UNITED STATES
View from the Heights
We’ve all heard the jokes, maybe laughed at them, or maybe even told a few. We’ve watched the monologues on the late-night comedy shows. We scoff and shake our heads at Penn State, or at the various Catholic sex scandals that run across the CNN ticker. We often look at them haughtily and say, “Well I’m glad MY church isn’t that way!”
Are you sure about that?
At a Nominating Team meeting last week (yes, I’m stubbornly sticking to “team” instead of “committee”), a couple of members mentioned that they heard of churches requiring background checks for volunteers. One said, “We’d never do that, would we?”
I looked at them and said, “We already are.”
They were stunned, much as I was when I first heard of this concept some years ago. A children’s minister at a former church suggested in staff meeting that we should perform background checks on both staff and volunteers. I couldn’t imagine insulting our membership in such a way.
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