California law is incredibly complex and constantly changing. Faith-based organizations are routinely under attack in the Legislature, the press, social media, and popular culture.
We believe that legal compliance and training is a form of stewardship.
No matter how important your mission or how dynamic your methods, without the proper precautions, all it takes is one lawsuit to jeopardize your entire organization. With that in mind, we work to equip and protect your faith-based organization from lawsuits, and determine the best way to respond to a lawsuit if necessary.
Equip
Equip your pastors, staff, and volunteers for effective ministry within the bounds of California law
Education
Understand your faith-based organization’s legal obligations, risks, and areas for growth and improvement.
Policies
We help you draft policies, protocols, and best practices to comply with your legal obligations.
Training
Through dynamic, responsive, and relevant training, we help implement these policies. Properly trained personnel experience newfound freedom to do their work effectively, within the safety and structure of legally compliant policies.
Protect
Protect your faith-based organization from attacks, both internal and external.
Identification
When an issue arises, we quickly assess your risks and vulnerabilities.
Management
We help protect your mission and your organization’s continued viability by managing the crisis to help limit potential exposure.
Public Relations
We help preserve your organization’s reputation through thoughtful and tactful press, social media, and public relations strategies.
Respond
Respond to attacks and complaints. We act as your first line of defense in a crisis through:
Investigation
A comprehensive internal investigation of alleged misconduct is often the difference between a small problem and a big one.
Crisis Management
We draw on our extensive crisis management experience in the civil, criminal, and employment law arenas to triage the issues and help de-fuse even the most volatile situations.
Peacekeeping
As believers ourselves, our purpose is Kingdom minded. We seek to prayerfully assist you in bringing about restoration and reconciliation for all parties involved, as well as facilitating connections with other qualified professionals (licensed counselors, mediators, etc.).
Why Equip and Protect?
The concept of Equip and Protect was developed by Alex Medina and Brandon McKelvey—Christians, husbands, fathers, and two of the partners of leading California-based employment law firm Medina McKelvey LLP.
After successfully managing a crisis at a large church relating to staff’s mandated reporter obligations with potential criminal, civil and administrative exposure, they realized that even the largest and most sophisticated churches and faith-based organizations are often one allegation away from their entire mission being jeopardized.
With over 30 years of collective litigation, dispute resolution, and crisis management experience, Alex and Brandon work side by side with faith-based organizations of any size to help prevent lawsuits and other formal complaints and to quickly respond in the event that an issue escalates beyond your control. They are also available to speak at conferences, organizational/denominational meetings or retreats, or other events of your choosing, on such topics as legal compliance, training, and stewardship.
“Brandon and Alex jumped into a highly sensitive situation for our church on a moment’s notice. They were able to quickly assess our risks and potential exposure; advise our executive leadership on the best course of action; and ultimately helped bring about peace, healing, and restoration. Christian lingo and church culture can be difficult for many outside lawyers to understand, but as believers themselves, they were able to ‘get’ our mission and purpose very quickly, which helped us to reach a swift resolution. Now that the crisis is over, we’re engaging them to help us avoid situations like this in the future.”
— Pastor of a 20,000 attendee church
Discover how our team may be able to help your faith-based organization.
We’ll work with you to customize a plan that best fits your organization’s needs and budget. Stay tuned for free resources to help protect your organization, as well as information about Alex and Brandon’s upcoming speaking engagements