Everyone who is a part of your church.
Safe Ministry Check wants to help you get your whole church onto your safe ministry team and develop a safe culture. Safe churches are churches with a safe culture, and one of the ways you can establish a culture of safety is to have everyone who is part of your church do some kind of training.
A lot of the time, we think that the only people who need to be trained and checked are those who are involved in kids ministry. But protecting vulnerable people is about more than just protecting children. Children fall into the category of vulnerable people, which is why anyone who has caring or leadership responsibility for kids needs to be trained and checked. And while this is well understood by most churches, what is often forgotten is that vulnerable people come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and backgrounds.
So does your safe ministry system reflect this reality?
Has everyone in your church received some kind of training to be able to spot and report possible abuse? Has everyone with some kind of leadership or care responsibility for other people been screened to make sure they’re appropriate people for the position their in?
Let’s think about this through an example of something your church might not be doing. At your church, it’s probably likely that you have some kind of small group structure. You might call them Bible Studies, or Small Groups, Home Groups, or even Growth Groups. Depending on your church, the leaders of these groups will have responsibility to care for and look after people in the group. People of various ages, from different backgrounds, all with a variety of different experiences. Have those leaders been checked to make sure they haven’t had an accusation made against them in the past? Have they been trained to best care for those in their group? Having the group members trained will only create a safer environment. They’ll be able to spot and report anything they might feel or deem as unsafe.
Trying to sort out how to make this happen? Let us know. We’d love to be able to help you.
Photo by Dario Valenzuela on Unsplash