5 Things Every Parent Should Know About Child Safety at Church

You drop your kids off at church and assume they are safe. Most parents do. But how do you actually know? Not what the church says. What the church can prove.

Here are five things we learned the hard way that every parent should know before trusting a church with their children.

1. A Background Check Is the Bare Minimum, Not the Standard

Most churches will tell you they run background checks. But a background check only catches someone who has already been caught. It does not screen for patterns of behavior, complaints that never resulted in charges, or leaders who were quietly asked to leave a previous church.

The real question is not whether your church runs background checks. It is whether your church uses a third-party child safety compliance system that goes beyond a basic criminal records search.

Programs like these exist specifically for churches:

MinistrySafe Founded by attorneys who represented child abuse victims. 5-part safety system including training, background checks, screening interviews, policies, and monitoring.

Protect My Ministry Background screening combined with mandatory child safety training for every volunteer and staff member.

ECAP Awards accreditation to ministries that demonstrate compliance with child safety standards through independent assessment and audit.

Plan to Protect Highest standard of safeguarding and abuse prevention for churches serving the vulnerable sector.

If your church is not using a program like these, ask why not. The cost is minimal. The alternative is leaving your children's safety to good intentions.

2. Ask Who Decides Who Gets Access to Your Kids

In many churches, the senior pastor has final say over staffing and volunteer placement. That means the same person who hired someone can also decide whether complaints about that person are taken seriously.

A healthy child safety system separates these decisions. The person who approves a volunteer to work with children should not be the same person who manages that volunteer's career at the church.

Ask your church:

Who reviews and approves volunteer applications for children's ministry?
Is that process independent of the senior pastor?
Is there a written policy you can see?
Are reference checks conducted with previous churches?

A church that welcomes these questions has nothing to hide. A church that gets defensive is telling you something.

3. Find Out If Your Church Has Ever Had a Leader with a History

In 2022, an independent investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention found that denominational leaders had maintained a secret list of over 380 accused offenders while publicly resisting calls for a database to track them.¹

This is not just an SBC problem. Churches across every denomination have faced situations where a leader was quietly removed from one church and welcomed into another without the congregation being told.

Ask your church directly:

Has any staff member, pastor, or volunteer ever been asked to leave a previous church or ministry?
Has anyone in leadership ever been the subject of a complaint to a licensing board, regulatory body, or law enforcement?
How would parents find out if this were the case?

If your church cannot answer these questions, they either do not know or do not want you to know. Neither answer should be acceptable to a parent.

4. Look for a Written Child Protection Policy

A verbal promise that "we take child safety seriously" is not a policy. A policy is a written document that defines specific procedures, assigns responsibility, and creates accountability. It should cover:

Screening requirements for every adult with access to children
Two-adult rule so that no child is ever alone with a single adult
Check-in and check-out procedures so parents control who picks up their child
Mandatory reporting obligations including who is required to report and to whom
An independent reporting process that does not route complaints through the person being accused

MinistrySafe and similar programs provide template policies that churches can customize. If your church does not have a written policy, that is a red flag. If they have one but will not share it with parents, that is a bigger one.

5. Trust Your Gut

You know your children. If your child tells you something felt wrong about an interaction with a church leader, take it seriously. Do not let the church's reputation or your own desire for community override what your child is telling you.

If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one. It takes the silence of that village to allow the abusive atmosphere to continue.

Rachael Denhollander, attorney and child abuse advocate

Do not wait for certainty. If something feels off, ask questions. If the answers are evasive, protect your children first and sort out the rest later.

What We Are Asking For

We are not asking churches to be perfect. We are asking them to be transparent. A church that has implemented a third-party child safety compliance program, published a written child protection policy, and built an independent reporting process is a church that has put its children ahead of its reputation.

That is the minimum. Your children deserve at least that much.

¹ Guidepost Solutions, "Report of the Independent Investigation: The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee's Response to Sexual Abuse Allegations," May 2022.