Sunday’s shootings in a Colorado church and YWAM center will likely be unpacked endlessly in news reports and op-eds in the days to come. There will be questions about why a church security guard happened to be armed. Obviously, the fact that (s)he was armed saved lives, but it will raise eyebrows nonetheless. Last time I checked, our mall security didn’t even carry weapons, much less church security (wait, we don’t have church security) and I wonder if it’s generally a good idea for churches to have armed security guards? [Update: Some news reports are now saying that the “security guard” was simply an average church member with a concealed weapons permit.]

This week’s discussions will also raise questions about church safety in general. Unfortunately, they’re unlikely to spur many congregations to consider their own preparedness for violence, accident or disaster. The irony is that while churches are often prepared to offer crisis counseling to congregants, they’ve rarely considered what happens if the church itself is the center of crisis.

The possibility of a gunman walking into your foyer is incredibly slim [view stats], but as we’ve seen several times over the past years (and twice Sunday), it’s not out of the question. What’s more likely is that someone will be hurt, maimed, or killed by more routine happenings in the life of the church. If your church owns vehicles (especially the 15-passenger type), takes youth or adults to camps or retreats, or sponsors just about any activity outside of worship (and maybe worship isn’t exempt), then you’re involved in exposing people to significant risk.

There are two reasons that the risk at church is greater than what individuals face on their own.

First, risk increases when numbers increase. This is a simple axiom that churches would do well to remember. More participants, more risk. The more vehicles you put on the road to a retreat, the greater the risk. And so forth.

The second reason that churches routinely expose congregants to significant risk is that there is a perception that group activities have been carefully planned and managed for safety. There is a perception that someone must have considered the risks involved, and therefore participants are less questioning and less careful. We assume this because it is true in most every other area of American public life. When we show up in public places we assume the activity will be safe because someone is keeping a tab on things. We don’t worry about shelves falling on our kids when we shop at Target. We assume someone has assessed the shelves for risk. When we go to theme parks we (generally) don’t worry about the safety of the roller coasters or the inflatable jumpy castles. When we eat at Burger King, we don’t obsess about whether the hamburger is cooked. Some would argue that we should be more concerned about these things, but in general our litigious society is one that has adequately planned and prepared for risk.

However, rarely are Churches such places. The average congregation is notoriously ill-prepared to deal with issues of safety even though we advertise our churches as places of care. Does your church have a disaster plan? An evacuation plan? Do you have a risk management plan for all areas of church activity? These are standard fare in most every non-profit and corporate environment, but I’ve yet to serve in a church that had any of these when I arrived. I’m currently volunteering in a certified megachurch and they still don’t do background checks on their volunteer staff! And don’t even get me started on their lack of vehicle safety!

Who are the worst offenders in the church? Usually the youth ministry folks. Let’s be honest, our idea of safety often stops at a signed parental release form which we assume, like love and the blood of Jesus, “covers over a multitude of sins.” However, even though parental release forms may deflect some legal responsibility, they don’t bring children back from the dead. They don’t repair churches, youth ministries, families, and lives that are ripped apart by stupidity and abuse. And in case you haven’t heard, those forms are basically worthless on a legal level anyway because negligence can’t be signed away. Liability can be signed away by parents and students, but you will always be liable for negligence.

How is negligence defined? Often by a simple legal test, “Did you act in the situation as any reasonable person would act.” If not, you’re negligent. The problem for youth ministry is that we’ve spent most of the past thirty years trying to be unreasonable! If you’ve ever thumbed through a youth ministry games and crowdbreakers book, then you know what I’m talking about.

Imagine what youth ministry sounds like in a court of law: “Really, ma’am, you covered several children in peanut butter and then encouraged other children to throw M&Ms at them as part of a game? And you didn’t check to find out whether any of the children had life threatening peanut allergies?”

Or, “Really, sir, you encouraged children to stay up all night during an event at your church, and in fact, children were prodded by others to stay awake, and then you allowed those children to drive vehicles home in the morning? Did it not occur to you that those sleep-deprived children would be a danger on the road?”

And you can almost hear the youth minister’s response, “But they’re not really children, we’re talking teenagers here. And their parents signed release forms agreeing to allow them to drive home.”

“Sir, the recognition of this court is that you encouraged minors of 16 and 17 years — children — to drive home after staying up all night. That’s negligence, sir. No reasonable person would do that, and the signature of a parent doesn’t change the fact that, due to your negligence and the resulting car accident, a child is now in a permanent vegetative state.”

This sounds extreme, except for the fact that it was reality for the pastor under whom I worked for six years. He was a former youth pastor (one of the best to ever hold the title) and spent seven years in and out of court, and a lifetime of regret due to a car accident following an all-night event. Jerry was actually incredibly thoughtful about safety at the event (there’s more to the story than I have space to share here), but not thoughtful enough to avoid being ripped apart on the stand during nearly three days of testimony. In the end, the lawsuit was dismissed, but it didn’t change the outcome for the girl whose life was ripped apart early one Saturday morning.

There isn’t space here to unpack all of the ways that church ministry (and particularly youth ministry) fails to maintain standards of safety, but if your ministry doesn’t have a comprehensive risk management plan by which you actually abide, and with which you train leaders, then you’re just asking for trouble.

You can imagine what it was like running youth ministry under Jerry, someone who had seen that disaster firsthand. Before each youth ministry event I sat on the couch in his office and was “grilled” as he played the prosecuting attorney. Countless events were safer because of those conversations. Safety in youth ministry doesn’t limit what you do, it limits how you do things. It requires more planning, more forethought, and (yes) more money. But if theme parks can hurl people hundreds of feet off the ground, then yes, we can play our silly games, take kids on meaningful retreats, and do all the other things that contemporary youth ministry does. The point, of course, isn’t that youth ministry should be anything like a theme park (God help us); the point is that safety and creativity are not mutually exclusive.

New Life Church in Colorado Springs was well-prepared for Sunday’s catastrophe. I don’t know the extent or nature of their risk management plan, but it’s obvious from comments already released they had something in place (in fact, the senior pastor said they had trained for this kind of tragedy). On the other hand, I know that if a gunman walked into the foyer at the church where I currently attend the body count would be much, much higher.

In ten years of youth ministry I’ve seen a lot: a teenager who almost lost her legs to a boat propeller; a U-Haul trailer that detached from our van and passed us on the left; kids who almost drowned during a rafting trip; a boy who fell from a climbing wall rushed to the hospital; numerous seizures; a roll-over accident with a church van; a junior high pastor whose eye was permanently damaged; the United States Border Patrol surrounding our church van with guns drawn; losing a kid in the New York subway system. Each of those stories are stories of close calls, evidence of grace at work, and opportunities to reflect about what we could have done differently. Oddly, each of those events took place with some semblance of a risk management plan in place. Almost all of them, however, occurred when that plan was not carefully followed.

It’s unlikely that a gunman will come strolling into your youth group meeting, but be rest assured that peril of some kind lurks around every corner in youth ministry. So, here are my 10 quick-and-dirty tips for improving the safety of your youth ministry:

1) Create a Risk Management Plan and live by it: Very few churches (and even fewer youth ministries) have these plans in place. This is a shame. The idea is to create a plan that identifies areas of risk along with guidelines that reduce this risk. What would your church do if a gunman walked in? Or if there was an earthquake? Or, as a more mundane example, we identified highway safety as an issue and had a “5 mile under” guideline at the church where I served in Idaho. At all times we drove our church vehicles five miles per hour under the speed limit except when the driver determined that this would create unsafe conditions. It was a way that we could reduce risk and be extra careful. My feeling is that youth ministers should be proactive and create these plans for youth ministry. Make the plan, and get the church board to rubber stamp it. In the end, the youth minister is going to be the point person who makes sure the guidelines are followed, so it better be something you’re invested in. Here’s the link to the excellent Non-Profit Risk Management Center. Also, Brotherhood Mutual has a list of resources that can get you started. And here’s the all-knowing Wikipedia resource on the topic.

2) Read the book, Better Safe than Sued: If I had to list youth ministry books that impacted my ministry the most, oddly, this book would be on the list. It’s a bit out of date now, but if you haven’t read it, you MUST. My first reaction upon completing the book was to sit around and sing Kumbaya with my students. My next (and better) reaction was to embark on creating what’s described in #1. (Get Better Safe than Sued.)

3) Play the “Worst Case Scenario” game before every event: No, I’m not talking the board game that teaches you how to survive a croc attack, I’m talking about the informal game I used to play with Jerry where we’d think through every possible tragedy that could happen as a result of the activities we were doing, and then we’d figure out ways to reduce the risk or be prepared. A day or two before your event, grab a few leaders and think through the possibilities.

4) Be overtly cautious when trouble comes: Somebody got hurt? Seek medical help. Don’t play doctor. People will say you’re overreacting, or overly cautious, but tell them you’re being overtly cautious. You don’t want to explain to parents, “Well, Jimmy looked okay,” after he just died from internal injuries. Seeking medical attention is the right thing to do. Eleven years ago my little brother was along for a youth group mountain bike trip that I was leading. Three miles in he flipped over the handlebars and got beat up pretty bad. He was black and blue, but we didn’t take him to the hospital. For a decade it went undiscovered that he’d sustained some pretty serious internal bruising and fractured a vertebra in his neck. We were incredibly lucky that he didn’t die or suffer paralysis, but he also was dismissed from his construction job last year at the age of 23 because he became unable to work due to those old injuries. We should have sought medical attention even though he “seemed” okay. You should, too.

5) Go professional, licensed, and bonded at every chance: Professionals cost money, and youth ministry is usually about saving money, so we turn to amateurs to drive our vehicles, lead our wilderness trips, and conduct our activities. In effect, we’re putting price tags on lives. I don’t care if it’s $3,000 cheaper to use 15-passenger vans to drive up the mountain road to winter retreat, you just don’t do it. You spend the three grand extra and rent a bus with a professional driver who is trained to drive large vehicles safely in adverse conditions. You say your church doesn’t have that kind of money? Balderdash! I’ve served in churches of 100 that have the money, it’s just they’re not accustomed to spending it on youth. It’s high time to talk to parents and church boards about the money that safe youth ministry costs. Taking kids white water rafting? I don’t care if you’ve got all kinds of experienced people in your congregation. You hire the licensed company to provide the equipment and guides to safely navigate your people down the river. Licensed guides not only know rafting, they know the current river conditions, and they’re usually highly trained at keeping people safe, and rescuing them when they’re not. I watched in amazement one year as a raft of eight junior high boys disappeared into a class 5 hole on the Salmon River, and came up the other side empty. Our raft was too far back to help, but I was astounded as their guide came shooting out of the water and scaled the raft like Spiderman while lifting kids out of the water and throwing them back in the boat. All eight boys were back in the raft in under two minutes. This is just an example of why it’s smart to pay the extra money and hire the professional. Don’t put a price tag on kids’ lives regardless of the activity. If you can’t afford to hire the best for safety’s sake, choose a different event.

6) Be safer than you have to be: As good as professionals are, don’t be complacent about safety. Go above and beyond when you can. Once we hired an inflatable climbing mountain for an event. Students climbed to the top of a pyramid shaped “mountain” and then slid back down. It looked safe, and they were harnessed in, but halfway through the event a freshman thought it would be fun to jump from the top onto the inflatable mat below. His harness ripped out, he did a free-fall onto the mat, and the impact shot him back into the air. He landed on his head, without a helmet, on a concrete floor. He instantly went into a grand mal seizure, and by the time I arrived he’d been seizing for nearly two minutes. We dialed 911, and when the seizure finally stopped, he looked straight up into my eyes and was unable to move any part of his body and could only mutter nonsense to me. I was afraid he’d been paralyzed. Luckily, he wasn’t, but it took several hours for him to regain full control of his body at the hospital. But the whole incident could have been averted by simply requiring kids to wear helmets. The company I hired said they weren’t necessary, but they were extra protection that would have cost us little and prevented serious injury. Taking kids skiing? Require them to wear helmets. Taking them boating? Local law may only require you to have lifejackets in the boats, but go a step further and require teens to wear them. Small safety precautions make a big difference and are minimally intrusive. Take them.

7) Answer the question, “Is this what a reasonable person would do?”: This is the basic test of negligence, and it’s the one that most youth ministers fail miserably. “Cool” has for too long been defined in youth ministry by being unreasonable. Holding a lighter in front of a can of hairspray is really cool, but it’s totally unsafe and totally unreasonable. Yet I’ve seen youth leaders do it. The viral video of the kid jumping off a bunk bed with his underwear attached in order to get a super wedgie is unreasonable in every sense of the word. That video was shot by a youth group leader during a church retreat in Pennsylvania. Bad idea. He opened himself up for all kinds of trouble, not only by shooting the video, but also by failing to ask if a reasonable person would allow youth to engage in this kind of activity. BTW, the answer is NO, but I’m guessing that half of the youth pastors reading this might have to mull it over a few times before coming to that conclusion.

8.) Get rid of the 15-passenger vans NOW: This is really specific, I know, but if your church still owns 15-passenger vans, then you’re stupid. Yes, stupid. There’s no other way to classify the possession of vehicles known in the industry as “rolling coffins” and for which the NTSB has issued numerous safety warnings. Either get rid of them now, or remove all roof racks and the rear seat so that the vehicle can seat only 10 people maximum. Brotherhood Mutual has more information on 15-passenger van safety in their pages here.

9) Speed limits, Background Checks, Maintenance, Experience, Seatbelts: These are the simplest things you can do to raise the safety level of your ministry. When driving, obey speed limits or drive below them. Conduct federal background checks on all volunteer and paid leaders. State background checks are not enough because they only scour state records and usually only for names and aliases. Background checks that are run through the FBI use fingerprints, cost more, and are highly effective. There’s hardly a school in the country that will hire a person without an FBI check; I see no good reason why churches should be any different. Next, keep your vehicles in good repair, this is a no-brainer that can save lives. Also, never let an inexperienced driver behind the wheel of a church vehicle. Drivers under 21 should never be allowed, either. Period, end. Finally, if students aren’t wearing seatbelts on church outings, the driver will be held responsible in most states. It’s foolish to drive without first requesting students to buckle up. And the whole “shoulder strap behind my shoulders” thing needs to get the kibosh put on it pronto.

10) Supervise, supervise, supervise: Youth ministry events without proper adult supervision end in disaster more often than not. This is obvious, but it’s easy to be lax on supervision when you’re short on adult volunteers. But you know what, somebody has got to be a hard ass and say, “Sorry, we’re not doing this because we don’t have the number of adults needed for good supervision.” Do that once, and I guarantee you’ll, a) get flack this time; b) have enough volunteers the next time.

That’s my advice in a nutshell. Do you have any tips to add?