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Barriers To Safety And Love: Why Church Leaders Keep Them In Place
By James F. Cobble, Jr.
"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (John 10:11, NIV).
Twenty years ago, churches were not that much different from other nonprofit organizations in responding to safety concerns. For example, few organizations screened workers to guard against the threat of child sexual abuse. Many safety concerns were simply off the radar screen. Today, a greater awareness exists concerning both safety and responsibility. As a result, community standards are changing. My own daughter, who just graduated from college, has already undergone two criminal record checks as a part of her brief employment history. Local school districts and other organizations, such as the YMCA, Boy Scouts, and Big Brothers, now routinely do background screening on both paid and volunteer workers. In our own school district, over 30,000 volunteers are now screened annually.
Safety Concerns Today
Why has safety become such a big concern? To a large degree, the answer is fear. Organizations and leaders are afraid of lawsuits, bad publicity, and financial loss. Yet there is also a growing recognition that both crime and accidents can be prevented. We can and should create more safe and caring environments. If any message has permeated the American consciousness during the past several years, it is the need to create and maintain safe places. We all understand that if given the chance, some people will hurt us.
The standard of care needed is very basic. Leaders only need to act reasonably. From a legal standpoint, reasonable care is generally determined by a jury made up of common folks like us—people we see at church and in the grocery store—who share many of the same concerns and struggles we all face. These people are called on to listen to the facts of a specific case and then decide if the leaders acted reasonably. To be honest, it’s not a high standard. When you think about it, of all people, shouldn’t church leaders find that an easy standard to meet? In fact, as the church, aren’t we called to an even higher standard of loving care?
Safety Concerns and Church
The sad reality is that many church leaders simply ignore issues of safety. While on the surface it appears as a contradiction to the very essence of being a shepherd, in practice safety concerns are frequently viewed as barriers to ministry. Rather than viewing safety as an act of love, it is viewed as a burden.
Church leaders who fail to take safety concerns seriously must be prepared to look victims, family members, and possibly 12 ordinary men and women in the eye and explain why they, as God’s shepherds, are different from leaders in every other organization in this country. They must explain why children at church can play in unsafe playgrounds and ride in vehicles that are susceptible to tragic accidents. They must give an account why those who molested children in church activities needed no screening or supervision. They must clarify how their calling to a higher, divine standard exempts them from the same basic, elementary care that is understood as necessary by those who make no special appeal to a God of love and justice.
During the last several years, the scandals in the Catholic church have painted a sad picture for all Christians. Many church leaders have embraced change to protect children only when confronted with the heavy hand of the law and investigations by the media. Some Protestants take solace in the notion that this is a "Catholic" problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a problem for all of us. Protestant churches, like Catholic parishes, experience child abuse. But more to the point, church leaders, regardless of doctrinal persuasion, often fail to grasp the bigger picture about the relationship between safety and loving care. It’s not just about child abuse. It’s about providing care for every person, through every stage of life, and understanding that preventable accidents and injuries produce suffering and pain. Somewhere in this mix, we need to recall that Jesus came to bring us life and to suffer on our behalf. That is the task of the Good Shepherd. (See sidebars, "Understanding the Profile of Sex Offenders: Implications for Screening and Supervising Church Workers" and "A Summary of 2,500 Church Job Applicants.")
The Church’s Failure to Respond to Safety Issues
Why do church leaders fail to respond to safety concerns?
The language of risk management is foreign to many church leaders.
Risk management sounds more like a business or financial responsibility than one of ministry. It evokes images of insurance agents and bankers rather than pastors and Sunday School teachers.
The common understanding of safety is viewed in very narrow terms.
Our research indicates that many church leaders equate risk management with purchasing insurance. To be honest, few topics are less appealing to the average pastor. It’s a toss-up which is more exciting: reading an insurance policy or reading the phone directory. Yet insurance is a vital part of any risk-management strategy. Insurance, though, does nothing to prevent risks from occurring. Rather, it only helps finance the recovery from losses that happen. (See sidebars "Insurance Coverage: An Overview.") The insurance policy didn’t prevent the boy from being killed at the church hayride, or protect the members of the Sunday School class that died when their 15-passenger church van tipped over. (See sidebar "What Church Leaders Should Know About Church Vans.")
Many church leaders think the insurance agent is responsible for safety.
While some insurance agents are trained as risk managers, most are not. In addition, the job of most insurance agents is to sell insurance and help manage claims. Risk management is first and foremost the responsibility of church leaders. Safety strategies become effective only when they become part of the fabric of congregational life. To have any chance of success, church leaders must fully embrace that commitment. Furthermore, the primary focus of the risk-management plan should be on prevention. (See sidebar "A Strategy To Reduce Risk—Establishing a Church Safety Team," and "The Safety Coordinator.")
Church leaders fail to respond to safety concerns because of the organizational life of the church.
In many respects, churches are no different from other organizations in their assessment and response to risk. Risks often seem to be remote, and responding to them seems to produce more burdens than benefits. Common expressions of these attitudes include the following:
- It can’t happen here.A mentality exists that losses and accidents will not happen at "our church." These are things you read about in the paper or see on television that happen to others. The problem: no church is immune from loss. It can happen at your church.
- Passive acceptance. Churches acknowledge that risks may occur, but no felt need is present to do anything about it. The risk is viewed as remote and unimportant. The problem: accidents and losses can strike without warning.
- Fear of alienation.Some leaders believe risk management can create fear and scare volunteer workers away. The problem: when developed properly, risk management enhances confidence and attracts volunteers and new members. For example, which church would a parent of small children prefer to attend: one that intentionally provides a safe environment for children, or one that ignores safety concerns? Severe losses, negative publicity, and a failure to be responsible will drive people away.
- Too cumbersome.Risk management requires too much time and energy. It creates too many burdens, and we don’t have time or resources to do it. The problem: properly organized, risk management is manageable in any congregation. Losses always create even more stress and drain resources away from ministry.
Many church leaders make little, if any, connection between safety and their own commitments of faith.
Many church leaders have no theological perspective in which to ground safety as an act of love or responsibility. Rather, just the opposite can occur. Some faith viewpoints undermine commitments to safety. For example, if people believe God will protect them no matter what they do, this can lead to a feeling of security or to a willingness to embrace any risk without making any differentiation between good risks and bad risks. (I believe God protects us and perhaps one of the means of that protection is the use of common sense.) While this viewpoint claims to arise out of faith, it represents a simplistic, one-dimensional perspective on a problem that deserves better.
A Theology of Safety
Here are a few common theological viewpoints that can undermine a commitment to safety within a church. In each case, a distortion of a basic truth occurs.
The church is a holy place.
Some people believe no place is safer than church. Sanctuaries embody the very essence of protection. When people drop off children at the church, the last thing they expect to discover is their child has been injured due to carelessness. The problem: people of all ages are hurt in sanctuaries and in church programs. Many of these injuries could be prevented.
Example.A church member was seriously injured while hanging Christmas decorations in the sanctuary. The church was found liable for providing an unsafe ladder.
Example. A pregnant woman slipped and fell on icy stairs at the church and became paralyzed. The church was found liable for failing to remove the snow and ice properly from the stairs.
Example. A small child enrolled in a church daycare was left in the church van following a trip and died of heat exhaustion. Church employees did not notice the missing child until it was too late.
Trust and obey.
Churches are communities of trust and faith. No one can be more trusted than those who engage in ministry and service to others. We can trust such individuals to do what is right. The problem: not all church leaders act in the best interests of their congregations. A few do things that hurt people and harm ministry. The biblical standard is that church leaders must be accountable.
Example. A church treasurer, who worked as an officer at a local bank, embezzled over $100,000 from the church.
Example. A youth pastor molested more than 14 boys from the church youth group.
Example.A pastor used church funds to purchase expensive gifts for himself and his family.
Example.A pastor seduced women in the church who came to him for counseling.
A focus on safety embodies a lack of faith.
Risk is inherent within ministry. Trying to lower risk goes against the grain of faithful service. We must trust God to protect us. Risk management shows a lack of faith. The problem: faith risks are different from pure risks (accidental or criminal losses); we embrace the former but try to minimize the latter following the model of the Good Shepherd.
Example. A church began a ministry in an inner city to help drug addicts. The church took no precautions, however, to safeguard their facility and experienced severe theft and vandalism. The issue is not the calling to the inner city, but the pure risks of theft and vandalism, which were completely ignored.
Example. A church began a daycare and installed playground equipment. A child was seriously injured on a piece of playground equipment that had been identified as a safety hazard by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and was posted on a list of equipment not suitable for preschoolers. Once again, the problem was not the ministry of the daycare, but the installation of unsafe equipment. The harm that resulted was not due to a lack of faith, but to simple ignorance.
Conclusion
One thing is clear about behaviors that minimize safety concerns: the reasons that may have been acceptable a generation ago will no longer be tolerated by the ordinary citizens of this country. Church leaders who fail to promote safety because it is inconvenient or a bit too costly, and later suffer the consequences of a tragic accident within the church, will find a harsh public reception. The historic goodwill that has been given the church will give way to the demand for accountability, which in modern terms means courtroom justice.
From a Christian perspective, the critical element in transforming acts of safety from being a burden to being a benefit is broadening our view of what it means to love our neighbor and to be caretakers of God’s creation. Once we see risk management as caregiving and stewardship, we move to new levels of motivation and commitment. We cannot be satisfied with the societal standard of reasonable care; the Christian standard is loving care. We cannot embrace an image of church leaders as reluctant caretakers of children, and self-preservationists who put the institutional needs of the church above the welfare of those for whom Jesus gave His life. Rather, let all who enter our communities of faith find the true Comforter who leads us into all truth. Let us break down every barrier that hinders the full expression of our faith. Let us discover afresh what it means to be good shepherds.
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James F. Cobble, Jr., Ph.D., Matthews, North Carolina, is executive director of Christian Ministries Resources. |
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