Last Sunday night my church convened for a quarterly business meeting. Among the many things that were voted on and discussed was a proposed policy that addressed the security and protection of children and students through age 18. One key element of the multi-faceted proposal was the requirement to perform a background check on any and all church staff or volunteers who work with our children. If a person is enlisted to assist with a single event, they will have a background check. After some discussion and a question and answer session, a vote was taken and it was unanimously adopted.
As a person who is paid to minister to students, I was ecstatic that my church voted to put things into place that would help protect not only our students, but ME as well. You see, as someone who has only been in this particular church for 6 months and is still learning names and faces, I do not have to be concerned when a church member (but still a stranger to me) comes up to ask if they can assist me with the student ministry. Rather than be suspicious and always questioning, I just have to have them fill out a form and know whether that person is fit or unfit, from a legal standpoint, to be working with kids. The pressure is off. Our church decided to make the good faith effort to do what was reasonably expected of an institution that claims to love its members.
Love can be defined as actively doing all one can to offer protection and provision to another. As the church of Jesus Christ, we owe it to our children and to the adults that work with them to create an environment in which all parties can be comfortable and confident. We live in a fallen, imperfect world. The society in which we live today is not the same as that of decades ago. Some of it is for the better- race relations, health care, etc. Much of it is worse-- sanctity of life, crime, moral decline, permissiveness, etc. There are factions and elements of darkness in our society that would like nothing better than to prey upon our kids and to bring reproach upon the church. In Matthew 10, Jesus was dispatching His disciples among people who sought to do the same things and He warned them saying, "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." Some things never change. To mix a metaphor, the wolves are still skulking around the gate, waiting and watching.
Shrewd As Snakes
It is incumbent upon the church to be smart and not stick our heads in the sand laying claim to the adage, "That kind of stuff can't happen here." Unfortunately, things HAVE happened, ARE happening, and WILL continue to happen in places where people have uttered those same words. I think shrewdness in this context is putting policies and procedures in place so that prospective church members can be comforted, current church members can be confident, and the courts can be content that all reasonable efforts have been made to protect and provide for the children.
Innocent As Doves
While no policy or procedure will prevent sin or evil from rearing its ugly head, they can certainly mitigate bad circumstances and at least make it so that the church can continue to function after something bad has happened. We have to be above reproach in all we do as a church. In the fourth chapter of his epistle, James says, "Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." That's all I need to hear.
Thanks, ISBC, for doing the good you ought to do.
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