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... 

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.

A claim of negligence against a church or ministry can have very serious consequences. There are many possible types of legal claims: torts, breach of contract, employment claims, intellectual property and so forth.  Because of the potential high value of the claims, and because it is a common type of lawsuit that can take many forms, this post reviews the tort of negligence resulting in a personal injury, with the church or ministry as a defendant.  While individual defendants are usually named, some sort of shared liability with the organization is likely because it has greater financial resources.

A Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, Rev. Jiang, was accused of sexually abusing a child. He denied having done it. The criminal case against Rev. Jiang was voluntarily dismissed by the prosecutor.

Failing in the child protection arena has two possible worst-case outcomes for organizations. You need to get these policies right the first time. Organizations need to work on their child protection policies. 

The State of Minnesota filed criminal charges against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The charge was six counts of a gross misdemeanor criminal complaint, for putting children at risk in various ways. What lessons should organizations gather from this criminal complaint?

Failures around child protection policies are heartbreaking on a personal and organizational level because children get hurt.