Years ago and miles away, I once served a large church that held an annual Vacation Bible School (VBS). Because it was free for the community, the draw for this particular VBS was huge: there were hundreds of registered children, most from outside the regular worshiping population. It was an opportunity to create new relationships and minister to kids who wouldn’t normally hear about the love of God.
 
One particular year, the church staff was alerted to an unusual conversation a volunteer had with a young child during the Bible rotation. The lesson on the creation story had just ended, and the volunteers were having small group discussions with their kids. When asked, “How do you think God felt when Adam and Eve disobeyed,” one child responded, “Mad, like how my mom gets mad when she…” And the child trailed off. The volunteer raised an issue with the church’s minister, and the minister took action from there to investigate the situation.
 
Among many things this church did well, one of their particular strengths was their child protection policy. A clearly articulated set of policies on the safety of children at the church, the child protection policy had been authorized by their church’s board, utilized consistently across all program areas, and – crucially – it had been communicated to every volunteer, at every training meeting, every time.
 
That’s why this particular volunteer knew that the young child’s statement amounted to a red flag: she had been trained. That’s why the minister in charge escalated the situation to protect the safety of the child in question: he had been trained. And that’s why the child’s name doesn’t appear in this post, why some of the details of this story have been changed, and why I am writing about it now: I, too, have been trained.
 
The necessity of training like this is at the core of the new resource from GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment): The Child Safeguarding Policy Guide for Churches and Ministries. This book provides an in-depth, practical guide to creating a Child Protection Policy, covering both the legal and theological ramifications as well as providing specific tools that assist in the Policy’s creation.
 
As children’s ministers, we believe our calling is of great importance. We know that children are sacred, that there is a spark of the divine within them from which we are all commanded to learn. No children’s minister ever thinks child abuse will be an issue their ministry has to address. And yet, how many of our churches operate without a codified Child Protection Policy in place? We are so busy crafting programs, writing curricula, and recruiting volunteers that we assume our ministries are safe, that our children are protected.
 
The reality is that we cannot protect every child every minute of every day. The kids who walk through our doors have their own lives, their own situations. If we are to be congregations where children are welcomed and loved for who they are, then the very least we can do is ensure that our congregations are safe and secure places for those kids.
 
That what makes The Child Safeguarding Policy Guide such an important resource. It acknowledges the realities of day-to-day ministry while still lifting up the importance of creating and implementing a child protection policy. It moves from defining what abuse is and what effective protective practices are to the realities of reporting abuse and walking with survivors through the trauma.
 
What makes this resource stand out are the “policy worksheets” provided at the end of every chapter. We’re children’s ministers, not lawyers, and while we might acknowledge the importance of a child protection policy, the particularities of crafting such a policy can seem daunting. The “policy worksheets” in The Child Safeguarding Policy Guide help define exactly what your congregation needs from a policy. It points to state resources and definitions, it asks pointed questions about your theological and ethical commitments, and by the end, you have language that could be part of an effective policy.
 
A child protection policy is not about restricting what we as ministers can do in our programs. Instead, a policy frees us to recruit and train volunteers, engage with families, and create relationships with children in the context of a safe and secure environment. Our ministry is made better when we have a child protection policy in place.
 
When our kids are protected, we are fulfilling our calls as children’s ministers. These kids belong to God, and it is our duty to take care of them as a part of the creation that God calls “good.” Resources like The Child Safeguarding Policy Guide help us to fulfill that call, to give every child a place where they can go and feel safe, secure, and loved.

This is a tough one. It’s tough because of the subject matter, and it’s tough because of the fear and anxiety we have around even broaching the subject.

But we have to talk about it. According to research by the CDC, around 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be a victim of physical or sexual abuse by the time they are 18 years old.[1] Even in very small youth ministries, we need to acknowledge the truth that it is not a question of how we would work with victims of abuse, but how we are running our ministries in a way that is considerate of the fact that we almost inevitably already do, whether we know it or not.

Many of us feel anxious about working with child abuse victims not out of selfishness, or lack of compassion, but from a place of feeling deeply inadequate. We worry that we don’t have the expertise or the training or the words to provide the deep healing needed for child survivors of abuse. And we’re right. We don’t. Children who have been through the trauma of abuse, particularly at the hands of a trusted adult, have psychological, social, and emotional needs that no youth worker can be expected to meet.

We know we cannot save teenagers from the pain and hurt of abuse. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know we cannot save teenagers from anything.

So what do we do? How do we live into the ministries that we were called to knowing that there are wounds we can’t bandage, and gaps we can’t fill?

I wrestled with this question over the course of a year spent working with International Justice Mission in Thailand, doing aftercare for child victims of sexual assault. Even now as a youth worker back in the US, this question still rattles around in my head. I remember traveling out to child victims’ houses when I was living in Thailand and feeling so anxious. What do I say? How do I talk to these kids? How do I make sure not to make it worse? And shelter after shelter, village after village, dozens of kids as young as four and as old as fifteen all taught me the same basic truth, and the most important insight I can give to youth workers about kids who are victims of abuse: they are still kids.

People are not defined by the worst thing that ever happened to them, and one of the greatest gifts you can give someone is helping them see that. Whether you are aware of specific victimization, or if you just assume that it must be present somewhere because of the size of your group, the response is the same – recognizing and celebrating the divine spark, the imago Dei, that still shines in your youth, even when they are blind to it.

If you’re unsure of where to start, or feel overwhelmed, try starting with a few practical steps:

1) Don’t treat abuse victims like they’re damaged. They already feel different and vulnerable; treating them like they’re damaged won’t help.

2) Be a non-anxious presence. If a child does chose to invite you into that part of their story, stay calm, and stay present.

3) Listen for the silence. Be aware of changes in behavior, of potential triggers, and that a child is unlikely to verbalize to you why something is affecting them.

4) Don’t fix it. If you notice those changes or those triggers, check in with the youth, but don’t try to rescue them in the moment.

5) Remember that you don’t own this story. If you have been privileged enough to be let into this story, honor the risk a youth has taken on you and let them retain ownership of what this story means to them and how often it comes up.  
It can be tempting with abuse victims to think of them as only abuse victims, and being sensitive to the specific triggers and traumas of your youth is crucial. But the more you see their victimization as their identity, the more they may see it as their identity. Being honest and brave in the face of abuse is crucially important in the healing process, but you can’t stay there. To move through healing, youth have got to realize that this is a part of their story, but not the only part, and not the most important part.

Youth workers can be a crucial part of the healing process. We are not social workers or therapists who are there to specifically address this one issue. We are game-leaders and song-singers, we come to youth not with formal evaluations and professional detachment, but roller skates, and Sonic, and an unbridled enthusiasm for holistically knowing these youth exactly as they are and loving them for all of it.

So no, you may not know the neurobiology of trauma that has shifted the brain chemistry of your youth – but you know that they are nervous about their game next weekend. You know that they were so excited when they made first chair. You know that they hate dodgeball, but have a mean backhand in Ping-Pong and can eat seven pieces of pizza in one sitting. You know that they have questions about why God would allow bad things to happen, but when they spend time in nature, looking at tall trees and small butterflies, that they know God is real and good.

And all of those things are just as true and just as real and just as important to who they are as any hurt caused them by the actions of a broken person in a broken world. Our job as youth workers is not to try to fix the pain inflicted on to the youth in our care, it is to acknowledge Jesus’s presence in and among it, hurting in their grief and celebrating in their joy, knowing that who they are in God’s eyes, their divine spark, is no less bright because it has seen darkness, and believing these words in the Gospel of John for our youth, and helping them believe it for themselves:

The divine spark in youth is inextinguishable, so may we be magnifying glasses for the light that, despite all the darkness, still shines within them.

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Footnote:
[1] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2005). Adverse Childhood Experiences Study: Data and Statistics. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
 

Disclaimer:
My opinions expressed are those of someone who is not a professional mental health provider. My opinions are my own and I do not speak for the FUMC Fort Worth Youth Ministries, FUMC Fort Worth, the United Methodist Church, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, or the Center for Youth Ministry Training.

* A version of this post was first shared on the Youth Specialties website.