KidMin Leader Cast: We Make Professional Kidmin Leaders

Speaker 1 0:00
Todd, welcome to the kid men leader cast. My name is Todd Hixenbaugh and I am your host. In today's episode, we're going to be discussing something essential to creating a safe and welcoming environment for our kids, the importance of background checks and safety trainings before we get into that, I want you to know that we have a newsletter, and I want you to go and check that out. I have three insights every Sunday at 9am that are gonna hit your inbox. If you sign up for that, you're going to have practical tips, tricks, strategies, things that I'm processing that are going to help you to become a more professional and effective children's ministry leader. So go to Kidman newsletter.com today. It's totally free. Sign up for that. I don't spam people. I just make sure that you have great content coming constantly into your inbox so that you never feel in the dark. I know how important that is for all of you. Also go to kid men leader, cast.com this episode you're listening to right now has its own episode page there, where you can go and rate, review. Can do all the things right there and tell us how terrible I am or how great this podcast is. What all the things, whatever you can do. It from Kid men leader.or

Unknown Speaker 1:36
Kidman leader, cast.com

Speaker 1 1:40
go there, rate and review the podcast, and of course, I always want you to subscribe. It's totally free, and it you're going to make sure that you never miss another episode. So go ahead and do that now, like right now, for real. All right. Did you know that one in four children this is going to turn dark all of a sudden? Did you know that one in four children will be sexually abused before they turn 18 years old. The statistics a little bit old. This was from a poll done in 2022 but one in four children will be sexually abused before they turn 18. Background checks and safety training are absolutely crucial to reducing risks and ensuring safety can happen in your ministry. It doesn't mean that it'll never happen, but it means that your chances of having issues are greatly reduced. Here's some things we're going to talk about in today's episode. We're talking about why background checks are vital for children's ministry. We're talking about how safety training builds a stronger and more aware team. We're talking about practical steps to implement checks and training in your ministry. Let's get rolling. Why do background checks matter? I feel like this is obvious, but we're going to talk about it anyways, protecting children from potential harm. That's literally what we're doing, right? It's, it's kind of like insurance, okay, the insurance company for your car, they're betting that nothing's going to be wrong and you're not going to have any accidents or getting any tickets. You're betting that something could happen. And so what happens is you pay them to ensure that it doesn't, and if it does that, they're there to help you. Background checks are kind of like that. You see, I am just making sure and looking into people to make sure that nothing is going on. They're telling me nothing's there. Right when they fill out the background check form, they're telling me nothing's there. I'm just double checking. I'm just making sure, right? I'm not that. I'm not trusting people, but I just want to make sure it's the old trust but verify approach to ensuring safety in our ministries. You see it builds trust with our parents and with our volunteers. You see when volunteers see us doing background checks and making sure that all, all of the people who are working with kids actually are who they say they are, and that there's nothing in their past that would potentially harm them from working with children or harm children. It breeds confidence that the ministry they serve with is actually pretty good, like it just does, and obviously with parents and families. It's another peace of mind thing, right? And remember, it's Trust, but verify. It's not that I don't trust you. It's I'm verifying that the things that you're saying are actually true. So you also have a legal and ethical responsibility. Background checks is part of the church's responsibility. Is is a big deal. It is part of our responsibility. Matter of fact, Jesus says this in Matthew chapter 18, verse six, Whoever causes one of these little ones? Who believe in me to fall away. It'd be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of sea. That's pretty intense. But I believe that that if there's anything that happens that would cause a child to be hurt or to not trust the church or not trust God, and we're responsible for that, that's a big deal, and that's really what we're talking about, right? So we're talking about, we want to make sure that we're doing everything to not hurt children and to, in fact, push them further towards Jesus. That's the goal of everything that we do. And so if we're not background checking people, if we're not making sure that everything's on the up and up and it hurts, hurts them, and then they walk away from God because of it. That's this big deal, and Jesus says there are some implications and consequences that can be there for us. What's the impact of not doing background checks? You're just vulnerable. You're very vulnerable to abuse, to neglect. You're also vulnerable, in a practical sense, to lawsuits, right? If somebody finds out that you had somebody who has sexually assaulted children or who has hurt other people, right

Unknown Speaker 6:13
on your team, and they find that out,

Speaker 1 6:16
several things are going to happen. One, you're going to eat sued. You just are. We're a very litigious nation in the United States, the West in particular, very litigious,

Unknown Speaker 6:31
and in this case, honestly,

Unknown Speaker 6:32
rightfully so.

Speaker 1 6:36
But also you're going to lose credibility in the eyes of your congregation. People are not going to respect you. They're going to think that you're irresponsible, and they're not going to want to have you in charge of being of the children in your church. They're just not. Parents are not going to want to put their kids in there in the ministry with you. It, there's it's nothing good comes of not running background checks. Nothing good comes of it. It's just a terrible idea. On every possible front, you'll lose trust. You're going to lose credibility, all those things. It's just not good. So how are we going to implement effective background checks? Let's talk about it. We're going to choose the right tools. Choose the right tools. What should we be looking for in a background check service? Well, first, what types of checks are we going to consider right? Criminal records, sex offender registries, employment history, all these things are important. You're going to look at County, you're going to look at state, and in some cases, some churches even go all the way to BCI, FBI, full nationwide background checks,

Unknown Speaker 7:48
I'm seeing that less

Speaker 1 7:51
those cost a lot of money, but also they're more tedious, right? That's where we get into fingerprinting. That's where we get into all that stuff. Those I'm starting to see less of for sure. People are doing local and county, state level background checks right. And there are tons of different companies to go with. You could look at checker is an I know one that's pretty good.

Unknown Speaker 8:19
I believe that.

Speaker 1 8:23
I believe that kid check has that service available as well. And again, Google it. There's tons out there. I will include some of these in the show notes for you to go and look at. Ones that I've worked with in the past, just for getting off the top of my head and didn't write it down some of these, but you're also going to want to look okay for you. Is it going to make more sense to have a digital process, right? It's just a link that they fill out when they go to do the background check. Are you going to print things out? Who is going to be in charge of running these? Who's going to be in charge of of making sure this happens. What is you're looking at the tools. Make sure that we have sharp, good tools, then we're gonna make policies and procedures around it. We're gonna create a ministry wide policy on background checks. Everybody has to have a background check. That's the policy. Boom. You're gonna have it done every three years. You're gonna have it done every five years, whatever I suggest three it's what we do in our ministry. Every year is a lot. Every year is good. I mean, that's great. Um, remember about every time you run a background check, it costs some money. Um, it just depends on what your value is on that right? I could argue it either way, we do three years. Every three years we run background checks on all of our volunteers. Planning Center has a nice feature we our church uses Planning Center. It's just kind of a a contact management system, people management system, and it allows you to. To indicate whether or not a person's been background checked, right? Is that way any ministry can see if a person has an active background check. And it also shows you, when you have people who their background checks need to run again, look into all of that, set the policy, and then we're going to do this. We're going to then communicate that to everybody. We're going to communicate that to volunteers, volunteers who are currently serving, volunteers when they fill out the application to serve, we're going to make sure that is well communicated. How frequently are we doing background checks then? And this is the big one that people get tripped up on, right? It's handling the sensitive information. You're asking people for their driver's license number and for their social security number, which means that you basically can get, at that point, any information on them that you want. This is where having processes is key. Okay, we're going to ensure confidentiality of personal information. We're going to shred documents.

Unknown Speaker 11:04
Once they're done,

Speaker 1 11:07
we're going to delete files or use a background check system that does that for you. And then we're going to properly store things. Okay, maybe you need to have a copy of it on hand. Okay, that's going to be locked, or that's going to be in a computer system that has firewalls, that has protection on it, that that people can't access, right? And then you're gonna have a designated person who's in charge that. For that, it's our office manager, right? Part of her job is dealing with sensitive information, and she does all the things that she's supposed to do, in terms of shredding documents, in terms of managing the back end of the digital system, inputting the information where it needs to go. She does that. That's her. Part of her job at our church is handling and processing all of our background checks in children's ministry, student ministry, student ministry, women's ministry, Men's Ministry, all the ministries. Okay, that's what she does. That's her job. So that's kind of the background check process. Those are some things you need to think through. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 12:18
there's another side to this.

Speaker 1 12:21
It's the safety training side, because it's like, okay, you've done the background check, but like, how are we going to train on safety? How are we going to talk about safety? How are we going to talk about the policies? What are we going to do with that? Let's talk about it. Why is safety training crucial? We're going to be equipping volunteers with knowledge to respond to emergencies. You will never wish that you had done a safety training as much as if you have an active shooter situation, if you are in the building and the building catches on fire, if you have some sort of emergency, you will never wish that you had gone through and done some easy training with your volunteers than in those moments you never will and it

Unknown Speaker 13:07
doesn't take long.

Speaker 1 13:09
Most of your buildings, anyways, per your county or Township, you have to have fire emergency plans drawn up. The building has to have these things, tornado, active shooter, all those things you're building probably to be for the inspectors. They have to have that information anyways, and so why not take it and just walk through it with your volunteers quickly? It's a great way of doing that. You should show them and have it posted in all of your rooms, the exit plan, all that stuff. And we're going to talk about this in trainings, right? We're going to talk about this. We're going to do this in trainings. And then the other one, and this one gets kind of controversial, we're going to teach our volunteers what to look for with abuse and neglect, all right. We're going to talk to them about signs, things that you can see right, how they can tell and and what to look for, and then who are they going to tell? What's the chain? What's the process? We're going to explain processes. We're also going to go through our entire protection policy. Again, I said this. I believe last episode, I want to go through our entire protection policy once a year with our volunteers, and then I want to have it recorded so that for new volunteers, they can watch it that way. They've seen it until the next year, when I go through it again, I'm constantly talking about how we can maintain a safe environment.

Unknown Speaker 14:45
Here's a here's a proverb for you. Proverbs four,

Speaker 1 14:49
verse six, do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you. Love her and she will watch over you. We want to be wise, wise as a serpent. You.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
Mika is a dove always.

Speaker 1 15:03
What should you include in your safety training? What else should you include procedures for reported reporting or abuse suspicious behavior? We talked about that. What I have done and what I'm going to reinstitute, is I offer signups for volunteers, for people to take first aid and CPR training courses, and the church pays for it. For us, you can do that through our local fire department. They have trainers. I include that if they want, that's an OP. They can. They can choose to do that.

Unknown Speaker 15:37
If they want. They don't have to.

Speaker 1 15:40
But I give them the opportunity to learn that. I personally make sure that I'm CPR and First Aid trained. I have a couple of other volunteers who part of their volunteer jobs, they've agreed to go through that and be trained in that and that. Those are some of my coaches, people who are higher level leadership, who they've just agreed to go through that. I believe everybody, as much as it depends on them and they can, I think everybody should go through CPR and first day training. That's just me personally, but I'm gonna always offer it to them and let them sign up for that and then make sure that we can get those people into the proper classes we're gonna always be talking about keeping and maintaining a safe environment, right? We're gonna set physical boundaries with children. We're not gonna touch them in inappropriate places. We're gonna limit contact that's inappropriate. We're also gonna avoid a lot of one on one situations. Remember, we talked about this last episode. We're not gonna go into bathrooms alone with kids. Bad idea. We're going to make sure that everything that we do in our conduct when we're interacting directly with children is on the up and up. We're going to make sure we're talking to our volunteers about this. We're going to go through our protection policy with them. Remember, safety should be a continual process. It's not a one time event, right? Training on this stuff. It's not just we don't do it just one time and then we don't do it again for 510, years. It's constant. We're making sure that we're reiterating these things over and over again. We're talking about peanut allergies, we're talking about procedures with food. We're talking about pickup and drop off. We're talking about cameras and where the cameras are, and all of that stuff. We're going to make sure that our volunteers are well equipped to be able to execute their duties well, right? It can be a safe environment, that it can be an environment that protects them and it also protects the children. And we're going to make sure that safety is always a question that we're asking when we're in team meetings, when we're talking about events, when we're talking about Sunday mornings, when we're talking about weekends, that is a part of every single event. Who is your first aid person, who is the security team, who is the whatever? We're going to make sure that's a regular part. And then we're going to empower our volunteers. We're going to encourage volunteers to speak up if they notice safety concerns. Hey, you didn't have security at VBS, and you had 500 children at your VBS

Unknown Speaker 18:09
who didn't think of that. That was dumb.

Speaker 1 18:13
Hey, you know, I noticed we don't have a first aid kit on in the children's ministry wing. That's a problem. Hey, I noticed this. You should we should think about that. Here's the thing, if something feels off, it's okay to speak up and ask for support. Our goal is to protect our children. This is something that you should say frequently to your volunteers. We also need to engage families in the safety process. Families have a lot of dealings in this kind of stuff. They're always taking their kids into school. The school is is got a whole bunch of safety stuff that they do. Engage them in the process. Educate your families. Tell them, hey, this is why we do this. This is why we give you the security tags. All of our volunteers are background check. Hey, we have posted everywhere the escape plans for fire, for active shooter, for whatever we have all this stuff that we that we're doing. Here's what we're our trainings look like, if you would. You like a copy of our Child Protection Policy here? Here you go. Here's we can find on the website. We're going to communicate these safety measures continuously through newsletters, through meetings, through signs, we're going to make sure that it is well known that our area and the people that we have in it are safe.

Unknown Speaker 19:32
All right, let's recap.

Speaker 1 19:35
Let's recap. Here's what we talked about. We talked about the importance of background checks and safety training. Then we talked about the role of a children's ministry volunteer and the leader, which is you in creating and maintaining a safe environment. Here's a challenge I have for you this week. Review your current safety policies. Look at your child protection policy. Policy, do you have a Child Protection Policy? Let's start there are your background checks up to date. Do you have a background check policy? Do you have a background check system? When was the last time you held a safety training session for your volunteers? Let's ask these questions now. I want you to take this episode. I want you to share it with your team. I want you to share it with your volunteers. I want you to share it with your pastor, and then I want you to subscribe so that you never miss another episode. You can go to kid, men, leader, cast.com, to do that. Go there now, subscribe. It's totally free, and we're going to continue to learn how to run effective and safe ministries through this podcast. Let's close in prayer, Lord, thank you for the gift of children. Thank you for the opportunity to serve with them. Guide us in creating safe, loving environments where children and families can grow in your love. We pray for wisdom. We pray for protection over every child and every volunteer and every person that enters into our ministries. We love you. Thanks for loving us. Amen. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai