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People You Don't Want in Your Ministry
Your ministry might serve as an easy target for someone who wants to harm children.
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Like a triple espresso on an empty stomach, some news stories make my hands shake. In our paper yesterday, I read about a Boy Scout camp director recently arrested for possession of child pornography. The FBI raided the camp to confiscate his computers. This man also worked at a YMCA. Get ready to tremble with me. Leadership from both organizations described how he passed extensive criminal background checks. One group performs them periodically and requires annual youth protection training. The suspect worked there for seven years. A senior leader remarked that, unfortunately, no manual exists for them to see exactly what a pedophile looks like. By now, you likely see the connection between this news story and your ministry. You perform criminal background checks (right?), you conduct child protection training (right?), and the potential still exists for the wrong people to make it into your ministry. One reason is that background checks only reveal people caught by authorities; they don't reveal intentions or undiscovered activities. An estimate shows the number of registered sex offenders in the U.S. stands at 232 per 100,000. Experts tell us many more exist but have not yet encountered the legal system. All this to point out that the number of people you should worry about might be much higher than you imagine. But you serve in a church. Why would any of these people try to serve in your ministry? Simple answer: because of the kids. People with perversions toward children tend to look for ways to hang out with kids, build relationships, and earn trust. Similar to what children's ministries encourage workers to do, right? Not easy to read; not easy to write about, either. But it's true—your ministry might serve as an easy target for someone who wants to harm children. Or not. Depends on the quality and integrity of your systems and on your commitment to those systems, regardless of their popularity with potential volunteers—even the deacon who decided to help on Sundays. Or the Boy Scout leader. No, not a cheap shot; more of a wake-up call for all. Remember, there is no manual that shows what a pedophile looks like. So ministries must implement systems that limit access and opportunity. What do these systems look like? Let's start with the absolute basics and then steer toward even more robust ideas. To start, every children's and youth ministry should put in place a volunteer assimilation program that includes a criminal background check, reference checks, and personal interviews for everyone. The deacon, the mother of four, the school teacher, the college student who's attended church his whole life, and that older guy who tells jokes that everyone around the church loves. Even the husband of the children's ministry pastor. Both organizations that employed the suspect mentioned above stressed their background check process. For good reason. It will scare away the people with a legal history of child and/or sex crimes and encourage them to go elsewhere. Without a policy of checking all, an organization will appear asleep at the wheel if the wheels start to fall off in a catastrophe. And what we're looking at today is potentially catastrophic. |        
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