Podcast Summaries

Carrie is going to share with us today, and I'm just kind of going to prompt her with some questions. But today we're going to be talking about safeguarding. Yes! So I'm sure that safeguarding is something that all of us have heard of, and different ones of us have encountered safeguarding in different ways in the real world. Maybe it's in a work context or in a church context, or hearing safeguarding represented on the news somehow. Today we're going to be talking about safeguarding within church life. But this is not safeguarding training, okay? You're not going to leave from today with a certificate. Instead, Carrie and I are going to be talking about why safeguarding is central to the gospel. Our intention today is to inspire each of us to see how safeguarding is not an additional extra to the gospel. It's not a boring and annoying impediment to the gospel, but actually that it sits right at the very heart of the gospel. And when we say, yes, so somebody just said yes. So if anything that's said today you agree with, as ever with Gloucester Vineyard Church, we would love to hear that affirmation. So if you agree, then like yes, come on, amen. Hallelujah. All of those things are good today, so let's have some of those. So today, so I've just used the word gospel a lot. Just to define that term, when we talk about the gospel, we mean the good news that Jesus Christ came to earth 2,000 years ago, that he became like us in every way, that he lived a fully human life like ours, that he announced and demonstrated the kingdom of God was arriving, that he was crucified, that he died, that he rose from the dead, he ascended to heaven and established the church, and so much more. That is the gospel, that's the good news. And we have the contention that our responsibilities to be a safeguarding church sit right at the heart of the gospel. And so that's what we're going to be unpacking today. But to start with, Carrie, why don't you introduce yourself? Oh, you haven't got a microphone, that's awful. I can shout. Yeah, very good. Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for inviting me to speak today. It's a good start. So I've been asked to tell you a little bit about myself and my journey as a Christian. So I was fortunate to be born into a Christian family and as a little girl went to a very traditional Anglican church that was kind of struggling with that move between tradition and modernity. And it wasn't always obvious to me as a little girl where God's vision for the world was in that space. It felt like people were going through the motions and it felt like it had little impact beyond the door of that church. However, I was lucky. My parents were always an amazing example to me of what God's love for the world looks like. And so I've really grown up admiring their approach to public service, the way that they cared for their family, their hospitality, their generosity, and just generally how they modeled servant-heartedness to me. So I have always called myself a Christian, but I think it probably wasn't until I was in my early 20s that I started to have a think about what that actually means for me and for who I am in God. I spent some time living in Leeds and was part of a really big church up in Leeds and felt quite out of place in that space. But whilst I was there, God really called me to have a heart for women who were involved in street sex work. And the way that God works is that he makes that possible. And so a few weeks after I'd been kind of praying around that, an organization called the Joanna Project came and spoke at my church. So the Joanna Project are an amazing charity who provide outreach and support to women who have been or are involved in street sex work. These women are some of the most vulnerable women we have in our communities. They're often placed outside the bounds of our communities. They're not seen as members of our community. They're treated appallingly by men. And they're also treated appallingly by the systems that should be there to protect them. However, the Joanna Project showed me God's vision for these women. And that vision was to provide hope, to provide love, and to provide dignity so that they could live a life that was full in all its abundance. So this is where God really showed me his vision for his love in the world and my role seeking justice within that. So fast forward a few more years, I moved to Gloucestershire and I still volunteer with a street sex work outreach organization. But God has also put me in a place of employment where I have the opportunity to shape the system that people facing disadvantage often don't get the best responses from. So this involves me spending a lot of time trying to persuade people that hold quite a lot of power that we need to do things better and we need to do things differently. It also involves funding services that provide physical safe spaces for people to live. So I feel really privileged that God has put me where he's put me in a space where he is using my skills and my passion for justice. I mean, right? Come on. So how cool is it to have Carrie speaking to us today? We've also invited Carrie to come and speak to us because you are Gloucester Vineyard Church's safeguarding lead. So could you really quickly share to us what you do as safeguarding lead and what exactly does that mean? Yeah, sure. So essentially I am helping Gloucester Vineyard Church ensure it's a safe space for people who we may see as being vulnerable. So this includes all of our kids, our young people and adults within our community who may have care and support needs. When we talk about care and support needs, what we're talking about that's kind of a legal definition. But essentially what it means is people who need support around practical things, financial things, emotional things, who just need that extra help to manage their lives to be independent. So this includes older people, it includes people who have disabilities or long-term illnesses, people with mental health difficulties and people who care for those individuals. So practically what that looks like in the church is involving that, making sure that we have an up-to-date safeguarding policy. So having a policy that is something that we follow in our practice that informs the way that we do things. It also involves supporting those who work and volunteer in the church with support and training to understand what those responsibilities look like so that we are all skilled to recognize abuse and neglect and safeguard everyone that comes to be part of this church. It also means listening to any concerns that come up, so seeking people who may need some advice and providing that advice and responding to safeguarding concerns in kind of timely ways and appropriate ways. But it also means sitting here and talking to you and reassuring you that it's okay to raise a concern if you're worried about somebody, it's okay to come forward with that because safeguarding is really a responsibility that we all have. It's not something that Emily and Daniel have as leaders here, it's something that we're all responsible for. More than that though, as Christians, it's our calling to follow Jesus who we can kind of see as the ultimate safeguarding champion and to make it our business to care about children and adults who are at risk of harm in this church. More broadly though, I think my role is also to be part of supporting GVC to be a place where we're all safe in all of our vulnerabilities and brokenness, where we are all invested in maintaining safety and where we can really cultivate a culture of care, deep care for each other and our local community. Brilliant. A quick show of hands, how many people encounter safeguarding on a fairly regular basis in their work? Yeah, so fair few of us have kind of heard about this. Safeguarding seems to be everywhere at the moment. I'm sure as we've just seen, we all kind of encounter safeguarding in some way, shape or form. Seems like a really big thing to me, but it also seems like quite a recent thing as well. Does anyone resonate with that? Like I can remember a time before safeguarding. Can you tell us a little bit more about where this idea, where this language has come from and why it seems to be everywhere? Yeah, sure. So in terms of safeguarding as a kind of legal thing and in terms of it being something that we have to do, so a practice, it is quite rightly an ever evolving thing. But if we look at it in kind of the last, kind of if we're thinking about history of safeguarding, then safeguarding children and the formal frameworks that we have for child protection have only really been around for the last 80 years. Sadly, as is the case with lots of legislation and policy change, it often comes from reviews of tragic circumstances. So circumstances where we get things wrong. So often the deaths of children have informed changes in policy and practice and legislation. So in more recent

In history, you may have heard the names Victoria Climby, Holly Wells, Jessica Chapman. Their tragic deaths have shaped the way that we protect children today. If we think about adults, then we've got a bit of legislation called the Care Act 2014. This established kind of what we know safeguarding to be today. It's what we call a statutory duty. What that means is that it's something that councils, local authorities must do, and they must do it in a certain way. So it sets out the way that we have to do that duty. It also provides us with definitions of different types of abuse and neglect that people who are particularly vulnerable may experience. But it also includes some types of abuse that we might not think of as being so obvious in terms of safeguarding. So things like modern slavery are included. Things like institutional abuse are also included. So for both children and adults, most of the legislation we've got has been put in place in the last 20 years or so, and is informed by continued tragedies, continued situations where things haven't gone the way that they should have gone. So we've still got a really long way to go, even though we've got this legislation. We've still got a long way to go to ensure that victims of abuse are heard and first and foremost believed. So our initial response needs to be listening, not making assumptions, not passing judgment, but taking concerns seriously when they're raised is really important. So it's been kind of interesting for me personally, just as I've been leading and managing in different contexts, to kind of see the rise of safeguarding over the last 10 to 15 years and see it come into more and more spaces. And one of the things that I've observed, I've kind of seen a spectrum of ways that organizations tend to respond to safeguarding. Some will kind of go to one end of the spectrum and kind of risk assess themselves into a corner and feel like, oh, we can't do anything because everything is a risk. And so we kind of don't do what we should be doing. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you see organizations who are almost kind of scornful of safeguarding and kind of almost treat it like political correctness gone mad or like a nuisance box ticking exercise that we have to go through. Something that's just kind of got to be out of the way, get out of the way, just do the safeguarding thing and then we can crack on. Do you see that? Do you have any thoughts about that? So I think I didn't feel like I can come here today and say that we get it right because I think we need to start by recognizing that this is unfortunately something that the wider church has historically got very, very wrong on individual and organizational levels. So there have been systemic safeguarding failures across the global church. And I find that personally really difficult to reconcile that we are all reading the same gospel and yet we are behaving in ways that are really problematic and harmful. So we have this amazing commission from God and a gospel vision for our role in the world as peacemakers, as those who care for the abused and the oppressed. And then on the other hand, we have historically seen the church as sites of horrendous abuse. We have seen faith be weaponized. We have seen hierarchies of power that have protected abusers. We have seen victims not be heard. We've seen victims not be believed. And we've seen things covered up. And we've got to do better. So I continue to pray that God really breaks through in that space. I've already told you that I grew up as an Anglican, so I'm not outing myself as an Anglican. But I'm really encouraged that the new Archbishop of Canterbury, who's also a woman, has a really strong record on safeguarding. I think it's absolutely intentional that that is a skill set within the person that they have appointed to such an influential post. I pray that her example will be a real model to the church in all its forms across the world. That we see through her that we're called to be a people that speak up. That we are called to be a people whose hearts are broken for those facing disadvantage and abuse. And that we can, through that, become a people who are deeply invested in changing the hearts, minds, and behaviors of those who abuse. Bringing it back to the practicalities of doing safeguarding well, I think we can overcomplicate it. We can get bogged down in policy, process, legislation. Although those things are all really important, they're there to support us to be safe. There's kind of a middle ground, I think, that's important where we locate safeguarding as part of our duty of care. And that's part of our duty of care to all in our community. It's our kingdom work. It's foundational to the way that we welcome people. Whether that's at Chai and Chat or on a Sunday afternoon here. It's part of the way we walk alongside people in community and meet people's needs. So thinking about how we do our home groups, how we have conversations over tea and toast, how we welcome families and provide them with clothing at Grow Baby. So I think if we can see this as foundational in our culture of modeling Jesus' example, our attempts to, as Christians, become more like him, then we stand the best chance of it not being just what we do, but who we are. Yeah, agreed. Yeah, yeah. So we've mentioned that Carrie is our safeguarding lead. I just wanted to take a quick moment to voice, some of you may know this, that being a safeguarding lead for a church is often a tricky job. And it takes a lot of hard work behind the scenes. And it's often not particularly pleasant. But as Carrie has shared, we do have a statutory duty to do it, but we also have a wonderful gospel duty to do it as well. So can we embarrass Carrie by saying thank you to her by giving a quick round of applause? And before we move on, I also wanted to ask you guys to commit to pray for Carrie in what she does, because she is doing something which is an enormous act of service for our church. And we really want to back her with prayer, don't we? Because we're super grateful for what she does. There's a lot that happens behind the scenes that most of us just simply won't know about. So please take a moment to say thank you to her personally as well. Gotcha. So Carrie, why don't you tell us, from your perspective, as a church and as followers of Jesus, what is the position that you think we should take? Why do you think that safeguarding is kind of core and central to the gospel? Sure. So safeguarding for me is about righteousness and justice. It's about how we reflect God and how that shapes our identity as being made in God's image. It's about a choice we have between either benefiting from injustices and our own levels of privilege, or being a people who want to follow Jesus by healing the brokenness of our world. I think it's what we're called to do as followers of Jesus. And for me, rather than it being something that's an additional extra to the gospel message, or an annoying impediment to the work of the gospel, I feel safeguarding is core to the gospel itself. It's a fundamental element of God's work in the world through history from the beginning of time. Our lovely Sarah calls it a gospel imperative, and I really like that word imperative. It is something we must do. These ideas we find woven the whole way through the Bible. They are seen in the interactions between God and the lives of people we meet in the Old Testament. Then at the core of the New Testament, we're presented with radical justice, which we see embodied in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. So as we read through the first part of our Bibles, the bit we call the Old Testament, we find ourselves in a story that starts with brokenness, starts with this beautifully created world going absolutely wrong. So where our relationship with God and with each other and the world was broken by selfishness and self-centeredness, and where humanity is forced to go on through human history trying to work ourselves out of that space, working out how to relate to God within that, the way we relate to each other and the world in a way that is good, just, and meaningful. It's an ongoing thing for all of us to work out. So interestingly, humanity throughout all of that never loses its God-given commission to govern the world on his behalf and by his wisdom. So what we see is hundreds and hundreds of years, generation after generation of humanity walking through life trying to work that out. Trying to see how are we going to live a good life? How are we going to function in this world that's broken? How are we going to relate to God?

to each other and the world. Thankfully, as with everything, we're not doing this on our own. God is not silent on this subject. So throughout the Bible, God reveals himself. He reveals himself to the people of the Old Testament in the form of instructions. We're given laws and principles on how we form communities. And we also see this in how he works directly through spokespeople that we call prophets. So he chose so many different ways of revealing himself and communicating his heart to the people of the Old Testament over the years. So what amazes me is that God doesn't just give cold instructions and commands to his people. In that, we see he reveals something of his nature and character. He reveals a deep longing and motivations. And we get to know more of God in his vision for righteousness and justice on earth. So if you use those words a couple of times, and they can be used to mean all sorts of things. So we'll start with the word righteousness. Are you going to use some ancient Hebrew now? Oh, I'm not going to say the word. Go on, you've got to do it. Give it a go. So I have heard the Hebrew word for righteousness, tzedeq. Yes. Thanks, Sarah. So we find that word in the Bible, and we can see it being discussed by people who know a lot more than I do as being about what is right and just in line with God's moral order. It's about our ethical standard for us and our relationships. Now on to justice. So we associate the word justice most often with the concept of someone facing the consequences of their actions. But in the Bible, the Hebrew word for justice is used to build an understanding of the just nature of God. And most of what we see in the Bible is all about restorative justice. It's actively seeking out vulnerable people who are being taken advantage of and helping them. It's about charity. It's about advocating for the vulnerable, challenging the structures within our society that maintain oppression and disadvantage. If we look at the book of Micah, this is spelled out really clearly. So Micah 6 verse 8 says, God has told you what is good. Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God. Simple, right? If we look at the instructions that God gave to ancient Israel about how they should organize themselves as a society, there is an incredible weight towards the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, and the victim. Of all the instructions that we have written in our Bibles, those big long lists of commands that we find in books like Deuteronomy and Leviticus, about 35 to 40% of them are all about restorative justice. They're about being compassionate, about being in active community that prioritizes care for the victim and the oppressed. And that's a huge proportion if we think about it in percentages. What's more, we don't think that the laws and commands and instructions we have in our Bibles is everything that we need or that ancient Israel would have needed to create and run their society. There were many more instructions that we just don't have access to anymore. So it's really striking, I think, that the commands that we do have are the ones that have been passed on. These are the ones that have been prioritized in communication and I think that's important for showing us so much of God's heart. There's a phrase that crops up in our Bibles again and again in the Old Testament when we are looking at God's heart for the poor and the marginalized, and that's around the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner. So Deuteronomy 10, we hear, he ensures that orphans and widows receive justice. He shows love to the foreigners living among you and gives them food and clothing. So you too must show love to foreigners, for you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. And in Psalm 68, we hear, Father to the fatherless, defender of widows, this is God whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families. He sets the prisoners free and gives them joy. So this little phrase, widow, orphan, and foreigner, I think can be used as a bit of a kind of catch-all for all of the most vulnerable members of our society. Those that don't have stable home situations, those who are at risk of harm or abuse because they don't have adequate protection or because they don't belong to any of the existing systems or can't access those systems. God makes it really clear to us that his community should care very deeply for those who would be considered vulnerable for whatever reason. And so for me, it's also been something that I have seen really clearly in Jesus' ministry in the early church. So when he began his public ministry and announced his mission to the world, he quoted a passage from one of the Old Testament prophets and he applied it to himself and to his ministry. This is in Luke 4. He says, The spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of the sights to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour. We also see Jesus' brother James writing to the early church and he wrote this. It's in James 1. Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. So I think whenever we hear that little phrase in our Bibles, when we hear of widows, orphans and foreigners, we should immediately think of this kind of broader group of vulnerable people. So I think it's really helpful for us to identify that safeguarding is all about vulnerable people. However they are vulnerable, however they're at risk of harm or abuse. And I think there are so many examples that we could have put in our chat today from the Bibles, so many verses that talk to the topic of safeguarding. And throughout the message is so clear. So I think communities that seek to represent God faithfully should structure themselves in such a way that the vulnerable are cared for, that they're protected, they're provided for and they're championed. I really believe that we are called to be a people who live a radical and selfless way of life rooted in our understanding of who we are in God and our knowledge of what Jesus did for us. God declared Jesus the righteous one in death, but he came back and offered us all the chance of righteousness. Even though we're selfish, we're broken, we're guilty of benefiting from injustices. And for me, this is what should compel us to seek justice. Because even though we all fall short, we all have a part to play in the restoration and healing of our communities and our world. So I think if we want to be a faithful Jesus community representing God's heart to the world, then care and attention towards the vulnerable is not an optional extra for us. It has to be at the core, a defining feature of who we are. So we're called to be a community who asks, who are the vulnerable people around us? And how can we best serve them and care for them? So for me, this is why it's not only a duty for us, but a part of our joy to take safeguarding so seriously in everything we do and see it as just a core thing that we do as Christians. Because in looking out for the vulnerable people inside and outside of our contexts is in absolute parallel with how God looks at the world and what he expects his communities to be doing. Amen. Come on. Isn't that good? Embo, what's happening with the kiddos? Are they going to stay over there? Okay, great. So if you've got kids over in kids' church, they're going to stay over there. We're just going to take a couple of minutes to wrap up, just going to get really, really practical. And then we're going to pray to finish and then go over for tea and toast. So to wrap up, one of the things we highlight fairly regularly is how people can report a concern if they have one. We have a nifty email address, which is safeguarding at glostervineyard.org, where you can email Carrie directly and you can highlight your concern to her. Could I just make a quick request that unless the concern is really, really urgent, we don't bring them to Carrie on a Sunday whilst she's here. It's really kind of compassionate and kind to Carrie to put that in.

email. I'm not responding to anything by the way. No one's done this. But as I was writing this I was thinking, oh if I was in Carrie's shoes that would be just the worst. So let's respect Carrie as our safeguarding lead. If you do have something you want to raise, please use that email address and let Carrie just come and worship because this is her church community. Carrie, is there anything you'd like to say about highlighting a concern? When should people be thinking they might need to do it? And yeah, when should they be thinking, oh I might need to talk to Carrie about that? Yeah, sure. So really, anytime you are worried that an adult who you think has care and support needs or a child, so just a reminder about care and support needs, that's about an adult who you think might be vulnerable for whatever reason, or a child is at risk of abuse or neglect. You do not need proof of that. You do not need evidence of that. Please don't go all Agatha Christie and start investigating anything. You just need to have a reasonable cause to suspect that somebody is at risk of harm. So even if you are unsure, it is always better to bring it to a safeguarding person. So it's always better to highlight it than not. I'd also say that even if something doesn't then transpire to fit that kind of legal definition of safeguarding that does have kind of certain parameters, actually there might be something that as a church we need to be doing on a pastoral level to support that person. What if I have a concern about someone who's a friend of mine or a fellow church member that I know and love? Surely raising a concern, that's going to make things awkward, right? Should I just keep it to myself? None of my business? See if it gets better on its own? No. So as we've said today, it's our business. In fact, we're commissioned by God to be right in our relationships and be active and intentional in our care and our pursuit of justice. So this may well look like raising a safeguarding concern. The Bible is quite clear that this stuff is hard and in a worldly sense this stuff is costly and it's hard and yes, you may feel awkward. But the Bible also reassures us that in a kingdom sense we are told, blessed are those who fight for justice and blessed are those who thirst for righteousness. And where would you send people if they want to know more? You've talked about righteousness and justice as about being kind of core themes in the Bible. If that's fairly new to us, if we want to dig deeper on that, where can people go to find out more information? There is a great video that the Bible Project have on justice. So I'd give that a Google and have a watch of that. But then my other encouragement is really just when you're opening your Bibles, when you are reading those passages, just keep in the back of your mind like where is God's vision for justice in this? Because it's everywhere. Okay, is there anything else that you'd like to share with us before we wrap up? Anything you'd like to share before we wrap up? I think just to kind of what we said earlier, safeguarding is really rooted in that kingdom vision for the world, for our community, for Gloucester Vineyard Church. And that in creating communities of hope and joy, we need to be rooted in safety. So it's imperative that we are creating a safe space here for all of us in all of our vulnerabilities, in all of our worldly brokenness, so that we can cultivate that culture of deep care for each other. Brilliant. Let's say thanks to Carrie again. Wasn't that amazing? Thank you. Thank you.