Note from Pastor Jon: One of Jonny’s first internship projects was to draft a child protection policy. He’s written a great policy, and we will share it with the church once the elders formally adopt it. In this newsletter, Jonny summarizes some of the findings from his research.

I saw a billboard the other day which read: “Love your kids? Then make sure they’re in the back seat.” Most of us know this is standard procedure these days. I can only imagine the horrified looks I would get from other drivers if I sat my baby girl in the front seat of our Honda CRV with only an adult seat-belt on! Passenger seatbelts and airbags are meant for adults only, and a child can be seriously injured by them. But of course, if you didn’t know that, you wouldn’t take car seat safety as seriously. Knowing the danger makes all the difference. Loving our kids involves knowing the danger, so that we can take the proper steps to protect them.

We want to make Jordan Valley Church a safe place for our kids. After all, we believe that God has a special place for them to join us on our journey to know Christ (Deut. 6:4-9). So we need to know the dangers facing our kids at church, so we can protect them. If you Google “sexual abuse in church,” you will find all kinds of disturbing cases. It’s sad to read these stories. But it’s also easy to read them from a safe distance, assuming that the same thing could never happen to us. We put our kids at risk, if we don’t see the danger.

The Danger of Abuse in the Church [1]

The danger of child abuse exists because of 1) how abusers work, and 2) how churches let them access kids. Abusers work in subtle and deceitful ways. They manipulate a community to gain authority and trust, which allows them to gain access to children. Once they have access, they might use physical force or threats, or continued manipulation, to abuse children and keep the abuse secret. Abusers are masters at deception; they find what a particular community values in a person and try to be that person in public. But like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, they have malicious motives to hurt children.

Unfortunately, churches often allow abusers easy access to children. To illustrate this, what picture comes to mind when you hear the words “child abuser”? Our mental image is probably a socially awkward, shady-looking stranger in a trench coat, sitting in the back row. This kind of person would actually be relatively harmless because our guard is up as soon as he walks into church. A typical abuser uses deceit to gain trust, and our misconceptions make it easy. Once they have the community’s trust, they find access to children, target their victim(s), and abuse. What this means is that the person most likely to abuse a child is [2]:

• Someone they already know,

• Someone the child, the family, and the community trusts,

• Someone who is in social or religious authority.

The harm done to a child abused at church is tragic and soul crushing. Many victims end up rejecting the God they were told about while their abuse was going on, especially if Scripture or church authority was used to cover up or legitimize the abuse. After this happens, it is very hard to break through the deep-seated pain to trust God again. Christa Brown, who was abused as a child by a pastor at her church, explains her experience this way:

“...think about a victim of torture whose torturer always played Beethoven while he beat and brutalized the victim. Years later, that victim of torture is unlikely to much appreciate the music of Beethoven...The music is just background noise. But on some level his brain is still processing it as something that is linked to degradation, pain and fear. The sort of talk of God’s love that [Christians often speak to me about] is the sort of talk that transports me to the torture chamber that is in my own head.” [3]

The JVC Child Safety Policy

What a tragedy it would be if one of our kids learned to distrust the God they heard about at JVC because we failed to protect them. We cannot afford to just assume that pastors, Sunday School teachers, and child-care workers are safe. It is potentially disastrous to give anyone at JVC easy access to children outside the bounds of good child-protective practices. This is why we are introducing a Child Protection Policy, which will outline the child safeguarding policies and behavior of this church.

Safe policies are those that will ensure visibility and accountability for adult child-care workers. This means having multiple sets of eyes and ears on our children’s ministries and taking extra steps where necessary to ensure visibility and accountability. The policy will also define safe behaviors that will inform how all adults at JVC should behave towards children. How the church will address inappropriate, unsafe or abusive behavior towards children is also covered. The fact is, we cannot judge people’s hearts or the motives behind their behaviors. But we can recognize unsafe or abusive behavior and respond appropriately. The policy is designed to help us do that for the sake of child safety.

The Church as a Refuge from Danger

Of course, protection is not the only way God calls us to love children. At JVC, we believe that we love our kids by teaching them about God and the Bible, so that they will learn to believe in Jesus and have eternal life. Our desire is not to hinder them from the way, but to show them the way (Mark 10:13-16). As we teach them, God calls us to do so in an environment of care, nurture and protection. In other words, we are to treat our kids the way God the Father treats us as his children. Psalm 32 calls us to run to God for safety. He himself is a hiding place who protects us from trouble. As we are surrounded by God’s safety, he surrounds us with songs of our deliverance. God loves his children by protecting them, and we should do the same.

Psalm 32 is about running to God for forgiveness. Our hope is that our kids will learn to run to Jesus for that kind of protection. That is our primary message; we can either underline that message by protecting them from abuse or undermine that message by leaving them defenseless. This is why we need to take this seriously. For the vulnerable, we prioritize protection. For the hurt and abused, we accept responsibility, pursue transparency, care for victims, and seek justice. In all of this, we seek to mimic the heart of our Father, who himself protects and saves the vulnerable and oppressed (Deut. 10:18; Isa. 1:17). With God’s help, in both the teaching and protection of our kids, we can faithfully communicate to them a God who is a loving and trustworthy Father.

In Christ,

Jonny

[1] For more information on the Danger of Abuse in churches, see the following 2 articles from GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment):

“Four Common Exploitations: Sex Offenders in Faith Communities”

“Child Abuse Prevention Month: From Awareness to Action”

Appendix B of JVC’s Child Protective Policy will contain a more comprehensive list of resources, including GRACE’s website, as well as other books, websites and articles.

[2] For an explanation of the dynamics at play here, see Deepak Reju, On Guard. Pg 17-36; see also Basyle Tchividjian & Shira M. Berkovits, The Child Safeguarding Policy. Pg 49-60.

[3] Brown, Christa. This Little Light, (Cedarburg, WI: Foremost Press, 2009), 216.