George Washington’s bold crossing of the Delaware wasn’t just about the moment; it was about a strategy to secure the future.

At Gideon Law, we help churches and nonprofits build strategies that protect their mission and strengthen their impact for years to come.

About Us

We proudly serve as trusted church and nonprofit legal counsel, offering comprehensive general counsel services to churches, religious nonprofits, private schools, and ministry leaders. As a firm, our mission is to safeguard the advancement of your ministry so you can focus wholeheartedly on your calling.

Who We Are

Headquartered in the Southeast with attorneys licensed across the country, our team is deeply rooted in both faith and legal excellence. We blend seasoned experience with passionate dedication—ensuring that church law is practiced not merely as a profession, but as a calling.

Why Choose Us

Specialized Expertise

Our firm’s decades of experience in church and nonprofit law as counsel ensures your church or ministry is working with attorneys who truly understand the unique challenges religious organizations face.

Proactive Approach

Serving as in-house general counsel, we anticipate their potential issues and establish safeguards before they arise, cultivating both stability and growth for our client’s ministry.

Ministry-Aligned

Our founder, Miles Terry, and his team come from ministry backgrounds themselves. They understand first-hand the balance between spiritual mission and legal responsibility—and they walk alongside your leadership team accordingly.

Services Included in Every Monthly Retainer

From formation and strategic planning to governance, compliance, and ongoing legal counsel, we partner with your ministry to build strong foundations and confidently navigate every season of growth in all of the following areas:

Our Monthly Retainers

Technology & Digital Security

Each church should properly maintain the use of its organizational data, including membership rolls, donor lists, and financial information.

Church Finances

Your reputation for handling money should be beyond reproach. We can structure financial policies and procedures to safeguard your organization from financial abuse.

Tax-Exemption

Generally, churches are tax-exempt for charitable contributions but there are some exceptions that lead to governmental regulation.

Church Governance

A church is governed by its leaders who must properly perform their duties and maintain necessary records.

Keeping Your People Safe

It is your legal, ethical, and Christian duty to protect the vulnerable through strong abuse prevention policies and protocols.

Church Employment Law

Every church with employees or contractors needs the right policies and contracts in place to keep all sides covered.

Church Insurance Coverage

We can help you identify potential liability and confirm that your entity is properly covered if disaster strikes.

Risk Management

All churches and religious organizations face ongoing liabilities which lead to lawsuits.

Campus Operations

You and the people who attend your campus deserve to be safe and protected by your safety and disaster protocols should the worst occur.

Churches And Intellectual Property

Your hard work should remain your property and under your organizational umbrella.

Formation Services

Every strong organization begins with a solid legal foundation. We help churches, ministries, nonprofits, schools, and businesses choose the right entity, establish governing documents, complete the legal steps necessary to launch with confidence, and then maintain and update as needed. 

Minister Compensation

Special tax issues exist and need to be reviewed for ministers as well as individuals not qualifying for ministerial tax treatment. You need to know where you stand.

Our Legacy & Leadership

Gideon Law Group (formerly Goldfeder & Terry in 2022) brings a legacy of high-impact service across faith traditions. Our co-founders—Miles Terry (Ministry veteran and Managing Partner) and Mark Goldfeder (Rabbi, Senior Partner, and noted authority on law and religion)—built this firm with one vision: to elevate the health and protection of churches and nonprofits everywhere.

MEET OUR TEAM

Our Team

Book your FREE consultation today.

Confidential, Informative, and FREE.

We’re truly honored to work with every one of our clients, and we’d love to connect with you to hear more about your church’s legal needs.

SCHEDULE NOW

FAQ

  • Our practice is exclusively focused on church and religious nonprofit law. We provide general counsel services to pastors, churches, religious nonprofits, ministries, and religious private schools. 

  • As general counsel, our firm serves your ministry as its chief legal officer, or corporate counsel. We serve as your ministry’s main attorney and primary source of legal advice. We report directly to your board of directors or chief executive officer.

  • All of our initial consultations are free. We meet with each prospective client to determine their immediate needs and we work with them to chart an individualized path forward.

  • Our founding partner was in the ministry before he entered the legal field. Miles Terry was a youth pastor in college. After earning his MDiv he has spent the last 20 years working with some of the largest ministries and nonprofits in the country.

  • Our attorneys have years of experience working in the field of law and religion, representing nonprofit organizations of all shapes and sizes. We also have broad experience working with international, federal, state, and local governments.

  • Religious leaders today must fulfill many roles at one time, including pastor, marriage and grief counselor, executive administrator, office manager, and mediator. Oftentimes, the daily toil of leading an organization prevents its executives from casting a vision for the future, not to mention ensuring that the organization and its staff are legally protected and secure.

    We work with churches and ministries to establish policies and processes to identify issues before they arise for the protection of the organization, its leaders, and its people. Regular attention to the proper management of your organization will greatly decrease the likelihood that a crisis will disrupt your organizational well-being.

  • For most of our clients, we offer monthly retainer options at a flat fee and capped amount per month. For others, we offer legal services on an hourly basis.

  • We take a different approach to the practice of law, and that’s because of where we came from. We believe that the law is more than a profession. It’s a calling, just like yours.

  • If your church or ministry is already represented by legal counsel, we must have your current attorney’s written permission before we are able to consult with you about the possibility of retaining our firm. We would love to meet with you and your current counsel, and typically find that we are able to supplement or complement the legal services you are already receiving.

  • While some may want their churches to be big, Gideon Law Group wants your church to be healthy. We are concerned with the fundamentals of how your organization functions and how you are running it on a day-to-day basis. Let us help you with the foundation and leave the growth to God.

  • As church law attorneys, we uniquely understand the challenges that churches and ministries face, and the areas where churches often get themselves into trouble. While almost any attorney can review a document for you, are they providing you with the oversight that is necessary to protect your specific organization from liability? You need an attorney who is looking ahead on your behalf to fix your problems before they arise.

    When you retain our firm, we address the organization’s issues one by one. As attorneys who regularly work with churches and religious nonprofits, we take a different approach to the practice of law. We believe that the law is more than a profession. It’s a calling.