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Safeguarding in the church has become a high-profile and contentious issue. On the one hand, all agree that our churches must be experienced as safe places, and that the failures of the past must be addressed. On the other, the experience of many is that safeguarding administration has grown exponentially, and it is in danger of becoming a bureaucratic nightmare that does not deliver what is intended.

So can safeguarding actually been seen as something positive, an integral part to our mission? The latest Grove booklet in the Mission and Evangelism series, Safeguarding as Mission, addresses this head on, and is written by Justin Humphreys of Thirty-One Eight, a highly respected organisation in this area.

Justin begins by addressing the challenge head on:

Safeguarding has become a familiar term within most church-based settings in recent times. Its prominence (indeed existence) within the consciousness of churchgoers, workers and leaders alike may give rise to a range of re- sponses, not all of which will be positive. Safeguarding, for many, represents a government-led, bureaucratic, tick-box process that has little place in the church. For others, it represents a series of hurdles to effective ministry and mission. Yet, for others, safeguarding principles and practice are enablers and a good-sense guide for interacting with others.

It is this last perspective that this booklet seeks to address by encouraging the reader to explore the biblical imperative for creating and maintaining safer places and to reframe safeguarding as an integral element to our missional purpose as Christians. We will do this through exploring several encounters that different individuals had with Jesus throughout the New Testament and drawing learning points from how his posture, attitude and behaviour shaped those interactions and created safe environments throughout his mission. From these, we will draw conclusions regarding how this learning should help us to shape and potentially reframe our own thinking and practice.

It is important to make a clear distinction early in this booklet; it is proposed that a shift might be required that leads us towards considering safeguarding as something we are all called to as we seek to follow the example of Jesus. Therefore, this booklet is about safeguarding as mission rather than safeguarding in mission. That may be a paradigm shift for many…

The challenge may be to us all to begin thinking of this in a new or different way. Maybe the language of safeguarding is not always the most helpful or transferrable into our church contexts. Maybe the way it is some- times practised does not always achieve the positive ends it is intended to. Despite this, maybe some questions remain about why this is important. Do we practice safeguarding because the government or the law tells us we should? Do we undertake the relevant training because our local church leader tells us we cannot serve on team without it? Do we comply with the requests to have our criminal records checked for fear of upsetting our safeguarding lead? Or do we thoughtfully consider the way we create safer places for all because we truly believe, before all these other reasons, that we have a biblical mandate to do so?