These days it can feel as though there are few places to turn where you do not encounter the impacts of trauma in some form. Whether you are marking the 17th anniversary of 9/11 today or the one-year anniversaries of hurricanes Irma, Harvey, and Maria, or you are preparing for the incoming storms of Florence or Olivia, you are in the thick of your own crises related to flooding, violence, fire, substance abuse, depression, anxiety, death, or terminal illness – it can be hard not to feel overwhelmed and even hopeless amid the chaos of heartache. 

Trauma, of course, is not new. Though it may be decades or even centuries since events like the ones we face today have occurred, the sustainable practices of resiliency remain the same across time and demographics. Here are some of the ways leading field experts, journalists, and scholars are naming them today: 

Pediatrician and leading Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) scholar, Dr. Nadine Burke-Harris on the prescription plan for countering adversity: 

• Consistent sleep
• Regular exercise
• Good nutrition
• Practicing mindfulness
• Maintaining mental health
• Fostering caring relationships

Collective traumatologist, Dr. Jack Saul, on the four themes most typical of a functional community resilience and recovery approach: 

• Focus on building community and enhancing social connectedness among the concentric circles of impacted persons
• Commitment to collectively telling the story of the community's experience and response
• Practicing re-establishing the rhythms and routines of life and engaging in collective healing rituals
• Arriving together at a positive vision of the future with a renewed sense of hope

Pastoral theologian, Dr. John Swinton, on the relational and spiritual practices for formation through and beyond loss: 

• Listening to Silence
• Lament
• Forgiveness
• Thoughtfulness
• Hospitality

These practices are not merely about being "good" or "healthy." They are proven to be the skills and practices that sustain individuals, families, and groups through widely ranging forms of loss. To learn more about how you or your organization can practice skills for resiliency, browse ICTG's downloadable guides, training materials, or contact us to learn more. 

I am blessed to live in a small coastal town just outside Santa Barbara. Weekly I pick up the little newspaper and scan to keep up with the latest news in the community. With all the recent events of fires, potential debris flows, and evacuations there has been no lack of information to be shared.

Somewhere in the middle of the paper, I encountered the headline “Childhood Adversity: A Heart Attack in the Making.” As a man now in my late 50’s, I am now a little more attuned to illnesses I naively thought only associated with older people. The words “heart attack” carry a little more weight and impact than in years past.

Couple this with a life-long career of working with children and youth and quickly this article became a compelling piece. The environment of one’s childhood and adolescence brings quality or challenge to one’s health for years to come.

In this article Maria Chesley, who is the director of the Carpinteria Children’s project in California points to the experience of her dad suffering a heart attack at the age of 39. As she connected stories of the family system suddenly this event was not such a surprise.

Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains that "the repeated stress of abuse, neglect, and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain.” (source).  Her study showed that most people have at least one Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) and twelve percent of the population now has an ACE score of four. With this score one’s risk of heart disease and cancer is doubled, the likelihood of becoming an alcoholic is increased by 700 percent and the risk of attempted suicide by 1200 percent!

Ms. Chesley adds, “Children who experience significant adversity but have a loving adult who serves as a buffer are less likely to develop an exaggerated stress response and have their future health impacted.”

Those who are younger can easily feel indestructible. There is so much of life ahead; their bones are healthy, they are physically flexible and more. Whatever beating their bodies or spirit take seems to have no relevance to the future, until they get there.

Childhood adversity does indeed have an impact on the health and well-being of an adult. Where families are broken, leaders in the church, schools, and community can fill in many of the gaps. It is no small task, but it must be a priority. Given the cultural landscape of heightened fear, wars and loss the percentage of ACE scores, it seems, will only increase.

We can be the loving adult who may not only offer a child needed safety but also help our health, through giving, in the process.

Doug Ranck is Associate Pastor of Youth, Children and Families at Free Methodist Church of Santa Barbara, CA.  With three decades of youth ministry experience, he serves as ICTG Program Director for Youth Ministry, as well as a leading consultant, trainer and speaker with Ministry Architects, the Southern California Conference, and, nationally, with the Free Methodist Church. He has written numerous articles for youth ministry magazines and websites, and published the Creative Bible Lessons Series: Job (Zondervan, 2008). Doug is happily married to Nancy, proud father of Kelly, Landon and Elise, and never gets tired of looking at the Pacific ocean every day. 

View all of Doug's blogs here>

I serve in a congregation that takes very seriously the protection of children. Like so many other churches, children safety must be a priority. At Pine Shores we are committed to best practices when it comes to the safety of our children.  We engage in creating an environment where children participate in building community, experiencing love with excitement, joy and curiosity.  I know we can’t assure that abuse won’t ever happen here or doesn’t occur in our communities, but we are steadfast in educating ourselves and then providing structures that will prevent abuse and protect our children.  Incorporating best practices into a policy is imperative and will decrease the possibility of abuse.  

Sometime around May, just before we enter into our summer camp program, we engage in our annual review of our child protection policy. After receiving The Child Safeguarding Policy for Churches and Ministries, we reviewed our policy again and we are now better equipped and more informed. This resource covers vital topics including the warning signs of abuse, how to respond to abuse allegations, care for victims, and the legal implications. It positions us to strengthen some of our own protection policies, and helps us to have a much more thorough and intentional review process. We compared our policies with the information in The Child Safeguarding Policy for Churches and Ministries and discovered that our policies are up-to-date. We did find however, weaknesses particularly in warning signals of abuse and how children disclose. These are significant learnings for us and going forward we will incorporate this information into our yearly training unit. 

Best practices empower, and as a pastor whose responsibility is to pay attention to ministry and mission, I am grateful for this resource. Going through an intentional evaluation process of our protection policies has equipped us to create an environment here at Pine Shores where children feel safe, where they can flourish in their relationships, and where they can experience God’s love. That’s who we want to be.

The Child Safeguarding Policy for Churches and Ministries is an invaluable resource for us and I know that it also will be for those who are seeking to educate themselves about child abuse and how best to protect children in their care.  Well written, step by step, and a highly informative resource. GRACE has done great work for the local congregation.

Rev. Dr. Bruce Wismer, co-author of Recovering from Un-Natural Disasters: A Guide for Pastors and Congregations after Violence and Trauma, co-pastor of Pine Shores Presbyterian Church, and member of the National Response Team for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, serves as the Board Chair for ICTG. 

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.

---------
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.

As a kid, I experienced my childhood home church as an inspiring and fun community full of adults who were passionate about sharing their faith in Jesus Christ with the children and youth of the congregation. I have fond memories of worship services, festive events, and tagging along with my parents to youth group gatherings. While ordinary church challenges may have occurred, as a child I was oblivious to them. Perhaps that's why, as a high school student, I found it so disheartening to watch the church grieve and mourn after it was discovered an associate pastor had abused adolescents. He was defrocked and imprisoned. And the church – physically, emotionally, and spiritually – became a different place. Like any abuse experience, people struggled to make sense of what had happened. Church leaders had to do the hard work of rebuilding trust and finding its vibrancy again.

I did not realize until many years later how formative this experience was for me, personally. Because of it, I went to college with many questions. Why do Christians seem to wait so long to get counseling? Why is it so hard for church leaders, like the associate pastor, to find the resources they need to heal long before they commit acts of abuse and spread the damage? Who helps ordained and lay leaders in the church who must lead a congregation through the aftermath of abuse? How does a church ensure abuse does not happen? 

In the years following, the more I studied and began to practice pastoral therapy and congregational care, I have been grateful to discover colleagues along the way who have been wrestling with similar questions. Colleagues like Boz Tchividjian. 

Most recently, Boz and his colleagues at GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in Christian Environments), produced a practical guide for crafting an effective children's ministry policy in your church. At ICTG, we cannot emphasize the critical need for this guide enough. A central tenet to the mission of ICTG, we believe congregations should be frontline catalysts for healing and restoration in communities. This guide helps congregations be the vibrant leaders in individual, family, and community health they are called to be.

The Child Safeguarding Policy Guide helps ordained and lay leaders provide reliably safe environments for children and youth, partner more effectively with school officials, law enforcement agents, social workers, and mental health professionals to counter the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and foster whole community care. In this guide you receive thorough research to understand how wide spread experiences of abuse are, including in your community. Even more helpful, you receive step-by-step instructions for your staff or volunteer team to carefully create a sound policy for children in your congregation and community to experience safety, nurture, and thriving. If you don't already have a policy in place, or you need to assess the one you have, we recommend getting this guide today.  

Rev. Dr. Kate Wiebe serves as the Executive Director of ICTG. With nearly twenty years experience as a pastoral therapist and congregational care consultant, Kate is passionate about helping congregations expand their capacities to be catalysts for healing and thriving. Kate lives with her family in Santa Barbara, CA. You can find follow her personal blog here.