My new blog

I’m a lawyer with a graduate-level theological education. Naturally, people come to me with questions about how the law affects their faith communities. In talking to many different people, including recent seminary graduates, I realized many church leaders I know could use a place to go to where they could find basic information—even just the questions they need to be asking—about the legal issues that face churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious organizations. Too often these leaders wait too long to think about potential legal issues until they are pressing legal issues.

My practice does not currently include a whole heckuva lot of churches as clients. But I do some work for religious organizations, and I expect to do more in the future. More importantly, as I was earning my two graduate degrees—a law degree and a master's of divinity—I was constantly thinking about how the law treat religious organizations and how religious organizations should navigate the legal waters in which they find themselves.

I intend this blog to be a resource for clergy, lay leaders, and anyone curious about these topics. I will aim to stay true to this purpose. I expect to link to resources and highlight important lessons from them and news stories and other interesting bits from the Internet. I anticipate posting something at least once a week, but only time will tell.

Starting this week, I will start a series of posts pointing to resources on the Internet for church leaders to start when they have legal questions.