The concluding membership statistics in our 2008 Annual Report revealed that fully 20% of our congregation is under 12 years of age. That’s 100 children. One with two zeroes! All one need do on a Sunday morning – particularly at an 8:30 service – is to look at the numbers of children on the steps at Children’s Word, witness the swelling ranks of the Children’s Choirs, take a peek in the nursery, or look around at the Sunday School classrooms. Kids are everywhere. Hallelujah!

As a pastoral and ministry staff, we have lived by and publicly proclaimed to you that “Phinney is a safe place for kids.” The congregation has worked hard to make it so, instituting great procedures around boundary training for adults who volunteer over the past 10 years. We have also worked to assure that our staff understands and lives by important safety standards for the well-being of our youngest members. But there is also a downside in our conversation about being a “safe place.” This motto can create a false sense of safety among parents and adult caregivers who regularly bring their children to worship and other activities in the building.

But because I care so very much about your children, I feel compelled to help you understand what we as the church staff get anxious about whenever children are in the building. We believe and practice our ministry with the understanding that parents, guardians, or those who bring children to our church are always the primary caregivers. We believe it is essential, in order for our church to be a safe place that some basic guidelines be followed. These guidelines are even more important with our building under construction, its usual landmarks and familiar surroundings changing every day, and the assumptions about how to get from one place to another being challenged due to the changes made during the remodeling.

No child being brought to church for any activity should ever be sent into the building alone. A child should either be in the care of a parent or their caregiver until the adult in leadership of the activity acknowledges the child’s presence.

When an activity concludes – class, choir, nursery, etc. – the staff person in charge will not discharge a child into anyone’s care other than the parents’ or the person who brought them to the activity. Unless otherwise instructed, you can meet your child where you dropped them off. No child should leave worship unattended. The building is simply too large and too complex to assume that getting to a drinking fountain, a rest room, or any other spot and back is something a child alone can master. During worship, the building is wide open for anyone to come in and any child to walk out. We will soon be gathered as a congregational family for all activities on the 200 level and these spaces are not as familiar to most PRLC kids.

Sending a child from one floor to another for a rest room or a drink is not wise. This is currently a necessary occurrence due to construction. Please accompany your child. When we say that Phinney is a safe place, we as staff people do not wish to create the false illusion that we can prevent the unthinkable from happening. We have been violently vandalized recently. Purses, wallets, money left unattended have been stolen. Food regularly disappears from our refrigerators and storage areas. Bad things happen to good people.

What we DO mean when we say Phinney is a safe place is that we as a staff and as a congregation are going to take every precaution that is reasonable to make our facility, our activities, our ministry as welcoming, inviting, friendly, and hospitable as we possibly can. For this, we need your help.

Thanks for all that you do to keep our congregation both welcoming and safe. And thanks for your willingness to form great habits of care and nurture during this time of construction and disarray. They will carry us forward with great new standards of care for that cherished, new 20% of our congregational community of faith.