Trying To Make Church Safe

Have you ever heard of someone being hurt by a church or church leader? Most, if not all of you that read this will probably answer yes.

We hear news stories about how church leaders have violated their parishioners and how churches respond to the allegations.  I feel sick to my stomach when I hear these stories.  Churches are made of God's people and our mission is to bring healing and renewal to people and this earth.  We pray about this, we teach about this, we apply it to our lives - but every once in a while the mission goes sideways.

People hurt each other.  Sometimes its hurt feelings, people get slighted and offended.  Sometimes people have expectations of the church and they aren't met "the pastor didn't call me when I had this ______  was going on in my life."  Other times during intense times of conflict people say things that hurt deeply.  In my 17 years of church leadership I have been on the giving and the receiving end of this type of church hurt.  Not the type that makes the news, but the type that makes me aware enough to not discount the reality that some churches and or church leaders are not safe.

Then there are the more violent ways people abuse each other.  Abuse of power, abuse of position, abuse of trust that results in someone being violated.  The types of abuse that scar people deeply and ruin lives.  The types of abuse that makes the news.  And this does occur occasionally within the family of God.  More stories come to the surface as it becomes safer to come out.

Dr. Seuss wrote a book called "Yertle The Turtle" that shows in epic Seuss fashion, how power can corrupt and lead to abuse of others.

Within the circle of churches that Heartland is a part of (Classis BCSE - Christian Reformed Church) there have been cases of this type of abuse.   A friend of mine, John Stellingwerff is the Safe Church co-ordinator for the churches in our province.   We interviewed John at Heartland a few weeks ago during our Dangerous Lives series as he talked about abuse and abuse prevention. He trains churches in abuse awareness and prevention and is on the front lines when there are allegations of abuse. He recently was part of an intensive restorative justice process for a local church.  It was powerful and led to the promotion of healing in the lives of people who were abused by a church leader years ago - scores of people were affected - some still coming forward.

One of the important initiatives that Heartland has taken on in the past year is becoming a Safe Church.  That means we receive training and have policies and practices in place that promote safety (police checks, moral codes of conduct contracts etc.)  We are at the front end of this process.  The amount of work needed is dizzying.  We have a new Safe Church advocate within Heartland that is going to guide us through the process. Our council went to a training session over a month ago on the issue of leaders and boundaries and we need more training.

One of the questions is where to start?  Each church has to answer that question themselves, but for Heartland where this is hitting the pavement first is our youth ministry.  We are creating safe church practices for our youth ministry which includes moral code of conduct, police checks among other things.  And it is taking much longer to get this started and to make progress than we originally thought.  Our youth ministry isn't even up and running yet because we are still working on safe church practices for our volunteers.

It's not only a long process but a difficult one too.   A few years ago everyone knew everyone at Heartland, but now with new people and more volunteers for ministries we need to be intentional in who we invite to be leaders and mentors of our youth.  We need to be intentional in what we ask of volunteers. This means we need to write out in detail what we are looking for in the conduct of volunteer leaders and what practices we are asking them to be a part of.  All of us are in process and sometimes it feels like trying to train patients in the ER room to also be doctors.

We feel it's all worth it because we want Heartland to be a safe place of healing, restoration and renewal.