Praying or Preying? What will you be remembered for?

My title comes from reading an article in the Houston Chronicle titled "Preying on Teens". It is subtitled, "More than 100 southern Baptist youth pastors convicted or charged in sex crimes."

In the article, I was introduced to Chad who was hired and ordained to be a youth pastor. Chad had a good message for his youth group about abstinence, but he also preyed on some of the girls under his leadership which made abstinence impossible. Not surprisingly, Chad was fired by the church - though perhaps not for this.

What is surprising is that these church leaders who fired Chad didn't say anything to the next church who hired Chad to be their youth leader. You'll never guess what happened next.

Actually, you probably will.

I encourage you to read the article. It can be a little confronting, but such is the reality of our world.

Read it and learn two things.

This is why screening is important. 

When someone wants to be a leader with PYV (Presbyterian Youth Victoria) we ask them for some referees that we can talk to, and we ask which church they previously belonged to. In talking to referees we are able to learn about the character of the person who is applying for a leadership role. This is important. I might only know this person as an acquaintance. Maybe we've met at a camp or two and I have an impression that they are interested, and growing in godliness.

When I call their pastor, or youth worker, or an AFES leader, I get to talk to someone who works with them much more consistently. If those people have some concerns, then they will carry more weight than my initial impression. And that is as it should be.

We ask about a previous church so we can call someone from that church to determine if there were any circumstances that are important for us to be aware of. In Chad's case, if the second church had called the first church, and the first church had been honest, at least one girl would not have been abused. And if we can protect that one girl, we will.

In Victoria, we are required to have a screening program in place for anyone involved in ministry to youth or children. We will take that seriously.

What not to do if you're attracted to someone in your youth group?

I'd like to think that any youth leader would know how to answer this, but apparently not. And we can't say, "Well, they're just immature adults in a sexualised society" as though that makes it all ok. This article refers to Chad, who was 30 when he was doing this, and Gary, who was nearly 40 when he started cultivating his victim. She was 13.

There are reasons we tell youth leaders not to have one to one phone or messenger conversations with teenagers. There are reasons we tell youth leaders not to be alone in a room with a teenager.

Ensure your relationship to each of the young people under your leadership is above board.

You will destroy your reputation, the lives of the people involved, their families, and possibly the church community if you mess this up.

We are in a time now where such sins will not be covered up, where church leaders cannot cover it up without facing significant consequences themselves, and this is absolutely as it should be. May we never return to times when such cover-ups happened.


Another thing to note:

Are teenagers safe to disclose abuse in your church?

Do teenagers in your church community know that they can talk to someone if they are asked to do something they're not comfortable with? Or if they think their leaders are acting in ways they shouldn't?

You will probably say to me, "Of course. We always let them know they can talk to us if they have any concerns."

That's great. But I'd challenge you to be specific. Talk about sexting. Use the right terminology (you might need to find out what the current terms are). And if parents tell you they don't want their young teenagers dealing with this, get them to read this article. You see, if the 13 year old girl knew that what her youth pastor was doing was wrong, maybe she wouldn't have waited until she was 16 before she did raise the issue.


Friends, let's do all we can to help people grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And let's do all we can to keep these people safe.



Photo Credits:
Phone - Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
Couple - Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash

A book you should read - but probably won't.

Some books are helpful and pleasant to read. Some books are unhelpful yet enjoyable. And some books are helpful yet are also incredibly unpleasant. This book fits the final category. But still, I urge you to read this, or at least a few chapters from it.

Anna Salter writes with objectivity. She is well aware of the actions of predators etc as she has been working with victims of sexual abuse as well as working with offenders. Through the book we get glimpses of the kind of research being done in this field, and sadly we also get a glimpse of the extent of damage done by these offenders.

Protecting our children.

In Australia, events over the last decade have shown how badly we have done in protecting children. Whether it's a Stolen Generation, abuse in institutions, or the terrible abuse of children in some churches, we can't help but see that too many people were damaged as children. We who have a position in those institutions should want to protect children.

But how do we do that when the practices of the past have been manipulated by offenders? We learn. We accept that what we know isn't enough, and we look into dark places to see how we can protect children from that darkness. Salter helps us to do this.


My role in the Presbyterian Church with Presbyterian Youth Victoria and with the Safe Church Committee means I don't have the luxury of not thinking about this issue. If anything bad happens, I wear some responsibility (well, I feel like I do anyway). If something does happen, our reputation will be damaged - and rightly so. But far worse than this, someone will be damaged, and I'm not prepared to sit idly by and wait for that to happen if I can do something to stop it.

But there are some chapters you MUST READ!

I mentioned earlier that not all chapters need to be read. Salter even begins one chapter saying "you

can skip this chapter and the rest of the book will still make sense. To be honest, you'll like the world more if you don't read it." (She was right!)

You must read these four chapters though.

 

Chapter 1 - The Problem

The problem is much bigger than you imagine. What stood out for me here is learning that abusers are much more active than I knew. To explain that better, here is a quote: 

In all the interviews I have done, I cannot remember one offender who did not admit privately to more victims than for those whom he had been caught. (p13)

Chapter 2 - Deception
Chapter 3 - Techniques of Deception

These two chapters are vital reading. We are easily deceived. No doubt, some people are more able to pick up the deceit than others are, but as one molester, himself a minister, said:

I considered church people easy to fool . . . they have a trust that comes from being Christians . . . They tend to be better folks all around. And they seem to want to believe in the good that exists in all people. . . . I think they want to believe in people. And because of that, you can easily convince, with or without convincing words. (p28,29)

I'll add this comment regarding techniques of deception. As a church attendee, I spend maybe two hours a week with everyone when we are gathered together. With most of those people, I have nothing more than a short conversation, yet I think well of these people. Based on what? A friendly smile? A firm handshake? We assume people are good during the week, but it's pretty easy to make that assumption on the basis of their public behaviour. We might be tragically wrong.

Chapter 10 - Detecting Deception

This is the most important chapter in the book. Let me say that again:

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT CHAPTER IN THE BOOK.

Why do I say this? In these pages we learn some skills that make us aware that things may not be as they seem. I learn about the danger of a bias I have within me, and I learn about the evasion used by these liars.

On the topic of bias, Salter comments

People are easier to fool if they have a stake in believing the liar. Therapists, for example, who believe that they have successfully treated an offender will be loath to believe that he has gone astray. To face that means that their treatment was a failure and their judgement of the offender flawed. This is true of all of us. We are all biased toward believing what we want to be true. (p203)

This is relevant for our churches, for Christians generally, and for Christian leaders especially. We want to believe that 'he is truly repentant' and that 'he would never do that again'. We have our own bias that can get in the way of us seeing clearly what is before us.

On the topic of evasion, page 217 includes nine ways that liars answer questions without actually answering the question. In other words, they evade the question rather than outright deny. Here they are:

1. Unfinished Business: "That's about all". "That's pretty much it."
2. Answering the question with a question: "Why would I do something like that?"
3. Maintenance of Dignity: "Don't be ridiculous."
4. Commenting on the question: "That's a hard question."
5. Projection: "Someone would have to be sick to do that."
6. Denial of evidence: "You have no proof."
7. Accusation: "Are you accusing me?"
8. Qualifiers: "I can't say."; "I could say . . ."; "I would say . . ."
9. Answers: "My answer is . . ."; "The answer is . . ."

Finally

There is a lot in this book that leaves me uncomfortable, I can't deny that. I want to believe that nice people are truly nice people. I want to believe that the world isn't such a bad place. But surely if I accept the doctrine of total depravity to be true, then it shouldn't surprise me at all that there is such wickedness in the world.

So, I continue in my life as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I will do what I can to ensure children are safe from the predators that walk in my community. And, knowing that these sharks circle around looking for the weakest child, I will seek to bring that child into a community of others where he / she will not only feel safe, but will be safe.

This book has been helpful. You probably won't read it, but I think that you should.

The protective value of friends

Today I've been listening to a podcast from Ultimate Youth Worker on the topic of "Youth Drug & Alcohol" with Dr Kat Daley. I'd encourage you to listen to it, but not necessarily because you will learn stuff to help you with youth dealing with drug and alcohol issues. Something else stood out for me.

Dr Daley is a researcher, and in this podcast she talks about some of the differences that came out when talking with males and females. She was not looking for these differences. In fact, when she was doing some earlier research looking for those differences she came to the conclusion that there weren't any - apart from pregnancies.

In this discussion though, her comments are confronting. She speaks of a link between substance abuse and sexual abuse, with sexual abuse leading to substance abuse often with self-harming in between. Confronting. Perhaps not surprising, but it is something that is worth thinking about.

Anyway, the comment that stood out for me was the conversations that happened with the girls right at the beginning of the interview. She described it as 'small talk', the kind of questions that adolescent girls would normally talk about with each other. But these girls were asking these questions to Dr Daley because they don't have a group of female friends around them.

Think about this for a moment. These girls are asking these questions to Dr Daley because they don't have a group of friends around them. Is it likely that they are in this situation because they don't or didn't have a group of friends around them that would help to keep them from ending up here?

In my role as a youth director, I have learned that one of the best ways to protect people from being abused is to ensure they are fully involved in the group. Our camp and group leaders work to make this happen and if we see someone sitting on their own, we will talk with them so they know they are part of the group.

Why not invite people join your game?

But we're adults. A better way is for teenagers to keep an eye out for those teens who are sitting on their own and include them in the group. And I mean fully include them. There are a number of good reasons to do this, and one of them is that this helps to protect people from a dismal future.

How can you help the teenagers in your group to be a better help to each other?