Dakota Baptist Convention

By Everett Hornbostel

The Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (ARITF) provided a report to messengers during the June 14 session of the SBC Annual Meeting in New Orleans. One item which was approved was to continue the Task Force for an additional year. The ARITF has created a new website (www.sbcabuseprevention.com) which contains a ministry toolkit to provide churches with tools and resources to help make our churches a safe place. They provide five essentials to prevention and protection:

Train – Provide initial and ongoing training for staff, volunteers, and church members that raises awareness and shares effective actions to help prevent incidents of abuse in the church.

Screen – Adopt a careful vetting process for all those working with children, youth, and vulnerable adults. Screening should include an application, interview, references, social media review, and background checks.

Protect – Create and implement policies that protect children, youth, and vulnerable adults from grooming and abuse.

Report – Have a written plan in place to communicate with both the church and appropriate government authorities in the event of an abuse allegation.

Care – Identify and offer resources that will provide victims, survivors, and their families with options for on-going care.

The other part of the website is a database. Currently, names are undergoing an intense legal review before the database is populated. These names came from the Guidepost database released recently. 

A point of controversy is a fourth criteria for inclusion in the database. The first three are widely accepted, 1. Confessed the abuse in a nonprivileged setting; 2. Was convicted of abuse in a court of law; 3. Had a civil judgment rendered against them for committing abuse. It is the fourth criteria of: Has been defined as “credibly accused” according to the preponderance of evidence, as examined by an independent third party. ARTIF Chairman Marshal Blalock stated a “mere allegation” of abuse will “absolutely not” land anyone on the list. He continued by stating, “we want to get this right.” 

The Dakota Baptist Convention has a resource implemented to help in abuse prevention. The resource is MinistrySafe. This resource includes awareness training, background checks, a sample document library, reporting resources, response resources and a digital dashboard. Individual churches can obtain their own membership with MinistrySafe. The DBC also allows Dakota Baptist Churches to access the convention membership for trainings and background checks. If you would like more information about MinistrySafe or ways you can make your church a place that is safe from abuse, please reach out to our Church Relations Missionary, me at [email protected]