Providing skills and safe places for discipleship

  • Scouting Ministries provides safe environments
  • Scouting Ministries provide opportunities to learn life skills
  • Scouting Ministries provides a social learning environment

Every Scouting Ministry partner program participant must pass a background check, receive training, and follow the rules for keeping youth, adults, and organizations safe. BSA, Girl Scouts, Camp Fire, and Big Brothers Big Sisters have each spent time and money developing best practice safety rules. They are specific to the program and activities. The General Commission on United Methodist Men chose these partners because of their excellence.

Each of our partner programs offers a unique path to gaining life skills. Girl Scouts Journeys explore what matters most to the girls. They are multi-session experiences in digging into interests and skills. These hands-on activities put girls far ahead of their peers in managing ordinary life and living extraordinary lives.

BSA uses merit badges to provide skills necessary for life. When an adult asks, “What would we do if the power goes out to get food?” You know they have not been a Scout. Troops, Packs, Crews, and Ships all learn the basics skills of life. These set them apart from the crowd. They can cook, speak publicly, and manage life in a group. It is one thing to share life in a group. It is another to share life in a tent or on a boat.

Big Brothers Big Sister provides for monitored mentor relationships. The “Big” brings life experience and listening to the relationship. In the church, we often do the same at confirmation. Matches change lives. But why have intentional mentoring only at confirmation?

While confident that youth can learn in school, sports, and church groups, these programs offer a leg up. Faith is a component of each. Life skills are exercised safely. These programs extend over the years.

The safety measures are continually updated. The programs changed for relevance. The cost is an investment shared across the program. We have few churches or conferences with the where-with-all to take on such a task.

Wesley offered, “The church changes the world not by making converts but by making disciples.” Jesus took three years to make adult disciples. It makes sense for us to provide as many possible opportunities for youth and adults to connect in discipleship. It takes time.

Moving from Church to the Field

We are a Wesleyan people. There is still much to learn from John Wesley’s experience in growth and submission to the will of God. His journals are a powerful tool for us to learn and grow. At the least, his writings can give us a context for today’s church.

It was 1739. John Welsey was invited to preach with Mr. Whitefield in Bristol. Wesley did not want to go. He was “fully employed” already. We are often busy with the work of the church when God calls. It even came down to casting lots “and by this, it was determined [John Wesley] should go.”

John Welsey was a pious man, “tenacious of every point relating to decency and order”. He writes “that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church.” Given the move of society today as then away from the church, the kingdom of heaven will be slim if this sense of righteousness continues to hold sway.

After preaching about The Sermon on the Mount on Sunday, thank God alone that Monday came. John Wesley records a profound moment.

Monday, 2. At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people. The Scripture on which I spoke was this (is it possible anyone should be ignorant that it is fulfilled in every true minister of Christ?): “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” [see Isa. 61:1, 2; Luke 4:18, 19].

“I submitted to be more vile”

John Wesley

Do you realize it is Monday for the church?

Are you willing to give up being in the church to be the church?

God seeks ministries that go into the fields, the streets, and the world. The Sermon on the Mount was not preached in the synagogue or the temple. Wesley’s submission to be more vile reached 3,000 in one day and thousands beyond. We have examples and models who showed us how. Why wait?

Are you ready to be more vile?

It is four o’clock somewhere.

Summer is here, and so are summer camp and VBS

If you are a parent, guardian, or just someone who cares about youth there are things to think about this time of year. Are you sending a youth off to camp, VBS, or day camp? Are you participating as a volunteer? Take a minute to think about safety.

Questions to as yourself:

  1. Are all leaders background checked, vetted, and trained? Is the organization willing to share its policies on adults engaged with youth? If you are a volunteer insist that background checks and training are done. A trustworthy organization will not have a generic policy but one specific to the location and activity base in which they are engaged. They will share it freely. Ask.
  2. Are the older youth who help or staff trained as well? Are they alone with younger youth? What is the policy? Youth-on-youth abuse is a concern that must be addressed. Training and monitoring are required.
  3. What is the policy on bathrooms, changing spaces, and privacy?
  4. How does a participant report a problem? What is the reporting policy for the organization?
  5. Have you talked with your youth about what is appropriate behavior and not? Do they know who to talk to if they experience a problem?
  6. When were the policies last updated? Safety is never a one-and-done.

The General Commission on United Methodist Men encourages you to take safety to heart. A week of camp can be a life changing experience for the better. It can also be the crushing experience that leaves scars. Much like buckling the seat belt, checking out the youth policies or safe sanctuary policies of the organization is critical to a safe experience.

Learn more about safe partners

Time for a Relationship

For the last 114 years, Methodists have sought to provide learning opportunities for youth through Scouting. Before the Boy Scouts of America was formed, some Methodist churches across the United States saw the value in living experiential lessons and the practical application of servant faith. They started Scout Troops. When BSA was formed, they joined.

Boy Scouts continued to pour resources and training into the volunteers who serve. Positions became more specific and structured. Two deep leadership, Youth Protection, Parents Guides(s) to Protecting Your Children From Child Abuse, and skills focussed training built high functioning, fun, and low problem groups. Safety increased rapidly and abuse descreased. These susccesses led to two unique outcomes. Many volunteers stayed with the Scouts long after their own children grew up. And BSA groups slid from the focus of most churches who supported Scouting before. BSA had served so well that the church did not see a need to provide focus on the youth and adults in Scouting.

The BSA bankruptcy changed the perception. 84,000 of claims of abuse were leveled at the BSA a majority pre-dating the 1974 CAPTA Act that addressed child abuse and neglect. The harm done needed to be recognized and justice served. Providing program for children and families to grow could only happen if the past taught the harsh lesson. The realization that the focus had shifted within churches became front and center. Many churches recognized the need to embrace ministry in community safely.

With the approval of the court to proceed with the restructuring, it is important for the church to stay in the safe agreements. It is also important that we live out our faith in community. Scouting is a perfect tool for time together. There is an expectation of Duty to God and Reverence. As BSA has made clear, the faith community should attend to the spiritual side. Our agreements commit the church to pray, hold Scout Sunday, and serve with Scouts. These are simple but fruitful ways we serve. It is important for the church to do for the least of these as Christ directed. Faith goes well beyond the legal agreements and into the eternal relationships.