Launching in September 2024 to meet the needs of a growing city, the team at Emmanuel Exeter told us they believe that, “‘we have an obligation, whatever we do, to work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men’ (Col 3:23), and for us this included the way we handled the start-up of Emmanuel Exeter. Having discussed our aim of becoming an FIEC recognised church, the FIEC put us in touch with Edward Connor Solicitors at a very early stage. ECS then told us what our options were when forming the legal entity of the church. After reading ECS’s ‘Should your church become a CIO?’ booklet, we decided that this structure would best suit our ministry.” Emmanuel Exeter were aware that it was a project that would take time so they started the CIO process with ECS eight months before their first service.
“It was a great blessing to us to have a Christian firm of solicitors providing us with legal advice, primarily because our solicitors’ interests were very much aligned with ours – to build Christ’s church to the glory of God.”
They told us: “there were two particular areas of concern for us when thinking through how to form a new church: (1) legal liability of the church generally and of the elders in particular, and (2) the practicalities of church administration such as opening a bank account, registering with HMRC for PAYE and gift aid, buying insurance etc.” The church was also in a position to buy a manse for their pastor, so how the property was going to be held was also a concern for them. “ECS helped us through that process and becoming a CIO was the obvious choice for us”.
We worked with the church to provide them with a church constitution and get them registered as a CIO with the Charity Commission. The church were able to use our template constitution, which we tailored to their ecclesiology and practice. For Emmanuel Exeter this made the process easier – “starting with a pre-approved template saved us a lot of time and allowed us to focus in on what were, for us, the important aspects of integrating our church life with our constitution”.
We share in the gospel priorities of churches and we love to help new churches start well. Emmanuel Exeter commented, “It was a great blessing to us to have a Christian firm of solicitors providing us with legal advice, primarily because our solicitors’ interests were very much aligned with ours – to build Christ’s church to the glory of God. There was something very reassuring about using solicitors who totally understood where we were coming from with our questions and concerns and who had the same end goals as we did… We would not hesitate to recommend other church plants or start-ups to use ECS to guide them through the whole formation process.”
