Safety Checks - The Random Kind!

When you think about safety in your children's ministries, you think about things such as;

• Screening volunteers
• Secure ways to sign in/pick up children
• Training volunteers
• Child to Adult staffing levels
• Safe toys/equipment/supplies

And for good reason, as these are all things we need to think about when it comes to safety in our children's ministries. However, there is one more thing you can, and should do, on a regular basis to insure your children's ministry is safe! What is this additional thing, you ask? Random safety checks!

Random safety checks are where you have an adult; preferably someone your volunteers do not know, try to walk in your children's area, look in the classrooms and just sorta "hang around" to see who stops them to find out who they are and what they are doing.

If our children's ministries are going to be safe, we have to know who adults are if they enter our children's area and why they are there. Random security checks help us do this. 

My church is a large church; we have about 5,000 people. The Security People run random security checks during children's activities and then let us know if the people they sent into the children's areas were stopped and asked to identify themselves. We want to know who is in our children's areas and why they are there. This is one of the "layers" of security in our ministry.

Yes, my church is large, but any size church can do this; and should do so on a regular basis. Does your church have random security checks?