Building Safe Churches
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Ben Kreps:
Hey everyone, and welcome to the Mark Prater podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our executive director. Those who have been following along the podcast for the last couple of years might recognize the guy sitting beside me: Kyle Huber, Senior Pastor of Greentree Church near Ocean City, New Jersey. Once again, the Huber’s have opened up their home to my family as they do for a number of Sovereign Grace pastors, to provide a free place to have a wonderful beach vacation. Last time Kyle was on he was talking about his work in Belarus, but this time we have him on to talk about a very different topic in a vital way that he serves. Back in 2019 a new committee was started at our Council of Elders meeting before the Pastors Conference. This committee was designed and intended to help strengthen our churches in a very important way. Talk to us about that.
Mark Prater:
Yeah. That committee really was formed because, for a number of years we have been taking steps to just build safe churches. And we want to do that because we love and we care for and we shepherd the people that are members of Sovereign Grace Churches and those that visit our churches. And so, it was actually before 2019, maybe a year before that or maybe two years before that, there was a committee comprised of leadership team members as well as pastors in Sovereign Grace, who were just looking to take more steps, again, to build safe churches. And the result of all of that is we proposed, and the Council of Elders, I think, unanimously approved, as I remember the vote, a response committee for sexual misconduct. And we didn't use the term sexual abuse.
We used the term sexual misconduct, because we were looking for a broader term that obviously encompasses accusations of sexual abuse or actual sexual abuse that does occur, but also includes misconduct in the workplace, of a broad term. So that's why we call it the Response Committee for Sexual Misconduct. And Kyle Huber is here with us. It's good to see you, Kyle. Thanks for having the Kreps in your home. Kyle's here because he has served on this committee since its inception. And so Kyle, tell us a little bit about the purpose of this committee and then also speak a little bit about how the members of this committee have been trained and actually receive ongoing training to fulfill your task to serve our churches.
Kyle Huber:
Thank you, Mark. It's been a joy really to have the opportunity to talk about this committee because we cherish the responsibility we have and the opportunity to serve our churches. The purpose of the Response Committee for Sexual Misconduct is first of all, that we're ensuring that all of our churches understand what reporting is required. That every Sovereign Grace pastor is a mandatory reporter, and that reporting is not held off for when you think you see a picture fully and clearly, and you know what has happened. Reporting begins with any sense or suspicion that there may be sexual misconduct taking place. So helping pastors have the confidence to move forward quickly and directly. We are helping churches understand how best to protect themselves and their congregations, both in the Sunday gathering and in any form of church ministry.
We're also helping to make sure that under the BCO, that proper due process is taking place, if ever there is an accusation that may come within the life of a church. And finally, providing resources to churches to help them think through how are they equipping their congregation? How are they thinking through, what are areas of vulnerability in church life? How are they training their leaders, their volunteers? So, it's a broad range of engagement on this issue in the life of the local church. As you mentioned, we work very closely with Ministry Safe based out of Fort Worth, who in our investigation just simply is the organization that has the best training available in this field. And we've done a bit of investigation on that. We've gone through all of their training that they provide; every form of video training, of resources that they provide, as well as we're meeting with the directors of Ministry Safe throughout the year, bringing our questions that come up, how do we best think through different areas? We're hearing from them what they're seeing nationally are concerns. So it's ongoing engagement rather than just, we went through one season of training.
Mark Prater:
That's excellent. And the requirement that every elder, every pastor in Sovereign Grace is a mandatory reporter is not just because the state law may require it where their church is located, but it's also now a BCO requirement. It has been for a few years now that every pastor is a mandatory reporter regarding a suspicion or accusation of abuse. So, we took that step, and again, that was approved by the Council of Elders, just as another desire to build safe churches so that we know that our elders and pastors are reporting regardless if state law requires it or not. Well, that's wonderful. Thank you for all of that, the work that you're doing, Kyle. Talk a little bit about the resources that you have developed and where those resources are online so that our pastors can continue to benefit from them.
Kyle Huber:
Well, all our resources are located on the SGC pastor's webpage. And there we're trying to create a stock of documents that help pastoral teams think through how they protect their church. And often we're very aware what takes place during the Sunday gathering and so we give help toward that. But we're more particularly also looking at activities outside of the Sunday gathering, which may not always be on our radar. So we've developed documents about small group settings, with youth camp, overnight settings, and we just produced one dealing with mission trips. Each of those areas have their own vulnerabilities and how churches operate in each of those areas can be very different. So rather than giving a policy, which you can't do, that covers every church's situation, we are giving the categories that churches need to think through. These are the areas where you need to have policy, and these are the issues that you need to think of to help you with that policy. And we invite churches to contact us, to talk about policy questions. We're glad to do that. And one of the encouragements on our committee is we're seeing that happen much more often. Pastors are aware we're available and they're contacting us asking us how best to protect their churches in ways that are effective and wise.
Mark Prater:
That's great. I know you've helped our eldership at Covenant Fellowship. We just recently, in the last maybe six months or so, updated our policies related to youth ministry, which would include obviously youth camp. And we had a lot of back and forth. I know Leo Paris was on point for that. He had a lot of back and forth with the committee. And, you were so helpful in establishing an updated policy that we hope and pray continues to build a safe church at Covenant Fellowship. So thank you for that.
Ben Kreps:
Yeah. We at Living Hope have also have benefited from the committee's hard work; providing us with templates and ways to think about how to better protect the families, the members, the attendees of Living Hope Church. We like to try to be able to think and say that Sunday morning is the safest place in the week for kids and families at Living Hope. So, those watching or reading this may not be aware. This committee has put a lot of hard work into all of this. This is difficult work. This is not easy stuff to navigate through. But, I'm aware of all of the time and investment that these busy pastors are putting into helping serve Sovereign Grace in a most important and vital way. So, thank you, Kyle. Thank you to the whole committee.
Mark Prater:
Yeah. And Kyle, just to pick up on that, give us the names of the other guys that serve along with you. I know Aaron Mayfield chairs that committee.
Kyle Huber:
Aaron Mayfield is our chair, Derek Overstreet, Josh Murphy, Steve Bice, and we've just brought on to begin training, Keith Bunting, who will need to be approved by the Council of Elders. But he is starting to engage and we would anticipate, to give a sense of the amount of training, that once he comes on the committee we wouldn't expect to deploy him for a full year, recognizing the amount of study and training that will need to take place before he would be able to confidently speak into situations that may come up.
Mark Prater:
That's great.
Ben Kreps:
Mark, why don't you give us the last word here and your thoughts about all of this.
Mark Prater:
Well, I think that what this committee is doing strengthens our mission in Sovereign Grace. There's a gospel connection to the work of this committee because we are doing what we can, hopefully all we can, to build safe churches that allows us to continue to have the voice to be heralds of the gospel. Not only in the gospel being declared to our members as they apply it to their lives, but to new people coming into our church to hear the gospel proclaimed, and we pray they're born again. I'm so grateful for the recent resource related to mission trips, that again, is gospel related. And so, we want to do mission trips that serve without incident, and that, again, gives us the opportunities to spread the fame of Jesus Christ. So I think we have to remember that; we have to remember the gospel connection and why we do this. Of course, we want to build safe churches, but ultimately we want to do that for the glory of Christ and for the spreading of the good news of Jesus Christ.
Ben Kreps:
Amen. So thank you Kyle and the rest of the committee for serving us so well. And thank you, Mark, and thank you to everyone who watched or read this podcast. Grateful for you. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.