When you're clergy you have a decision to make: to put a clergy sticker on your car or not? A clergy sticker does have it's benefits at time: decent and most of the time free parking spaces at hospitals. No questions when you park in those spaces for the pastor. But it also has its draw backs for me. If you get pulled over driving, you generally get the "you of all people should have known better." Then there's the whole thing of to honk or not to honk, to give the New York wave or not. To speed more then just a few over or not? I do have a clergy sticker on my car and I do find myself going ohh...maybe I shouldn't do this or that. Some days I think I just scrap the thing off. I'm not sure that it stands for what I once thought it was and I'm not sure that I like being defined by a sticker on my car. I don't think the perks of having the sticker on my car outweigh everything else. So I guess I just created a new project for myself. I wonder how long it'll take to scrap the thing off my car window?
For years now, I have heard in preaching and clergy circles about being political in sermons; the good, the bad and those who state that church shouldn’t be political. There are workshops, books, and podcasts talking about politics in the church with a variety of opinions. What do people mean when they make the statement that the church shouldn’t be political? The IRS has the most say about the rules for the separation of church and state/politics. If your church wants to be tax exempt, there are rules: don’t endorse any candidate or party, if you allow one party to use your space, other political parties also must be allowed to use the space, etc. The UCC’s general counsel, Heather Kimmell, has a webinar on this topic if you’d like to hear a more detailed explanation which can be found on the UCC’s YouTube channel. Churches have gotten “creative” in how to get around this, often partnering with another non-profit group to give support to a particular group. The UCC is proud to claim...
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