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Most people on this planet would agree that we want to keep young people safe. Yet, when many small churches try to put current best safety practices in place for their nursery, children’s Sunday school, or kid’s ministry, they’re often met with resistance. Questions often pop up like, “Are all of these policies really necessary?”, “Why do I need a background check when I’ve been teaching Sunday school for 25 years?”, or “If you don’t trust me to change a diaper, you shouldn’t put me in the nursery.”
If you want to experience support instead of pushback for upping the children’s safety standards in your church, keep reading. I will give you seven specific steps for building support for child safety standards. Taking wise steps to move forward with purpose will go a long way in regards to protecting children in your care, keeping your volunteers serving with more joy and confidence, and growing a reputation of excellence in your community.
Why Change Your Safety Standards?
The safety standards and policies don’t exist to make your current volunteers feel happy. We’re not making changes to increase the comfort or happiness of the people who have been or are already serving. However, we are called to love and serve these people who have been serving faithfully. Keep in mind, that we are increasing our level of care. We are striving for purposeful, intentional care. The results are that we are expanding our level of trust with visitors and current families, and we’re also increasing the level of safety and protection for the kids, volunteers, our team, and our church.
Anticipate Some Resistance
If you’re like most small churches, you’ll anticipate some resistance. It’s important to remember that unity is so important, especially in small churches. We are in each other’s space all the time, and we’re not used to enforcing rules too much, maybe there are a bunch of rules, but there are equally as many exceptions.
When it comes to resistance, when people don’t want rules or don’t want to follow the rules, it comes down to three things. They either don’t understand the need, they don’t care about the need, or they simply don’t agree with how you are going about meeting the need. Most resistance isn’t coming from a place of not wanting to protect and keep children safe. In fact, most will agree that they want those things.
The thing to understand is, that they think that they are already protecting kids, serving the volunteers, and keeping the church from lawsuits. However, people assume that because if this is how they’ve always done it, then it must be the best way. This isn’t usually true though.
So, if we all want to provide safe places for children, give volunteers the best experience, and build trust in the church, how do we get everyone on the same page?
7 Steps For Building Support For Child Safety Standards
1. Start Conversations
When building support for child safety standards, it’s important to initiate conversations about the facility and the fears. Recommended standards and background checks. Keep in mind, that the goal isn’t to convince anyone. The focus should be on observing, listening, and asking questions. Try to keep the focus of the conversation on what you already agree on. You may even put together a focus group. If you do this, I would widen the conversation to parents, older teens, former Sunday school teachers, and even visiting families. You could even put out a survey.
2. Expand The Conversation
If you want to start building support for child safety standards in your small church, I want to encourage you to expand the conversations to involve experts like teachers, people in the medical professions, and people who are involved in safety and law enforcement. Ask them what they think the best practices would be in your small church.
3. Check The Law
Please, don’t skip this step. So many churches are completely unaware of their own insurance policies sometimes. However, there are so many important things in there for many, many churches. The law in your city, state, or even province is to be respected and followed. Before you can effectively start building support for child safety standards, look at what is recommended and required.
4. Do A Couple Of Trainings
When building support for child safety, do some training with a broad group of people in your church. Try to include anyone who’s willing. Do training with outside experts. You could even provide video training from your local governments. Try having organizations come that promote the safety of children, volunteer safety, church legalities, and child abuse. Invite people from every part of your church.
Also, I want you to keep in mind that this could be a part of your research as well. Do some of your own explorations. I will always remember the first training video I watched about child safety, and how much I learned.
5. Become The Best Listener
As you’re talking and starting some of these important conversations, try to become the best listener. Amid building support for child safety standards, don’t disregard your faithful servant who doesn’t want to be put under the scrutiny of a background check. Hear her heart. Listen to her when she says that she feels like you don’t trust her, or that she hates how much the world has changed. Listen well and grow in empathy. Most people who are resistant to change, have a reason to be resistant.
6. Involve People
Involve people in helping to create the standards. Don’t just grab a copy of some that you find on the internet, create it and change the wording to make it fit your church family members. Put together a draft with a group of people, and ask what others think. In addition to creating these standards, try starting with the five key areas I outlined for you in the previous post: Screening and Training Volunteers, Adequate and Safe Supervision, Registration and Consent, Bathroom Breaks and Diapering, and Limited Access To Children’s Areas. This is a great place to start, but it’s not the whole of it, so you’ll want to do a little more exploration.
7. Celebrate All You’re Doing
This is my absolute favorite step. If you do background checks, have a party. Maybe you can have a campaign where your entire church is approved to work with young children, that’s something to celebrate! Maybe 20 people completed training on child development. Celebrate! As you begin to celebrate these things publicly, your church knows, and it elevates your ministry.
This isn’t just about making people feel good. You’re actually elevating the standards of your ministry. This is one of the best ways to make a difference because great communication is impactful.
There May Still Be Resistance
If you follow all of these amazing tips and someone is still not on board, as lovingly as you can, I suggest that you release them. Hopefully, you do this with the support and blessing of your leadership and pastor. Any guidelines that you set should be agreed upon and should be consistent. The standards that you put in place are not suggestions.
You don’t build trust because you try to do these things and you suggest that people follow some guidelines. If you want to build trust, you need to follow your guidelines, always. That’s one of the reasons I suggest that you go slow and have conversations. If these are big changes for your church, you need a foundation of support.
Make Things Easier
Stepping up your safety standards doesn’t have to be a struggle. By involving people, listening well, pointing to the experts, and working as a team, you can watch this process go from a struggle to a celebration. Taking wise steps to move forward with purpose will go a long way in protecting the kids in your care, keeping your volunteers serving with more joy and confidence, and growing a reputation of excellence in your community!
Read More:
Best Practices For A Safe Environment In Children’s Ministry
