CHURCH SAFETY
God intends for the church and its ministries to be a safe place for all to encounter God and grow into lives of service and fulfillment.
Based on information provided by PC(USA)’s Creating Safe Ministries, this webpage is designed to help churches:
- create policies
- provide awareness of prevention practices
- report misconduct
- rebuild a broken trust when sexual misconduct occurs
Emergency Plan
This information includes suggestions to create emergency plans for potential acts of violence on church property. Other potential emergencies can arise from acts of God (hurricanes, snow storms), accidents (electrical fire, flooding), and acts of man (violence, infectious disease). While creating a plan can seem overwhelming, breaking down an emergency plan by potential emergency and discussing possible responses can make the task less onerous.
Make a Report of Abuse or Misconduct
This information provides guidance for making report or responding to a report of abuse or misconduct.
Prevention
The Book of Order provides that all councils of the PCUSA should have sexual abuse policies and child and youth protection policies (G-3.0106).
This is information for creating policies, conducting background and reference checks, providing training and awareness, and implementing prevention measures.
Creating Policy
If you are in the process of creating a new sexual misconduct policy or if you are updating your current policy, this information will be helpful to you.
Definitions
Here are definitions provided by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Book of Order and other sources that are found in “Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Sexual Misconduct Policy and Its Procedures” (adopted by the 219th General Assembly (2010), updated October 2013).
Building Trust
Healing and restoring trust take lots of hard work. It takes a community of support—parents, partners, children, church leaders, siblings and congregations.
Additional Resources
Here is additional help for raising awareness, rebuilding trust, and creating policies. Also provided are lists liturgical material and PC(USA) statements, resolutions and reports.
