Vacation Bible School is often the most high-energy, chaotic, and beautiful week in the life of a children's ministry. But in the thick of planning decorations, games, and snacks, ensuring the safety and protection of the children in your care must be the baseline of your preparation. Offenders look for environments where privacy is easily accessed and chaos masks boundary violations. Here are the top 7 things you need to prepare right now to make your VBS a sanctuary of safety and healing.

Unstructured time (such as travel, overnight trips, informal hangouts, lock-ins, etc.) create an increased risk for children and teens because they involve sleeping arrangements, showering and changing, or other vulnerable situations. In this article we will look at basic safety recommendations for student trips.

When people ask, “How did this happen?” they’re often searching for a single point of failure. Was it a destructive leader? A non-existent or weak policy? A failure of bystanders to speak up? The best way to approach answering this question is to think in systems, understanding how a set of parts might work together in an interconnected network.

Boz Tchividjian explains three narratives that are most common among offending leaders.

A survivor of horrific child abuse and abduction while living in a Christian home, David Linwah shares what he has wanted the Church to hear for so long.

A disturbingly common legal maneuver is utilized by attorneys across the United States which ends up discouraging victims from coming forward, David Clohessy explains.

In this interview with memoirist Trudy Metzger, the truth is revealed about how the deep physical, emotional, and spiritual pains caused by childhood trauma cannot obscure a loving God who crosses the road and gets down into the dirt with the hurting and brutalized.

In the past 20 years, I have come across many situations where folks  have found themselves conflicted about whether to say something after observing unsettling behavior between an adult and a child.  Unfortunately, too many have decided it’s best to remain silent. 

Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis explains how the Black church can directly confront child abuse, beginning within its own community.

Boz Tchividjian reflects on the similarities survivors of abuse have with Jesus and His sufferings.

A silent church will always protect perpetrators over God’s little ones.  A silent church will always abandon the very ones God holds precious.  In fact, a silent church is no church at all. God was certainly not silent in the face of evil, neither should we.

Understanding the reality of abuse begins with seeing the scope of it. Transforming our faith communities into places where children are safe and abuse survivors are welcomed, valued, and loved begins by realizing every number is a person.