Creating Safe Churches

MOBC offers a wide range of activities for children and young people. These include a Sunday morning children’s church, clubs for boys and girls of primary school age, and a youth group for teenagers.  All of these run with the help of a large number of volunteers, who commit substantial time and energy to providing entertaining programs that the kids enjoy.

At MOBC, we affirm that children and young people are precious to God. We also affirm that they are vulnerable and in need of our protection. With this in mind the church has a Child Safe, Child Friendly policy to help safe-guard children and young people while they are in our care.

All volunteers seeking to help with children’s ministry are required to complete a Working with Children Check and to sign MOBC’s own Ministry Covenant. The Covenant amounts to a promise to behave in a godly way and to take steps to grow in the Christian faith.

In addition to the above, all volunteers are expected to complete training that is offered by the Baptist Union of New South Wales. ‘Creating Safe Churches’ is a five hour course covering the creation and implementation of safe programs for people of all ages. A refresher course is offered every three years thereafter, to provide updated material.

Pastor Benita, and a group of volunteers, recently attended the course that was held at Narwee Baptist Church, with some undertaking the training for the first time and others completing the refresher.

MOBC is also involved in providing Special Religious Education, or Scripture, at Oatley West Public School. All volunteers who participate in this program must now undertake training in four key areas. These are, “Teaching SRE in public schools”, “Preparing and delivering a lesson”, “Classroom management” and “The learner and the teacher”.  Recently,
five of MOBC’s volunteer teachers completed this training, and there are others who will do so later this year.

Further to our commitment to provide for children and youth, MOBC actively encourages volunteers to take advantage of other training that is available. Recently, six volunteers attended the Children’s Ministry Training conference that was hosted by Sydney Missionary and Bible College (SMBC).  This fabulous day of teaching, recognised the children in our church as people who need to learn about God just as much as everyone else who attends. Keynote speaker, Ray Galea, spoke from John chapter 10 about “Shepherds, Sheep and Being Sure”. There were also electives on, “Making application engaging”, “Resourcing parents”, “Maintaining a healthy team” and “Praying with children”.  All in all it was an inspiring day, full of good advice and encouragement.

MOBC is rightly proud of the many volunteers who work hard so hard to make for safe and successful children’s ministry. We acknowledge that they give their time and energy, week after week, and then go the extra mile to complete the necessary training.

Well done to all those involved. And THANK YOU VERY MUCH.