Resources & Blogs

A policy not followed is worse than no policy at all. A policy tells the world what you believe is a reasonable standard of care. If you then don't follow it, you're condemned out of your own mouth.

Recent Court Cases Go Both Ways. Five recent decisions on the HHS mandate involve Christian for-profit companies. Each of these companies objected to providing contraceptives and sterilization, abortifacients, or both on religious grounds, and filed a lawsuit to avoid having to do so. Three decisions granted a preliminary injunction to plaintiffs so they would not have to provide the contraceptive coverage during the case. Two decisions went against the companies, one dismissing its claim, and one denying the preliminary injunction.

Theresa, I got stuck in a problematic place in my leadership a number of years ago. I was concerned about staff behavior that was counter to maintaining good and complementary relationships. I wanted a policy that I could use ...

Brent, you are right perception makes a huge difference. You’ve brought up the idea of ritualizing this “consent” as part of the milestones of moving into missionary service. That is...

Theresa – Clearly articulating the vision throughout the life of the missionary, and “ritualizing” it into the developmental milestones (such as a local church dedication service) creates an awareness in all the parts (the church, supporters, family, mission) of the multiple possible futures of this mission life...

Human resources and crisis management are often seen as necessary but dull policy stuff that must be taken care of, but are irrelevant to the mission. I disagree — I see healthy psychological and legal services as building up the body of Christ. Member care and crisis management should be embraced as a component of Christian community and the love that marks Christians...

This post introduces the efforts of two seemingly quite different people to come together and help missions sort out the many issues involved in caring for people and the legal environment.

Preventing child abuse, particularly child sexual abuse, should be a top concern for churches and ministries, given the tragic effects on children and the ethical and moral responsibility of an organization that works with children to care for those children. The most important reason to address these issues is that abuse can wreck children’s lives and cause effects going on into adulthood. Children, spouses, and families of victims also suffer. In addition, the impact of the child sexual abuse scandal on Catholic and other churches shows that an organization’s life can be nasty, brutish and short when it is hit by major litigation.