Generally, a church is a non-profit organization in the eyes of the US government at least. So for records with tax or financial implications, the church will be beholden to the appropriate IRS and state revenue regs. In general, the same sorts of regulations that impact any other business operating in a particular geography come into play.A church is like a business in that regard, and the "business" records of a church are the same as any other business.

The variance comes in when you look at the, shall we say, "operational" records of the church.This would be records of religious practices, sacraments, training of ministers, and the like. In general, there is a higher historical component of church records than other sorts of organizations. Depending upon the denomination, retention of those records is often directly prescribed by policy, custom, or even church law. In the case of the Catholic Church, Canon Law includes specific direction about retention and preservation of certain types of records, as well as requiring that someone have responsibility for the records of a diocese. Generally, records management functions overlap those of an archivist in a religious organization. My experience, however, is that things go sideways when someone in the organization starts *unilaterally* making decisions under the guise of "answering to a higher power". In most cases, these bad decisions come about as a
 result of people making records decisions who don't have any real world experience with records, litigation, or a regulatory environment. But I think we see that anywhere.

The approach that I would suggest to someone who is a "lone arranger" (as it were) in a church organization is to start at the denomination level and look for policies, as well as colleagues. In the case of the Catholic Church, there is also an organization called the Association of Catholic Diocesan Archivists that can be of help and I would expect that organizations like SAA have Sections or Roundtables for religious organizations. Absent any guidance from the denomination, the best approach is to divide the records into a "business" bucket and a "religious practice" bucket. The "business" records will generally follow existing laws and regulations that impact any organization. The "religious practice" bucket will tend to contain long retention to permanent records. Some special consideration also needs to be given to educational records (align with secular practice) and religious records that have standing as civil records (some sacramental records of
 baptisms and marriages can substitute for the equivalent civil records of birth and marriage in certain instances).

 
Patrick Cunningham, CIP, FAI
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