Coastal Church was known to welcome broken people. With about 75 members, this small Boston-area congregation offered Divorce Care and Celebrate Recovery groups. One of the people who started attending was a convicted sex offender who had been released from prison after serving a 17-year sentence for the rape of his 8-year-old daughter. While incarcerated, this man had committed his life to Christ. He had even earned a seminary degree online. People in the prison system affirmed the changes in his life.
Although several other churches in the area turned this man away, Don Bryant, then pastor of Coastal Church, and others within the congregation did not feel they could look him in the eye and deny his request. “In my 30-plus years as a minister, I have never asked someone to leave the church because their redemptive process was too messy,” says Bryant. “I met with the parents of our church to get their input. Although there was some uneasiness about letting him attend, our mindset as a church was so set in the direction of recovery-type ministries that it was too hard for them to say no.” While saying no would have gone against this church’s nature, saying yes would prove to be even harder.
According to a new national survey, most churches in America would have done the same as Coastal Church. In April 2010, Christianity Today International (CTI) conducted a survey of 2,864 people, including ordained church leaders (15 percent), church staff (20 percent), lay leader and members (43 percent), and other active Christians (22 percent). Respondents were drawn from the readers of CTI publications and websites, including Leadership.
The purpose of the “Sex Offenders in the Church” survey was to explore attitudes and beliefs on whether to allow sex offenders to participate in faith communities. The survey explored what practices churches use to keep their congregations safe when sex offenders are welcomed. Pastors, lay leaders, and churchgoers overwhelmingly agreed that sex offenders who have legally paid for their crime should be welcomed into churches. In fact, 8 in 10 respondents indicated that registered offenders should be allowed to attend church, although under continuous supervision and with appropriate limitations.
Mark Tusken, rector of St. Mark’s Church in Geneva, Illinois, said his church would be among the 8 in 10. “Many people view child abuse as the unforgivable sin,” he says. “But Jesus said there’s no unforgiveable sin except blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.”
Before taking on the leadership of St. Mark’s, a mainline church with an average attendance of 425, Tusken learned that there was one man in the congregation who had been convicted of a sex offense years before. He befriended this individual.
“Within our first year of meeting, he told me what had happened. I took that as a great sign of health on his part, that he came to me and told me about his past.”
Tusken also maintained the church’s previous policy of not allowing him—or anyone with a potentially dangerous criminal record—to serve or be near minors in the church.
“One of the great things that Jesus said is, ‘I am the light of the world.’ I want to live into that,” says Tusken. He doesn’t mean this figuratively.
A sign by the front door at St. Mark’s states the church’s safety policies. More than 300 adults in the church have gone through its child protection training program, and all adults who want to serve in the children’s ministry agree to undergo a background check. When the church underwent a recent renovation, interior windows were added in every area so that all rooms could be monitored. Tusken calls these safety efforts “highly effective light.”
“When you teach healthy people in the parish what to look for, what to be aware of, what the rules are, and how we can create safe boundaries, this creates a safe environment where Christ’s light can shine,” he says.
Do They Belong?
In your opinion, do convicted sex offenders who have been released from prison belong in a church?
79% Yes, as attenders, under supervision, and subject to appropriate limitations
24% No, if one or more of the offender’s victims attend the same church
21% Yes, as a member
5% Yes, as an attender (no limitations, no supervisions required)
4% Yes, as a leader
3% No, convicted sex offenders do not belong in church
A test for the church
According to the survey results, 2 in 10 respondents said they are aware of a church attendee or member who had been convicted of a sex offense.
“More than being a big issue in terms of actual numbers of sex offenders who want access to a faith community, I think this issue poses a test to the church,” says Bryant. “Our culture is wondering what the church is going to do. And the church needs to send a signal: who are we, what do we believe, how far we will go—do we have the troops that can storm beaches, go into dark places, and in hard circumstances find our way?”
If offenders aren’t beating down church doors to attend, is the time sink it takes to create policies and implement safety procedures to integrate them worth it? According to noted church attorney Richard Hammar, yes, the time and effort it takes is definitely worth it, particularly from a legal liability standpoint.
In a Church Law & Tax Report article titled “Sex Offenders in the Church” (September/October 2010, Christianity Today International), Hammar notes, “The U.S. Department of Justice’s Sex Offender Registry is nearing a staggering 550,000 names and rising. Plus, there are millions more offenders who don’t appear on the registry for various reasons.” A few of the reasons: many sex offenders are never reported or apprehended, minors who commit sexual offenses ordinarily will not show up on a sex offender registry, many offenders have committed crimes prior to the formation of a public registry, and depending on the type of crime committed, names are cleared from the registry after a certain number of years.
Regardless of whether a church intends to allow a former sex offender to work with children, a church still has a duty to supervise a sex offender at church once they become aware of him or her.
“A church does not eliminate its legal risk for sex offenders’ acts of child molestation simply because they are not allowed to work in children’s or youth ministry,” Hammar says. “Liability may arise if church leaders are aware that a known sex offender is attending church services or activities and yet fail to institute appropriate safeguards.”
Most churches who took the “Sex Offenders in the Church” survey say they have a good idea what steps they should take once they learn an offender wants to attend their church, but actually taking these steps is another matter.
When comparing answers for, “What response strategies do you think church leaders should take when they become aware that someone (a church attender or member) is a former sex offender?” versus “When you learn an attender or member from your church is an offender, which of the following steps do you take?” the same top three emerge—pray, talk to elders, talk to staff—although the percentage drops dramatically when comparing opinions to actual practice.
Seacoast Church, a multi-site megachurch in the Carolinas and Georgia, keeps its staff informed of any known sex offenders attending the church.
“If something comes up, we sit down and talk about it so that we can make appropriate plans,” says Glenn Wood, church administrator for Seacoast’s 13 campuses. “In our larger campuses, we keep a book that informs our security team of the known offenders attending church.” Seacoast also talks with local police, and in some cases parole officers, to find out what the parameters of the offenders’ probation agreements are.”
Many churches also create covenant agreements or conditional attendance agreements for offenders to ensure that they are closely supervised when on church property. (To learn more practical ways to handle sex offenders in the church, see the downloadable training resource, Sex Offenders in the Church, available on ChurchLawAndTaxStore.com).
Steps Taken
When you learn an attender or member of your church is an offender, which of the following steps do you take?
What Leaders Do
43% Pray about it39% Talk to elders39% Talk to staff23% Draft conditional attendance agreement20% Contact their probation officer
What Leaders Say Should Be Done
82% Pray about it76% Talk to elders76% Talk to staff57% Draft conditional attendance agreement57% Contact their probation officer
Ministering to the offender
Don Bryant learned of the offender at Coastal Church when the individual self-disclosed his past. According to the CTI survey, more than half of the time (55 percent) this is how churches discover an offender in their pews. In 34 percent of churches, someone from the congregation tipped them off, like in Tusken’s case. Wood says Seacoast has made it their mission to learn who is living in the 13 communities in which their churches are located.
“Seacoast’s main goal has always been to reach the unchurched,” says Wood. “About 12 years ago, we decided to figure out who was on the sex offender registry near our main campus in South Carolina. Learning that there were many offenders in close proximity to the church drove us to start Celebrate Recovery (CR), which deals with all kinds of addictions, as well as other recovery-type ministries.”
Although Seacoast has been committed to recovery programs, Wood says they require extensive volunteer manpower, an ongoing challenge for their smaller congregations.
Their solution: group smaller campuses (which run from 90-300 in attendance) together and only offer CR at some of the locations, thus enabling them to pool their resources and maximize volunteers. This provides the additional benefit of anonymity among recovery group members who can attend CR at one Seacoast location and worship at another on Sundays.
Bryant agrees with the wisdom of Seacoast’s approach. “Our church was too small. We just didn’t have enough people to sustain the level of care and attention the sex offender’s presence required.” Sex offenders don’t come from only one particular economic level, Bryant points out. But by the time they come out of prison, often they are homeless, jobless, and friendless. “A church will be dealing not only with someone who has committed what author Martha Nussbaum calls a ‘disgust-based’ crime, but also someone who needs a great deal of support at every level to re-enter society.”
He also learned that having more people in a church gives people options about how close to get to one another. “At a small church like ours, comfort zones got pressed beyond normal ranges because people were forced to interact with the sex offender, whether they wanted to or not,” he says. One by one, Bryant noticed families going out the back door.
“Good people who gave a ‘yes’ to this, and who I think meant well, ultimately just couldn’t tolerate it.” Although no one ever said out loud that they were leaving because of the sex offender, Bryant sensed diminishing energy among his congregants for having to deal with him. By the time the church dwindled to 35 people, Bryant knew it was time to shut down.
“We fell into ministering to a sex offender by virtue of having recovery ministries at our church,” he says. “We didn’t go out looking for a sex offender; he found us. But we weren’t prepared for it. We had to catch up really quick. Ultimately, I think we did it well, but it didn’t end well. This was a function of not having wheels on our intention.”
Ministry To The Sex-Addicted
Does your church provide recovery ministry to people with sexual addictions, including cyberporn addiction and other sex-related problems?
15% Local ministry plus referral24% No, we do nothing49% Referrals are given12% Ministry provided at church
Can a sex offender change?
While 49 percent of churches surveyed said they offer referrals to individuals struggling with sexual addictions, and some 12 percent offer in-house recovery ministries, 24 percent said they do nothing.
Another survey finding may provide a clue to why nearly a quarter of the churches surveyed stay away from addressing sexual addictions. According to the survey, 62 percent of respondents say they are either not sure or do not believe sex offenders can be rehabilitated to the point where they no longer pose a threat to others.
The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA), the largest professional organization on treating sex offenders, states on its website that “although many, if not most, sexual abusers are treatable, there is no known ‘cure.’ Management of sexually abusive behavior is a lifelong task for some sexual abusers.” The organization says repeat sexual crimes can be reduced significantly through prevention, assessment, treatment, supervision, and collaboration involving all parties.
Reducing sexual crimes is a far cry from finding a cure. Wouldn’t it be easier to exclude them, even though 95 percent of sex offenders are eventually released from prison? Not according to CTI survey respondents.
Only 3 percent believe sex offenders do not belong in church. The majority says exclusion may be justified, but not for the sake of convenience—66 percent think registered offenders should be excluded if their victims attend the same church; 61 percent said that before permitting an offender to attend church, they would review the offender’s probation terms and criminal record.
Tusken says: “We’re meant to be a place where people can be helped both out of their prejudices, out of their disgust, out of their fears, and also helping people who have fallen into a hole so deep, so dark that they can’t find a way out by themselves. That takes God raising them out of that place through others. That’s the body of Christ. Galatians 6—’Bear ye one another’s burdens’ is the old translation that still rings in my heart. We have to be there for each other or healing can’t occur.”
Whether 8 in 10 churches will be there to bear the burden of the sex offender is a test that has yet to be taken. At least half a million convicted offenders one day may be ready to grade us.
Marian V. Liautaud is resources editor for Christianity Today International’s Church Management Team. She helped develop Reducing the Risk: Keeping Your Ministry Safe from Child Sexual Abuse.
Copyright © 2010 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
