Gifts of property: Help donors get it right

July 15, 2018

Three examples demonstrate how to substantiate donations of land and buildings in accordance with tax law.

This article is the first of a two-part series on substantiating noncash gifts. Part two, which will appear in the September issue, will focus on the special rules related to donations of noncash “personal property” — such as clothing, cars, boats, household items and stock.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Church Finance Today

A U.S. Tax Court judge disallowed a deduction — albeit reluctantly — of $18.5 million for donations of real estate. The donors, Joseph and Shirley Mohamed, a philanthropic couple whose charitable causes included Shriners Hospitals for Children and the Sacramento Food Bank, had donated real estate worth $20.3 million several years before. They had claimed an $18.5 million deduction on their federal tax return.

The Mohameds failed to get the required appraisals for their property at the time of donation. And they lacked the mandated documentation at the time of filing. (Joseph Mohamed said he self-prepared the couple’s taxes and had failed to read instructions.)

Judge Mark Holmes stated:

We recognize that this result is harsh — a complete denial of charitable deductions to a couple that did not overvalue, and may well have undervalued, their contributions — all reported on forms that even to the Court’s eyes seemed likely to mislead someone who didn’t read the instructions. But the problems of misvalued property are so great that Congress was quite specific about what the charitably inclined have to do to defend their deductions, and we cannot in a single sympathetic case undermine those rules.

This case is an example of how good intentions don’t supersede tax law, said Ted Batson, a certified public accountant and licensed attorney with national nonprofit consulting firm CapinCrouse.

Read the full article.

This article appears on the August 2018 cover of Church Finance Today, a publication of Christianity Today.

Fifty years after historic meeting, race still divides Churches of Christ

July 1, 2018

‘We still have two brotherhoods,’ says longtime minister who helped organize 1968 conference.

By Bobby Ross Jr. and Hamil R. Harris| The Christian Chronicle

In the summer of tumultuous 1968, more than 40 prominent black and white ministers gathered to discuss ways to improve race relations in Churches of Christ.

The two-day national meeting — held 50 years ago at a hotel near the Atlanta airport — came less than three months after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and at the height of the unpopular Vietnam War.

One of the organizers, a black preacher named Eugene Lawton, got right to the point in describing his view of racial discrimination.

“It’s paved streets on one side of town and unpaved streets on the other side,” Lawton told the group, according to a July 5, 1968, article in The Christian Chronicle. “It’s wall-to-wall carpet on one side of town and wall-to-wall rats on the other. It’s having to sleep in the car beside the road because there’s no place in the inn.

“It’s being a member of the Church of Christ and being unable to attend a Christian college without going to Southwestern Christian College or 1,500 miles to Pepperdine,” the longtime minister of the Newark Church of Christ in New Jersey added. “It’s attending worship service and being sent to the basement. It’s a preacher being dismissed on Monday because he prayed, ‘Lord, bless the King family.’”

In interviews with the Chronicle, the 80-year-old Lawton and three other surviving attendees recalled the circumstances leading to the historic meeting, the personal bonds that were formed that June and the racial divide that still lingers a half-century later.

“The white brotherhood wasn’t even aware that racism was declared to be illegal in America,” Lawton said of 1968. “So we had tokenism at the time, but most of the Christian colleges didn’t open their doors to black students because of love and Christianity. It was based on the federal government saying you wouldn’t receive another dime (of student aid) from us unless you integrate your schools.”

Read the full story.

This story appears in the July 2018 edition of The Christian Chronicle.

Related: “50 Years: Racial Reconciliation and the Church” is a series highlighting significant events of 1967 and 1968. Read all the stories.

U.S. mission groups stranded by Haiti unrest, and CNN — to its credit — reports on it

July 1, 2018

By Bobby Ross Jr. | GetReligion

Summer is prime time for faith-based mission trips.

Many U.S. church groups — often including teens and college students — travel all the world this time of year.

I just returned from a Christian Chronicle reporting trip to Puerto Rico, where I followed a Kentucky congregation helping with Hurricane Maria relief work. While there, I noticed the news about unrest in Haiti, a country I visited just a few months ago to report on water well drilling.

Just weeks ago, I reported on political violence prompting the cancellation of dozens of church mission trips to Nicaragua. Not so many years ago, of course, ongoing concerns over drug cartels began curtailing mission work in Mexico.

Not too often, though, do major news organizations cover the impact of the dangerous world on church mission trips, even though there’s frequently a compelling story there.

That’s why I was so pleased to see CNN tackle that angle amid the Haiti unrest:

Read the full column.

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All of my GetReligion columns (July 2018):

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In red-state Oklahoma, marijuana ballot question splits people of faith

June 6, 2018

Clergy on both sides of State Question 788, which would permit the distribution of medical marijuana, call it a moral issue.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

OKLAHOMA CITY — As Presbyterian minister Bobby Griffith sees it, legalizing medical marijuana in Oklahoma could help arthritis sufferers with chronic pain and veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The 41-year-old husband and father has a personal reason, too, for supporting State Question 788 — a pro-marijuana initiative that the Bible Belt state’s voters will decide June 26.

“For myself, I would be interested in a prescription for it to see if it works better than my anxiety and depression medications,” said Griffith, co-pastor of a Presbyterian church near downtown Oklahoma City and a member of the national group Clergy for a New Drug Policy.

As Griffith characterizes it, the Oklahoma ballot measure’s potential to improve health outcomes and reduce dependence on addictive opioid painkillers makes it a “moral issue.”

Religious opponents counter that backing the issue would be immoral. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., an ordained Southern Baptist pastor, blasts the ballot measure as a “recreational marijuana vote disguised as medical marijuana.”

“The moral issue to me is really a family issue,” Lankford, who directed a Baptist youth camp before his 2010 election to Congress, told Religion News Service.

“The best thing for our state is not to get more parents and grandparents to smoke marijuana,” added the senator, who filmed a commercial urging voters to reject State Question 788. “To have our communities more drug-addicted and distracted, that doesn’t help our families. It doesn’t make us more prosperous. It doesn’t make our schools more successful.”

About 30 states have passed medical marijuana laws, starting with California in 1996, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Oklahoma would be the first to do so without listing qualifying conditions. That, assert critics, would allow doctors to issue two-year marijuana licenses to patients for any reason. The Oklahoma State Medical Association cites a lack of “evidence-based studies” to support medical marijuana.

“It’s trying to trick the people of Oklahoma into buying into it,” said the Rev. Paul Abner, an Assembly of God pastor who leads an anti-marijuana coalition called Oklahoma Faith Leaders.

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service whose media partners include The Associated Press, USA Today and the Washington Post.

 

1,000 wells around the world

June 3, 2018

A Tennessee-based ministry that drills for clean drinking water in Haiti and other nations hits a major milestone.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

AKDESÉ, Haiti — In this remote mountain village, water gushes from a well drilled by Healing Hands International.

As one woman pumps the handle, another gleefully splashes the clear, flowing liquid on her face.

Little boys and girls giggle as they cup their hands under the spout, taking giant gulps before filling plastic buckets to carry home.

In an area where donkeys ferry supplies and entire families squeeze onto small motorbikes, the $7,500 well’s dedication brings celebration and dancing — and the opportunity for healthier lives.

“The people wanted it so badly,” said Art Woods, president of the Nashville, Tenn.-based humanitarian aid organization, which is associated with Churches of Christ.

It’s a scene repeated hundreds of times in this impoverished Caribbean island nation: Since the Jan. 10, 2010, earthquake that claimed 230,000 lives and left 1.5 million people homeless, Healing Hands has focused on providing access to clean water.

Read the full story.

This story appears in the June 2018 edition of The Christian Chronicle.

Related: In Haiti, a calling — and a baby (reporting from Tintanyen, Haiti)

 

Amid political violence in Nicaragua, dozens of church groups cancel mission trips

June 1, 2018

More than 90 people have died since clashes began six weeks ago between government forces and civilian protesters, according to observers.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

Normally, a team from the Highway Church of Christ in Judsonia, Ark., would be sweating for God in the mountains of Jinotega, Nicaragua.

For 15 straight summers, the congregation has sent teens and adults to help with Misión Para Cristo — Spanish for “Mission for Christ.” The humanitarian aid organization shares Christ’s love with thousands in Central America’s poorest nation.

But amid ongoing deadly clashes between Nicaraguan government forces and civilian protesters, the Arkansas congregation reluctantly canceled this week’s planned trip to Nicaragua.

“It’s just heartbreaking not to be able to see our Nicaraguan brothers and sisters,” said Danny Deramus, a Highway church elder.

Dozens of U.S. church groups have made the same difficult choice to stay home.

Read the full story.

This story appears in the online edition of The Christian Chronicle.

Related: For thousands of Nicaragua’s poor, mission ‘a gift from God’ (reporting from Jinotega, Nicaragua)

Related: For a Nicaraguan church, a revival (reporting from Masaya, Nicaragua)

 

Let’s be honest: Many voicing opinions about Colorado baker don’t know the facts

June 1, 2018

By Bobby Ross Jr. | GetReligion

Everybody, it seems, has an opinion about Jack Phillips.

But not everybody — trust me on this — has taken the time to review the facts of Phillips’ case.

Does the Colorado baker — in whose favor the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 this week — really “refuse service” to gays and lesbians as a matter of general business practice?

Not according to him.

His position — one that resonated with the court’s majority — is more complicated than that.

Yet headlines such as this one in USA Today serve only to fuel the misperception:

Poll: 51% of white evangelicals support business’ refusal of service to LGBT customers

Here is the question that the survey covered by the national newspaper asked:

Do you support or oppose allowing a small business owner in your state to refuse to provide products or services to LGBT individuals if doing so violates their religious beliefs?

I have the same concern with that question that I did one asked in a previous survey that I highlighted last year: I’m just not sure it’s the right one. There are better questions to get closer to the real issue.

Read the full column.

• • •

All of my GetReligion columns (June 2018):

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