Protecting our most valuable resource, the children

I came across an article in The Christian Post today called, “Survey: Many Churches Neglect Screening Youth Workers.” It wasn’t an extremely interesting read because the results failed to surprise me.

“One of the most common questions we’re asked by churches is how to attract new people. Our research consistently shows that how a church treats children is one of the keys to drawing and retaining new families. Sadly, churches expose themselves to all kinds of potential problems by failing to screen the people who will have contact with and responsibility for the children of strangers during church events,” said David Kinnaman, who directed the study.

Kinnaman (no relation to this blog’s writer) makes a very good point about church security, either pastors are clueless about potential threats or has the “it can never happen here” approach. In today’s society, we cannot take security for granted.

When I began working at Grace as an intern, I was surprised at all the security that goes on for our children’s program. One of the big things that we do is screen volunteers using a service called Mobilize My Ministry (Ministry Mobilizer) which is a part of Protect My Ministry. What Ministry Mobilizer does is it allows us to effectively run background checks on our volunteers and it raises a red flag if anyone shows up with a criminal record. But that’s not all, we re-screen our volunteers after a certain period of time to make sure that they still have a clean record.

But pastors and administrators should not stop there. Remember, just because someone has a clean record does not equal total trust. There are people who may not have “acted out” their criminal desires or the crimes may not have been reported to the police (think about the Catholic Church sex scandal). It is important for us as staff to know our volunteers and keep an eye on them. When working with children, trust is something that needs to be built, not automatically granted upon a clean background check.

The reason why I commented on this article is because I have a heart for law enforcement, hopefully becoming a police chaplain someday. It’s also important for pastors to remember that threats still exist in our congregation and it is important to keep a watchful eye. Let me know what you think, does your church have a good policy regarding the screening of volunteers? It’d be interesting to see how we’re being proactive in protecting our flocks.