Protecting Your Youth Ministry Students (Safety at Youth Group - Pt. 2)

*** Would you like a FREE Student Ministry Volunteer Application? E-mail us at MinistryCoachPodcast@gmail.com and we can send one over! *** In this episode, we take a intentional, practical look at youth ministry safety and student protection, focusing on prevention policies that reduce risk, remove secrecy, and make it easier for parents to trust your student ministry team.  We walk through the safeguards we actually use and teach as well as specifics about youth pastor and volunteer text communication policies. Finally, we cover some important additions you should consider in regards to church facilities and accountability.

The time to grow a healthy, thriving youth ministry is NOW...let's work together! Make sure to check out GrowYourYouthMinistry.com ***

Subscribe, share this with a youth leader, and leave a review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ so more youth pastors can listen in!

=======

You may also enjoy these episodes:

(#286) How to Protect Your Youth Ministry Students - (Safety at Youth Group Pt. 1)

(#012) Creating a Safe Ministry - 3 Areas to Focus On

(#031) Training Your Youth Ministry Volunteers - Onboarding & Acclimation

=======

We love hearing from you all and we do our best to provide powerful and insightful youth ministry content on a weekly basis to be that coach and mentor you may not have, but desperately need.
If you have an episode idea, please E-Mail us at MinistryCoachPodcast@gmail.com!

If you have it on your heart to support this ministry, please consider going to our Patreon page at: www.patreon.com/ministrycoach

=========

🔄 CONNECT WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA 📱:
Ministry Coach Podcast:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MinistryCoach/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ministrycoachpodcast/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ministrycoachpodcast
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ministrycoachpodcast

Kristen Lascola:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/klascola/

Jeffrey Lascola:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grandmasterbengal/

========

Audio Equipment:

Microphones
https://amzn.to/3V9GrrT

Microphone Preamp
https://amzn.to/3QVB3WQ

Digital Recorder
https://amzn.to/3eXmvkj

*This episode is not sponsored. Some of the links are affiliate links which simply means, if you buy something, we will receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you) Thank you!*

Transcript

Why Student Safety Is Nonnegotiable

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Today we're doing part two series of how to protect our students in youth ministry.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Welcome back to the Ministry Coach podcast, where we're doing part two of a two-part series all about how to protect your students in youth ministry.

Two Leaders And Visible Rooms

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Yeah, and if you didn't listen to part one, I would recommend going back and listening to that because I think that one was a lot of the heavy content of just character profiles of people. How do we guard the gate to our youth ministry? How to maybe really listen to the Holy Spirit and your gut and not take any chances. And I'm gonna mention this verse again because it all centers around this Ephesians 5:3. But among you, there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality or of any kind of impurity or of greed because these are improper for God's holy people. And I wanted to reiterate that because I feel like there really is no excuse for even a hint of any kind of immorality in this area. Like there shouldn't, like I think even having to kind of wonder is a red, red, red flag. Like, huh, like that was odd, or oh, that didn't sit right, or why did they, or who, you know, and so we're just trying to equip ourselves to be extra careful when it comes to these uh students because we love them, and these episodes have taken on more of a serious tone because, like, you can't come back from this kind of stuff. You know, students can't come back from this kind of stuff. And, you know, there's so many stories that you hear of people that had a weird deconstruction of faith moment because it was so earth-shattering to lose trust in people that were supposed to protect you. And if it's on our watch, you know, we want to make sure we're being like so, so, so diligent to make sure we are going above and beyond to keep our students safe. Your church, your community, families, students, like people don't just like bounce back. It's not like, oh, the bus was late. Like those are mistakes that youth professors make all the time, but this stuff is like monumental. We don't come back from it. So today we're gonna unpack some prevention, more policy type measures. And again, nothing can like completely foolproof, but we want to do our due diligence and be super duper careful. So here are a few things that I've done. Again, think of yourself as being cross-examined by the prosecution. Right. And then the defense gets up and they say, Well, did you do this, this, this? And yeah, I did that. Yep, I did, I did, I did, I did. And somehow, you know, you never want to be like, oh, well, I just was fingers crossed, you know, kind of thing. So number one, we always have a two-leader system when we have adults leading small groups. And I love being able to tell parents that. So here's like a very common scenario, actually, is we have a brand new family who's coming to our church. Their child has never been to a youth group. These people may or may not be Christians, but their kid hears about our youth group at school. They've been wanting to try it, wanting to try it. Finally, the parents let them. And then the parents want to know, like, who are these adults?

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Right.

Vehicle Rules That Prevent Risk

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Because I'm not attached to your church. I don't know, like, oh, that's Andy. Like, I've known him for years, or oh, that's Heidi. She's amazing. You know they're amazing, but these people have no clue who these leaders are, or even who you are to be touting these other people. Sure. And that's fair, very fair. So they always are like, well, what, like, who are the people who volunteer and what is that like? And what is that system? And do you background check people? They have a lot of questions. And I love being able to say, yeah, all of our leaders, like we talked about on the last episode, have been like referenced, application, live scanned, and we have two adults per group. So there's never like, you know, an adult who's just alone with the students. There's always two per group. And I love being able to share that with them. The other thing I love being able to share with them is that we have windows in all of our small group rooms. There is like nowhere really on our campus where you can go and be totally invisible or totally alone, except for the youth ministry closet. Sometimes I just gotta take a breath, you know, and I go in there like, whoo, in between services, I'm like, okay, go. You know, but there's cameras everywhere. And I'll get to that in a second. But being able to say, yeah, here's our small group rooms, all of them have two windows in them. All of them are led by two adult leaders that have had all these background checks, that makes a parent feel so much better and makes me feel a lot better. Like there is really like nowhere to hide kind of thing. So if you don't have windows in your rooms, like I don't know what to tell. Like, I guess you can't just like start hacking away at the walls. But what you can do, and which I would recommend, is propping those doors open and just creating some visibility there. So we also have another rule that has to do with driving and vehicles with students. So back in the day, we had a rule that you could not drive a student of the opposite gender alone. So I couldn't take a boy home from an event if his parents were late or something. I would have to bring somebody else with me. Well, now we fast forward to 2026, and we've actually been doing this for years, is you can't be alone in the car with a student regardless. There always has to be another child or student or adult, someone else present in the vehicle with you, which I think is really smart for you, for your leaders, for students, for everybody.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Definitely takes a little bit more planning ahead sometimes, but yeah, and that's what we've run into.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Like, oh gosh, this person needs to ride home and this and that, what do we do? And it's like, yeah, logistically, sometimes we have to figure it out, but it's like a solvable problem. Like, so again, you're being cross-examined. So it was inconvenient for you to make sure this child was safe by putting somebody else in the car. Yes, that is my statement. It was inconvenient and it was late and I didn't feel like it. Yes. Next question, please.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Now, do you guys do like if the parent signs off on it and they're like, can you just take my kid home?

SPEAKER_02 7:10

So sometimes a parent will arrange it with a leader they're friends with without me being involved. I cannot intercept every single one of those. Like I tell my leaders, they're like, Oh, this is my family friend and they're my neighbor. And I grew up and the mom texted me. I'm like, those ones are a little like like what part do I play? Because you have this whole personal relationship going on. This is more for like, and do without what you will. It's up to you. But this is more like there's a student left and they their parent didn't pick them up, they forgot, or they're late or something, or a student randomly asked for a ride and you don't know them, and it's kind of out of the blue. It wasn't arranged by the parents, it wasn't, you know, this whole understanding. It was just here we are, and it's been 45 minutes. Are they coming or not? You know, that in in those kinds of cases, but there could be someone out there that feels differently. Like, no, even if their parents arrange it, you know, you can't. I I mean, I don't know. But yeah, that's where it got it does get a little complicated because, you know, everyone in our church is so tight knit, so they like have relationships outside of our youth group.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

One of the leaders could potentially be like a on-call. What's the first thing it's called?

SPEAKER_02 8:31

Like an emergency contact.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Emergency contact. That's what it is. Right. And it's like, well, I can't use you. Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

I know. So there's obviously like asterisk at the bottom of some of this, but that's just a general rule to be aware of.

Meeting Students Without Isolation

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Hey guys, sorry to interrupt this episode, but if you wanted a copy of the student ministry volunteer application that we use in our youth ministries, make sure you send us an email at ministrycoachpodcast at gmail.com or check the link below and we can get that sent over to you. All right, let's get back to the episode.

Texting Guidelines And No Secrets

Bathrooms And The Privacy Problem

SPEAKER_02 9:00

And then when it comes to meeting with students, here's another one. And this is this is very well known in the church. Like, people are always like, never meet with a man or a woman one-on-one, alone, whatever. So, like, kind of like the same thing with students. Like, I feel like sometimes a student does need to talk to you. You're their pastor. You have to be accessible. It can't be like la la, I cannot. I must. Like, we also have to have a measure of like humanity here. Like, it's not just like we're all protection bots. Like, okay, where's the humanity? So if a student wants to meet, we cannot say under section four or three of the church bylaws, it says, so what can you do? You can meet with them in a public place that's not audible, like being seen, not heard, kind of thing. Kind of like a white noise coffee shop or yeah, where there's background noise, people can see you, you know, whatever. And there's plenty of places for that to be able to happen. You know, there's at our church, we have a few outdoor patio furniture kind of places where people are constantly walking by, but no one's stopping and like staring at you and listening. We have a coffee shop cafe area where the same kind of thing happens. Our office is an open office. We don't have doors that close. So, I mean, people can walk by and catch like a couple words, and it's fine. So encourage leaders and yourself to meet if you have to meet with a student. And sometimes I've had to meet with students where the topics are very sensitive, and I need to actually ask them really important questions to figure out what kind of situation we're dealing with. And I'm able to do that and protect their privacy in a very easy way. So that just safeguards you and them and any misunderstanding that may occur. And then when it comes to texting, so communication with students. So back in the day, like I remember like literally sitting in my office with an office phone before a youth group would start. I because I was a small group leader, also, and I would dial every single individual kid and be like, Hi, Mrs. Coles, this is Kristen. Is Nikki coming to youth group tonight? Oh yeah, hold on, Nikki, Kristen's on the phone. So it was an interesting day and age because you had to talk to the parents to talk to the kids. And so now with the privacy of the cell phone, it is just individual direct line to the student, which gets a little weird for us because these kids start coming to youth group, and their parents may or may not have ever met the small group leader. And then all of a sudden, this adult is texting their child and like, hey, how are you doing? Hope to see you later tonight, you know, or at youth group. And the parent, like, what? Who is this? What's going on? You know, and we've had that happen. And it was totally well intentioned, but it didn't land well because it was like, Oh, yeah, okay, the lines of communication are different now. So here's what we've landed on is like, I feel like it'd be really hard to say, never contact your students ever again. Like, that's part of ministry, right? But what two things I would say on this number one, a group text is really wonderful. They can still share prayer requests in there, you can still follow up with people because normally they would share prayer requests in the small group, anyways. So sharing it on a group text is pretty effective. If you are gonna text a student individually, a few guidelines that we've talked about is number one, text the parent first. So you would text the parent and say, Hey, I'm Kristen, I'm Nikki's small group leader. I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm so excited for this year with her at youth group. You know, you can reach out to me anytime uh with any questions. I'll be checking in with her like once a week just to follow up on prairie quests and stuff like that, if that's all right. And if the parents like, yeah, that's great, thanks for introducing yourself, or if the parent might say, Hey, any communication with my child needs to go through me, you could just say, Great, so glad I have your number, whatever. So once you have permission from the parents, even if you are going to text the student, the guidelines we put on like private text communication is like, keep it simple, short, and not too personal. So, say they prayed about a friend situation last week. You could just say, Hey, Nikki, hope to see you at youth group tonight. By the way, I've been praying for that situation you shared in youth group. Hope you and Amanda are getting along this week. I think that's appropriate. If it starts to like get really deep and personal and it's a very frequent texting and it's going back and forth and it's every single day or multiple times, like, you know, if it's starting to feel like you're, I think we've talked about this before, like being like the only person there for this student, and they're just emotionally relying really heavily on you. That's probably a signal like to back it up. And it doesn't mean you can't talk to them about the thing that they're going through, but the communication from that point should probably be just in person. So when you see them at youth group, like, hey, tell me about it and have a conversation. Like I catch students in the hallway all the time and chat with them, or you know, in the back of the junior high room when something a game is going on and we're just kind of in the corner chatting or right after group, there's still people meandering around, but all like, hey, like that seemed really hard. Like, tell me how you're feeling about it, whatever. So just use those and teach those to your small group leaders as well. Of just like, here's sort of what we're going for with communication with students. And if they ever have questions, just say ask if you aren't sure. Like we said, there should be no secrets between a small group leader and a student. You should know. If you're the youth pastor listening to this, you should know everything. Like, it's not like, oh, well, she doesn't want me to say anything. It's like, no, that's not how this works. Like, if it's your ministry, you should know everything. There should be no secrets. So, anyways, that's the texting rules. Uh, we already talked about having the windows in the classroom, keeping the doors propped. And then with that, one more thing to mention is we keep the bathroom doors propped open as well. This is normally a measure for shenanigans from students. We talked about this in our safety episode, but I think it's just one more measure of like one lesson I've just learned is when you're in youth ministry, most of the time privacy is just not a good idea in any sense of the word. Like, especially with junior hires, anything that has a little like privacy or a non anonymity.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Anonymity.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

I could see it in my head. I couldn't say it out loud. It's just not good, just doesn't mix. So keep those bathroom doors propped open because here's what we want people to do go in.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

This is assuming that you have a privacy wall that yeah, which I think most bathrooms do nowadays. Some of those single stalls don't.

Security Cameras As Deterrent

Training That Reveals Predator Patterns

SPEAKER_02 16:45

Well, do your best or put a security guard in the bathroom. I don't know, but I just think there cannot be too much privacy. I did a church audit on a church last year, and that was one of the first things I told him. He was having a lot of behavior issues, and I said, those doors, they've got to be propped open because he was having the bathroom issues. Like they go in, they know that they can like get away with all kinds of stuff, and they do all kinds of weird stuff. So keep them open. And then if your church does not have security cameras, I would highly, highly, highly recommend putting them everywhere. I cannot tell you how many times I have gone to our security office and said, I need you to pull up auditorium footage between 745 and 748 because I know that kid's lying to me. And I was right, he did hit him. But having cameras, I think, is also a really great deterrent for all kinds of things. Right. And you can always go back and fact check. I have solved so many crimes that way. It is beautiful because I don't know about you, but leader, like protection aside, students lie to me a lot. Right. And I just say, Okay, I'll be right back. And I go and I check and I say, Hey, you lied. Like, what's going on, man? Like, that's very disappointing. And why did you lie to me? Well, I thought I was gonna get in trouble. Like, okay, maybe a little bit of trouble, but now this is your character, like, this is a bummer. So, yeah, and it's also helped me help students who have been wronged. Like, hey, they stole my phone. No, we didn't. Well, where is it? I don't know, I didn't take it. So, so we're we just have no phone. The phone is just okay, let's go back and look at the footage. Oh, what do you know? You took it, then you slid it across the floor to that guy. Now that guy has it. Oh, what do you know? It's in the front pocket of your backpack. Thank you. Problem solved. Judge Wappner here. Do you remember him? Okay. People's court. Hey, quick question for you. Have you ever felt like you were working really hard in your youth ministry every week, but you don't know what the next step is or how to grow your youth ministry? Well, you are not alone. And that is exactly why we created our course and coaching program called Youth Ministry Growth Accelerator. Inside the program, we're gonna walk you step by step through strategies, systems, leadership principles that help ministries grow, both in size and in health. This isn't just theory, it's the exact framework we've used and taught to youth pastors all over the country and even globally. In addition to the course and coaching, you will also have the opportunity to join a cohort community where you can meet with other youth leaders who are on the same journey to encourage each other, share ideas, and stay accountable as you put things into practice. So if you're looking for a clearer path to grow your ministry, head over to grow your youth ministry.com to see everything that's included. Once again, that's growyouryout ministry.com. All right, let's get back to the episode. So I think cameras are a really, really good idea and for you to be able to have access to them. I don't know like what brand or system we use, but one great thing is it's always every camera angle is always up on a computer somewhere. So someone could be watching in real time, which they do a lot of times, but then if they like it records it up into a certain point. So I can always go back and look. And I've never had to use it for like leaders' bad behavior or an adult doing anything weird, but I have had to use it countless times to solve a junior high crime. Who threw that, who broke that, who did this, who hurt him, who hit that that person, who stole the phone. So it's just wonderful. You like, I don't know how I did youth ministry before security cameras. It was really, really hard. So yeah, those like have been very effective, all of these measures in my ministry. And at the end of the day, like we were talking before, trust your gut instinct. If you watch that ministry safe training, like we talked about on the last episode, it's I don't know if we did talk about that in the last episode.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

We didn't know. Yeah, we did.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

Okay, well, if we didn't, I'll go over it again really quick. So there is a company that does like sexual abuse prevention training. It's called Ministry Safe. And our staff, it's a mandatory training. You have to watch it. But it's pretty cool because it's hosted by I think their husband and wife lawyer team, who has tried many cases uh having to do with this subject matter. So they know like predatory patterns of behavior, predatory patterns of thinking. And it's very insightful because the average person doesn't think like that or look for those things, like you would miss it because you're brain's not even in that zone. And so they interview people who have been convicted of crimes like that. And they kind of like spill their, spill their beans, spill the beans.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

The beans are everywhere. It doesn't matter how they got there. Check the footage. One of them's lying.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

They spill the beans on like their methods. And it's kind of chilling to be honest. But it also is like, okay, thank you for sharing that.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Go back to your jail cell.

Trust Your Gut And Take Reports Seriously

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Yeah, because that is like things I would have never ever looked for or been aware of before. So I would highly recommend the training. I think it was really, really helpful for you and your team to go through. Because yeah luckily I mean I've been in ministry now for 23 years. We've never ever ever ever had an incident. So there's never been anything like that came close. So I feel like these prevention measures these trainings these policies trusting gut instincts hearing from the Holy Spirit listening to other people. And by the way, I didn't even say this but if a student like ever tells you someone makes them uncomfortable please listen to that. Do not dismiss them because that's a lot for a kid to say so investigate that. Don't just go like uh don't worry about it. You know? And so I feel like yeah nothing has ever ever happened and my hope and prayers nothing ever will but we work really hard at preventing that. But stay vigilant, you know people make little slips here and there like what did you mean by that? Why did you say that like why was that the first thing you thought of like what you know the little hints like Ephesians is talking about pay attention to those because the Bible also says out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. So it might not be just a little slip of the tongue that could be what is being harbored or you know in the heart. So pay attention to those little slips of the tongue that you're like that was weird. Like someone who I I don't know like you don't I can't make a blanket statement but also it's just like what's what's else is going on in there.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

But yeah yeah you just want to err on a side of caution and sometimes that might feel like overkill um but again it kind of comes back to what would you rather the headline be?

SPEAKER_02 24:45

Yeah.

Community Comment And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_01 24:46

You know you thought it would be fine and it wasn't and now someone's life is destroyed or maybe you're being a little overprotective and you might hurt a feeling or two but no one got hurt in the you know in the long run you guys if that if I'm saying it correctly. But anyways make sure you guys check out the episode we did obviously before this, but also the one we did all about safety for your ministry. Those are two good episodes um along these topics. All right we're going to do a community comment of the day this comes from Reese Rodriguez who says you guys are awesome. I was just hired as the youth director for my church and your videos have been so encouraging today.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

Yay I'm so glad Reese and congratulations on your job.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Absolutely thank you guys for watching and listening and we'll see you next time