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Instead of your small church being a scary place for visiting families, learn how to make your small church a safe place in your community. While the familiarity of a small church leads to comfort and trust for its members, that’s not a shared trust for visiting families. In this post, we’ll talk about challenges facing many small churches regarding good practices for children’s ministry safety, and what to do about them. The obstacles of smaller budgets and fewer children’s ministry volunteers don’t excuse us from high standards in protecting our kids, volunteers, and the reputation of our churches. Although small church ministry is different, it should never be less.
Keep reading to find out what matters and why, regarding safety and policy in children’s ministry. I also want to provide you with a few creative solutions for funding background checks and having an extra set of hands in situations where having two adults in a room might be challenging. In the next post, we’ll follow up with how to make policy changes a celebration instead of drudgery, as these shifts create some fantastic changes and forward motion in your local church culture. Key areas in this post:
- Screening and Training Volunteers
- Adequate & Safe Supervision
- Registration, Consent, & Check-in/Check-out
- Bathroom Trips & Diapering
- Limited Access to Children’s Areas
Diving Into Children’s Ministry Safety and Policy
I’m really excited to share with you how to keep your children’s ministry safe and your volunteers protected, even if you’re short on volunteers, have a tight budget, and have limited facilities. Sometimes when small churches hear about recommended, or even required, safety policies for best practices, they throw up their hand in defeat because they don’t have enough volunteers or they don’t have the money for the background checks.
We’re going to dive into some creative solutions to keep kids, volunteers, and your church protected and safe; ways to fulfill the spirit of the law, so to speak, while still working within what God has provided in your small church.
This is going to be broken up into two different parts because there are two camps of challenges in most small churches. One is tangible challenges based on things we can see and touch, like volunteers, facility space, money, and resources. We’re going to call these the challenges. In the next part, we’ll talk about overcoming objections in small churches. What I mean by this is when you know what you need to do or want to do, but there’s resistance. Sometimes, when we raise the standards of protection and safety, we can be seen as being mean or like it’s overkill to not allow piggyback rides or families bringing neighborhood children without consent.
So, today we’ll talk about the tangible challenges, and how to put some of the best practices for safety and policy in place, and next week we’ll go over overcoming personal objections so that you can put these best practices in place.
Who Would Benefit From This?
If you’ve started reading this blog post and you’re not involved in children’s ministry, should you keep reading? I hope you do! One of the things in small churches is that we have the ability to get everyone on board, of growing fans of different ministry areas so that we can share the value and the joy. This is one of the gifts of small churches. This is family. Small churches have a way of being pretty interconnected between ministry areas. You might even be the person to influence some change, start a new conversation, or bring some awareness to a few things that you might be missing in the area of child safety and policy.
If you are involved in the children’s ministry, whether you’re in charge or not, I encourage you to share this post with everyone in any role, working with children or youth. Start some conversations. Celebrate all that you’re doing right, and take some steps to move forward in areas where you could grow.
If you’re one of the church leaders like the pastor or a parent, then I really want you to stay with me. We’re not just going to be talking about what the policies should be, but why some of these things need to be in place as well.
Change Is Necessary
When it comes to children’s safety, it is, of course, about protecting the children. However, it’s also about protecting your volunteers, setting them up for success, and protecting your church. Too many people outside the church are very distrustful of God’s church, and they have a reason to be. Widespread abuses have happened in church, in all denominations and sizes. I think the church should be the safest place for children, families, and all people, not the scariest place you’ve ever left your child.
Here’s the thing, it is scary. Random people taking your children for an hour or more, with no training, no screening, and no window to watch what’s happening. It can be a place where illness policies aren’t enforced, and last-minute volunteers are grabbed because someone didn’t show up. This should not be the case. Children are the most innocent and vulnerable people in our midst. Let’s do better!
The Spirit Of The Law
I want to loop back to something that I mentioned earlier, the spirit of the law. I want to be careful to clarify, if there’s an actual law in place in your state, province, or country, it’s your moral responsibility to follow that law to the letter, not just the spirit of the law. You should be checking your church insurance policy and government regulations. I personally look to Canada before the U.S. because the restrictions are tighter there. Again, I don’t think children’s ministry should be an area of how much we can get away with. I think the question should be, what else can we do to make this the safest place on the planet?
I want to declare that I am not a doctor, I am not a lawyer, and I’m not a government regulator. The information provided on this post is for informational purposes only, and does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; the content on this post is for general informational purposes only. This may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information.
The purpose of this post is simply to start the conversation in your church and your ministry area, and to begin the process of intentionally developing your policies and practices based on research and discernment. In fact, you should not act or refrain from acting on the basis of any content included in this post. I disclaim all liability for actions you take or fail to take based on the content here.
Yes, I just wrote a disclaimer. That is how seriously I take your commitment to your church’s children’s ministry organization and policies.
5 Key Areas To Maintain High Standards With No Compromise
1. Screening And Training Volunteers
Screening and training volunteers are essential and should never be skipped, glossed over, or become an optional thing. Conducting criminal background checks is simply due diligence. Any person who steps foot in your children’s areas in any capacity should be screened with a full criminal/background check. Most people recommend that these be done every 2-5 years and cross-referenced with the national sex offender database.
Please, don’t say that this is unnecessary because you know everyone at your church and you’re familiar with everyone. Familiarity should not build trust, not when it comes to our ministry areas.
The biggest challenge most small churches claim regarding conducting background checks is the expense. At the low end, it’s $10 a person and can be quite pricey on the high end. This is for each person who would step foot in your children’s areas. If that’s a lot for your budget, and for most small churches, it is, here are a few ways you could fund it!
Ask parents to pay, I know I would in a heartbeat. You could also ask your volunteers to pay for it as well. You could even run a fundraiser or a campaign called Keep Kids Safe. There is no doubt a cost to this, but it is completely worth the money.
Volunteers should be trained on mission and vision in addition to child development and safety. Your ministry should be consistent in positive environments, watchful of bullying and how to stop it, knowledgable about special needs and positive discipline, and redirecting behavior so that no one ends up frustrated. Training your volunteers isn’t about not trusting them to know how to handle kids. It’s about setting them up to succeed too.
2. Adequate And Safe Supervision
The best practice is to have 2 unrelated adult staff members in a classroom for every 7-10 kids. This provides you with adequate and safe supervision. We want another set of eyes. It doesn’t matter if you have 1 kid or 10 kids, it’s important to have another person there. In addition, what happens if there’s an emergency? Who runs for help? It’s also important to make sure that these two adults are unrelated. If there are two related adults, there is a lot of enabling that happens and a lot of things can go unreported.
If you’re a small church and you’re wondering what you’re going to do because there are no adults to help, I want to show you some creative solutions. Your second adult could be in the hallway, between rooms. This person is there if anyone needs help, and can supervise from afar. You could also move to a more open space and combine the age groups in a shared space. What about adding a large interior window or corner mirrors so there is not an area of the room that’s out of one’s sightline?
What about teens? This dangerous solution is actually not a solution at all. We often try and use teenagers to supplement a volunteer shortage. However, they shouldn’t be responsible or liable for the children in your care. Also, to be completely honest with you, sadly, child abuse often happens because of teens. I know we don’t like to imagine it, but 23% of predators are under the age of 18.
3. Registration, Consent, And A Check-In/Check-Out System
A registration form for the year is amazing to collect and keep consent, medical information, soothing preferences, food allergies, and social media consent on hand. You can even keep up to date on contact information, birthdates, etc.
Consent is important. So many parents bring their children’s friends with them and put them in your care. Without explicit consent by the parent, this isn’t okay and can be a huge liability. Another best practice is to have a clear check-in and check-out policy, even when everyone knows everyone. This includes attendance. There is no tangible challenge to this one. Any church can afford a clipboard and a piece of paper. Fancy electronic systems or paging isn’t needed.
4. Bathroom Breaks And Diapering
For elementary children, grades 1-6, the best practice would be to use the buddy system. Send them with another child from their class! For preschool children, ages 3-5, the best practice would be to take a class trip to the washroom. Never go into the washroom stall with a child. If needed, prop the outside door open, and assist as needed with the cubicle door open enough so the child can maintain privacy. Another idea would be to ask an usher to grab the parents to assist, or ask the sibling to go with the child to assist.
In the nursery, the best practice would be to have the parents change their own child’s diaper. You can ask an usher to grab the parents, or have a system to inform them. Obtaining a cell phone number, in case a baby or toddler needs their parent is the easiest. This can be kept in a binder, or written on childs’ name tags. Let them know that you will be texting them if they are needed during the service, and send them a text when necessary.
5. Limited Access
The main thing to keep in mind is that we don’t want anyone who isn’t approved to be in the children’s areas. In addition to this, you should consider how easy it is for kids to escape the designated areas, as well as how easy it is for unapproved adults to come into your area. Remember, child predators are slick. They look for places where there are a lot of access points and little accountability.
There are a lot of things to do, even if you don’t have a lot of options in your physical space. Having a very clear sign-in process for kids, volunteers, and parents will help a lot. You could even supply approved adults with brightly colored badges or lanyards so that you know who is allowed in that space and who is not.
If you have a problem with space, an easy fix to this would be to set up a designated walkway with colored tape on the floor, to show people where the kids’ area is and where they should be. Some small churches even have off-duty police in their congregations who can keep an eye out. They’re like volunteer church security!
Build A Reputation Of Safety
I hope all of this gives you a start! A start to conversations, intentional forward movement, and a start to looking for creative ideas to facilitate a safe environment for children and volunteers. A place that builds the reputation of your church as a place that not only says they value safety, but is willing to take the steps to do their very best to ensure it.
In the following post, will go over the objections that might come up in setting policies and moving toward actually enforcing them. If you’re ready to bring some needed structure into your ministry, I want to help you do that with strategies to overcome the resistance that usually pops up. Change brings resistance.
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