This session explores how churches can cultivate resilience and care by building safety and security structures that protect the vulnerable and support ministry health. Through a discipleship-first lens, leaders will learn how readiness and response can serve as tangible expressions of faithfulness, helping ministries steward people, purpose, and trust so that the Gospel continues to go out undisturbed.

Jesus always showed great love, mercy, & compassion for the broken, vulnerable, and wounded of this world. He invited all those who were weary and had heavy burdens to find rest for the souls in Him. Today, the church and all followers of Jesus have the same undeniable calling to reflect Christ’s heart and offer help, hope, and healing for survivors and their families of sexual abuse. This session will address how churches can respond with great care, compassion, and resources to provide a place where survivors are believed, supported, and safe—and where the love of Christ can restore what sin and silence have broken.

Responding to reports and allegations of abuse can be both an urgent and complex crisis for ministry leaders. Whether you are responding to an internal allegation or reporting abuse from outside your ministry, what you do next can have lasting effects on victims, employees & volunteers, on your congregation, as well as your own career and witness before a watching world. How to manage crisis response for churches and Christ-centered ministries is something worth considering beforehand. How and when should you report? How do you care for individuals impacted by abuse? How should you form and lead a crisis response team and who should that include? When and how should we notify parents, members, our congregation or other stakeholders? When do we need an attorney and how can my insurance company assist? This workshop is for any ministry leader including administrators, pastors, directors, board members, and trustees.

Child safety and abuse prevention are issues of Great Commission significance. If our goal is to make disciples, we must also be good stewards of the precious resources that God has entrusted to us, especially vulnerable image-bearers. Unfortunately, abuse is a problem in our culture from which the church is not exempt. The good news is that there are steps that ministry leaders can take to protect children under their care. 

In this session, we will cover the basics of creating a child protection program at your church including appropriate screening measures, children’s worker training, and response plans. Creating a child protection program can feel like a daunting task, but ministry leaders should leave this session with resources and simple, actionable steps to get started.

Child and youth safety is not optional—it is a calling. This course gives you the tools and confidence to start strong or strengthen what you already have. Whether you feel fully called, or simply willing, this work protects the vulnerable, builds trust, and reflects the heart of Jesus.

Join us for this training to:

• Understand the role of a Child Safety Coordinator and why it matters to the mission of the Church
• Identify the core responsibilities and practical steps to launch or strengthen that role at their church or organization.
• Gain tools and resources to start or refine a Child Protection Plan in their own ministry.
• Leave encouraged to do this work in God’s strength, not their own.

Having a plan for how your organization would respond to a discovery of abuse is invaluable. Whether the abuse were to be perpetrated by someone within your organization or someone without, how you respond will impact the victim’s recovery, perpetrator’s sentence, and your organization’s reputation.

We don’t like to think about the fact that one of our own could be abused in our care or that one of our own could be an abuser. But that is precisely why it is so vital to create and maintain an abuse response plan while heads are clear, and hearts are not burdened by the sorrow that comes when abuse is uncovered.

Although we do everything in our power to protect kids and prevent abuse, on this side of heaven it still happens. You don’t want to be caught on your heels when faced with such a heavy, heartbreaking situation.

Let us come alongside you to give guidance on how to build a response plan that works for you and your specific ministry context.

In abuse response, we are right to prioritize the needs of victims. But churches must also be intentional in caring for offenders. How can we minister to offenders in a way that balances accountability, necessary consequences, and safety concerns with genuine love, aiming at a restoration of their dignity as God’s image-bearers? How do we apply the gospel to those who’ve diminished their own humanity by hurting others? And what practical considerations must we always keep before us? In this talk, we’ll explore these themes together, providing real help to those caring for offenders.