A few weeks ago I posted an article about the steps our church has taken to reduce the risk of child sexual abuse. I hope you will take a moment and read that article. Today I received a newsletter from the Church Law and Tax Report that has a lead article titled, "Church Liability For Sexual Conduct." The article lists five steps a church should take to reduce the risk of a child being harmed under its care. The steps for enlisting volunteers or hiring staff who work with minors are:
- require written application
- contact references
- conduct personal interviews
- do criminal background checks
- adopt a 6 month membership or attendance rule to avoid putting unknown individuals into service too hastily.
Our church has followed these steps for many years now. We regularly train our staff and volunteers on our policies. And we regularly review our procedures to ensure that we are complying with our policies. We use, “Reducing The Risk” training resources to guide our policy and training. I highly recommend this resource to every church regardless of size. It is relatively inexpensive, and worth every penny. It is inexcusable for a church to neglect putting these policies in place.
