I recently encountered a thought provoking quote regarding the impact that we can have on children. Apparently it’s a Chinese proverb. “A child’s life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark.” That raises several questions I’d love for you to ponder with me.

1. What pieces of paper are you intentionally leaving a mark upon?
2. What pieces of paper are you marking without much intentionality or purpose?
3. When was the last time you stopped to examine the marks you have made?
4. How satisfied are you with the marks you have left behind?
5. Who else, thanks to your permission, is leaving marks on the papers that you influence? (Personally, I’m thinking about media figures, teachers and coaches, and peers.)
6. How satisfied are you with the nature of the marks made by those others?
7. What have you learned about how you engage with and influence young children and adolescents? And how have you altered your engagement behaviors to reflect those lessons?

I don’t know about you, but for me, spending a few minutes reflecting on such questions is a pretty sobering experience. As much as I like to think I’ve applied some insights from research and experience in my dealings with young people, my objective analytical side suggests otherwise.

The research is pretty compelling in showing that the marks made on a person’s life before the age of 13 are virtually indelible. The early impressions we make go a long way toward shaping a person’s worldview, relationships, dreams, expectations, and core reality. Many of us treat our opportunities to affect a young person quite cavalierly – to their detriment as well as ours. It takes great discipline to look at each of our interactions with young people as moments of influence, perhaps even as defining moments, and to act with great poise and purpose. How we handle those moments of opportunity will go a long way toward developing the Church of the future.

For instance, England has a government agency – the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) – whose job is to determine whether or not someone should be barred from working with children. This vetting process applies to volunteers as well as paid staff. Each paid individual who will work with children at a church must pay ISA a one-time registration fee (about $100) to be approved for their job by the agency. (Volunteers must go through the same registration process but are exempt from the fee.)

Approval is based upon making it through the screening process without raising any concerns such as pertinent criminal convictions, other cautions listed in their official records, or additional red flags raised by police or intelligence sources. Any concerns that do surface cause the person’s file to go to the agency’s examination board, which will determine the acceptability of the candidate. The files of all individuals who are approved are then continuously updated through automatic database searches. Further, any suspicious or inappropriate behavior around children that is observed by or submitted to an employer must be reported in a timely manner to the regulatory agency.

Reflecting the seriousness with which the Brits take the health and well-being of their children, these regulations will apply not only to churches but to any organization that deals with children – health care, educational, athletic, social service and faith-based organizations.

In my own travels I have found that the lengths to which churches go to protect children varies substantially. Even in states where the laws are fairly rigorous, compliance tends to be inconsistent. There are a couple of important insights I gleaned from some research the Barna Group conducted on this matter. First, the safety and well-being of their children is one of the most important attractions to parents who visit a church. If the ministry does not impress the parents with its commitment to ensuring the security and care for their child, the parents are unlikely to return to that church, regardless of their reaction to the church’s ministry to adults.

Second, we discovered that churches that are most effective at helping parents to raise spiritually healthy and active children place such security matters at the head of its priority list. We saw that such churches typically go well beyond whatever the government statutes require in an honest effort to do “everything possible” to make sure that children are well taken care of while they are under the umbrella of the church.

Think about what you have seen or experienced related to the ministry to children at churches you have attended or visited. How adequately do you think we protect our children? What could we do better? Is there anything significant to adopt from the British approach?