of the Christian ministry that day will make the final call as to what the religious beliefs of the organization are in that instance so it's it's those kind of policies that we think would be really helpful and would could position the church of the Christian ministry to really have an effective defense. Should these issues come to light in the future. Well unfortunately we're out of town for this week, but I want to give you an opportunity to let our listeners know where they can go to access this incredible resource from alliance defending freedom, protecting your ministry absolutely is very easy.

You can go to alliance defending freedom.org/church with alliance defending freedom.org/church. All you have to do is put in your name and your email address there and you can download the manual free or you can request that a printed copy would be sent to you that were not charging for this manual out. In fact, I would just encourage your listeners, we want to get this out far and wide to his many churches as many Christian ministries as we can. Because these battles are coming and they're going to intensify that this is going to happen. So it's time to be prepared so alliance defending freedom.org or/church family. Thank you so much for your work at alliance defending freedom and for taking time out of your schedule to talk with us today about protecting your ministry legal manual by it's been a pleasure having you on family policy matters and we wish you the best and pray that God will blush you and the continued work of ADF absolutely thanks Raven neon in a we look forward to working with you guys in the future great.

Thank you, Eric, thank you.

Before we close.

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