February 15, 2021 Show with Vince Hinders on “Child-on-Child Sexual Abuse: Responding in the Context of the Local Church”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation, to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 15th day of February 2021.

I want to thank the hundreds of you who have expressed birthday wishes to me.

My birthday was yesterday, my 59th birthday was yesterday, or as I should say, according to a very close friend's grandson who's seven years old, my 1 ,000th birthday, and I just want to thank the hundreds of you who sent in birthday greetings on Facebook.

Actually, it was the same person who was a stalker, but I'm only kidding, but thanks for making my day even more special, and I want to thank the

Richardson -Ignacio family here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, for making my birthday very special over lunch after worship services, and I just thank

God for dear friends like you. But, now that the introductory remarks are over,

I can now come to a point where I doubt I'll be saying anything amusing again, because we have one of the most serious issues that we are going to discuss, an issue so serious that it actually made me feel queasy promoting it in writing, but it's something that needs to be discussed, especially by the

Church, if we are going to be good stewards as the

Body of Christ over the responsibility and privileges that God has given us as the

Church, and if we are going to be more prepared and equipped to protect those most vulnerable amongst us, especially being little children, from harm.

So, today we are going to be addressing child -on -child sexual abuse, responding in the context of the local

Church. We have addressed all kinds of abuse situations on this program.

We have addressed spousal abuse. We have addressed sexual abuse amongst adults.

We have addressed pedophilia, the wicked, satanic sin of an adult molesting a child, and very often sexually.

But we have never addressed before specifically child -on -child sexual abuse, although it was a part of an interview that I conducted a number of months ago on protecting children from sexual abuse.

That was just a very brief side issue that came up. It may have even come up through a listener question.

But today, the focus of our entire program is child -on -child sexual abuse, and to discuss this is a first -time guest,

Vince Hinders, who is Executive Pastor at Redeeming Grace Church in Fairfax, Virginia.

It is my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trumpets Iron Radio, Pastor Vince Hinders.

Thank you, Chris. It's a pleasure to be here, and you're right. It is a very difficult topic to talk about, but I'm glad we have the time to talk about it today.

Amen. I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away in the event that they have questions about this very important topic.

It's chrisarmson at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And I could see a topic like this easily lending itself to people wanting to remain anonymous because the situation or the question of child -on -child sexual abuse may involve their own children.

It may involve children in the church where they are a member or any other scenario where there is personal connection to this very tragic situation.

So, obviously, you may feel free to remain anonymous. If it is a general question, I would ask that you at least give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

That's chrisarmson at gmail .com. And by the way, Pastor Vince, if you could, before we go into the topic at hand, tell our listeners about Redeeming Grace Church of Fairfax, Virginia.

Yes, so our church was founded in 1979. It was a kind of an overflow of the

Jesus movement of the 70s. It was a charismatic church initially, and that's what defined its theology.

But over the years, it became reformed and actually significantly reformed, and that's primarily what we are today.

We do believe in the ongoing gifts of the Spirit, but only under the authority of God's Word, and we are reformed in our soteriology and how people are coming to faith in Christ.

Well, if anybody wants to find out more about Redeeming Grace Church of Fairfax, Virginia, their website that I just had in front of me and seems to have disappeared, here it is.

It's rgcfairfax .org, R -G -C for Redeeming Grace Church, Fairfax, F -A -I -R -F -A -X dot org.

And God willing, we'll be repeating that later on in the program. Since you are a first -time guest,

Pastor Vince, we have a tradition here where every time we have a first -time guest, they give a summary of their testimony of salvation.

That would include the kind of religious atmosphere they were raised in and the providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them. So if you could, start with your personal testimony of salvation.

Sure. I grew up in Washington, D .C. in a large Roman Catholic family. I'm one of eight children.

I'm affectionately known as number six. And yeah, so we were a pretty classic family.

We attended church on Sundays. My mom was pretty involved in things. I was an altar boy.

And pretty much went along with the party line, so to speak, in terms of went to church, and we were involved.

But I don't think I ever really understood what a relationship with Jesus was all about. And when my family moved out of D .C.

to Virginia, when I was still in elementary school, I started to really question going to church at all.

And by the time I hit middle school, I stopped attending church. And that's really when my life began to really unravel a little bit at a time.

I became sexually immoral. I was drinking. I was doing drugs. I was also doing sports, and I did end up going to college.

But ever since middle school, all the way until I was 25, I basically just lived the way that the world wanted me to live.

And unfortunately, when I was 25, I was dating a few different girls at the time, and one of the girls got pregnant.

And when she asked me what I thought we should do, I, in a very cowardly way, said,

I'll let you make the decision, and I'll support you in what you decide. And she decided to have an abortion, and I paid for it.

And in God's sovereignty, that's actually the moment when I realized that I desperately needed a

Savior, because I always thought of myself as a good person. I never thought of myself as a murderer.

And yet, through that circumstance, God very painfully, but necessarily, revealed to me that I wasn't a good person.

I needed a Savior, and in His great provision, He provided one for me in Jesus Christ. And so it was about almost 31 years ago.

Praise God. And tell us how you came to know that you were called into the pastoral ministry.

That's a bit of a circuitous route. I was actually on my way to graduate school in England to get my master's degree in finance.

When I became a Christian, I did go there, but I already started to feel a call in my life to care for others, especially children.

Can't really explain exactly how God was doing all that, but ended up raising some money for Romanian orphans back in 1990, after the wall came down and the news programs were talking about all the

Romanian orphans, and I was in England at the time, and the BBC had done a big program as well, and ended up raising money for Romanian kids by riding my bike from the top of Scotland to the bottom of England.

It's called the End -to -End. To make a long story short, I donated the money, my son and I, to the

Romanian Missionary Society. They asked if I would be eligible to drive one of the trucks across Europe with the supplies for the kids, which

I did that summer. And when I went there, it just broke my heart, and I knew that God wanted me to try to help, and so I was able to get a job with World Vision International and worked in the

Romania program there for three years, and we adopted... my wife and I met over in Romania.

She was a Bible smuggler, and we met over in Romania. We got married pretty quickly.

We ended up adopting a little girl from Romania who's got significant congenital heart defects and problems, and when we came back to the

States, I ran my family's commercial real estate company, but the church asked me a couple years into that to come on staff, and I thought, well,

I just want to obey the Lord and do what he's called me to do, because when I gave my life to him, I told him,

I'm movable property. I go wherever you want me to go, and that was almost 24 years ago. Well, praise

God. And how did you come to the Reformed faith? I know you're going to laugh when

I say this, but I read my Bible. Well, that's a no -brainer there.

Honestly, and some of it is my Catholic background. I think I always knew that there was a big

God, but given the way that I had lived my life, and I truly was dead in my trespasses and sins, it was never a question for me that God saved me and that God was sovereign.

I had nothing to do with it in that sense. It wasn't me coming up with a good idea to choose

God, and yes, I did respond in repentance and faith, but I've never struggled with the

Reformed understanding of the sovereignty of God. Well, I rejoice that you have come to these precious truths and are now having them as a key focal point in your pastoral ministry as well.

Well, this, as I was saying before, is a topic, the kind of topic that you wish you didn't have to ever speak about, and unfortunately, not speaking about certain things leads to their perpetuation and also leads to the harm of others.

I think that parents do a horrific injustice and do great harm to their own children when they do not discuss things about sex that may make them uncomfortable and may make them leave that duty and responsibility to others, and unfortunately, our society for decades has come to believe that the state -run churches have a duty to teach children about these things, and they do so coming from ideology that very often is born right from the pits of hell, all kinds of evil and twisted and perverse and damnable and unnatural things that are promoted to children by state -run schools, and even, sometimes unwittingly, elements of this sex education curriculum is borrowed from even parochial so -called

Christian schools. I even have interviewed a woman,

Audrey Werner, who has been trying to alert and warn the more conservative

Lutheran denominations about their adoption of some of this stuff that comes straight out of Kinsey's textbook.

Kinsey, who was a very seriously evil and perverse individual, but it is a sad situation indeed when being squeamish or uncomfortable over something leads one to ignore a subject that needs to be discussed.

So I'm glad that you not only have brought it to my attention that you have researched this issue, but that you wanted to discuss it on my program.

Tell us what led to this, what led to you wanting to research this to begin with, which eventually led to a thoroughly documented and researched paper that you've written.

Yeah, shortly after coming on staff, we encountered a couple of situations in our church where there was child -on -child abuse, and during that time, we worked diligently, we worked as hard as we could, we weren't perfect.

We know we're not perfect in that way, but the effort was there, and we really wanted to try to serve these families because they were families within the church, and we're a close -knit community.

We share lives together, people vacation together, they live in the same neighborhoods, they watch each other's kids, they swap babysitters for date nights, and so when something like this happened in the church, it was a big deal, and it caught everybody's attention, and sadly, in a sense, we were surprised by sin, which coming from a

Reform perspective, we shouldn't be surprised by sin, but for some reason, I think when our children commit sin, sometimes we're surprised by that, and so when these things happened, we did what we could, but over the years, in the following years, after these situations came to light, over time, we realized that the families of the victims were not...they

were not happy with the care and the counsel that we had given them at times. I think they acknowledged that we did try, but they would have deemed us somewhat incompetent, and during those times when these things were happening, we were asking for a lot of input and advice, but to be quite honest with you, the other pastors that we talked to, the lawyers that we talked to, the counselors that we talked to, there really was not much said about how to actually care for both sets of families or both children in the context of a local church.

There's lots of information out there about what to do when an adult commits a crime against a child, but when you've got children that are sometimes within the same family or children that are very close and neighborhood friends as well, and so for the longest time, there's a real struggle, and several years after all these events took place in our church, these families joined together and sued us in a civil lawsuit.

They never claimed any criminal charges against us in terms of...we were never criminally charged with anything by the authorities, but it was a civil suit claiming that we really mishandled these situations, and as I was going through seminary at Reform Theological Seminary in DC, I realized, you know,

I'm going to spend some time researching this, and that's how I came to do the paper. Great.

Well, you have done the body of Christ a great service by creating this paper, and so tell us, first of all, about some of the statistics.

We're speaking today about child -on -child sexual abuse, and what are the statistics involving the percentage of child abuse that takes place involving child -on -child sexual abuse, and also, is there typically an age difference between the children involved with this?

Is this just total naivete amongst children who are voluntarily on both sides involved in this, because they're just unaware of the seriousness of what they're doing, and those kinds of things?

Yeah, I think probably the thing that stood out to me the most as I started to research this was, sadly, how common it is between children to have sexual abuse.

I think for me, growing up, and even being in the church, I was always sort of more aware of stranger danger, that child abuse was typically from adults that people didn't know, and yet, as I looked into this,

I realized that approximately 36 percent of the reported child abuse cases are perpetrated by other children, so that's over a third of the child abuse actually occurs child to child, and not only that, but about 90 percent of the children know their abuser, so oftentimes, it can be a family member.

That's about 30 percent of the abuser, so that can be parents, siblings, uncles and aunts, cousins, grandparents, but then also, a large majority is just other people that they know.

It could be neighbors, it could be people from youth sports, it could be church members, and so the statistics got my attention very quickly, and I realized, wow, nobody ever talks about this.

With regard to the second half of your question, it can happen between children of similar ages.

It's obviously most egregious when it happens between children of very different ages.

When an older child with more power forces himself upon a younger defenseless child, that's obviously a very serious situation, but the types of abuse can occur all throughout the developmental process within children, especially as they start to hit puberty.

Between the ages of 12 and 14, that's when a lot of exploration starts to occur, and that's when a lot of the abuse occurs.

As far as the percentage, when we hear about child -on -child sexual abuse, is it most often the more serious and actually criminal situation where you have an older child actually victimizing a younger child?

It's a little bit hard to say statistically because the statistics have not been well kept over the years either by the federal government or by state governments, and it's only been in the last maybe 20 or so years that the

FBI and others have even distinguished between abuse that occurs from an adult to a minor versus abuse that occurs from a minor to another minor.

So it is a little bit hard to find the actual statistics. It's also hard to find out because so many, up to maybe a third or two -thirds, probably

I misspoke, two -thirds of the abuse that occurs out there is probably unreported.

So it's a little hard to know, but anecdotally, as people have looked into this, they realize that in the younger ages, a lot of the inappropriate sexual contact is developmentally related.

People just exploring their bodies with other children, that sort of thing, and that's where a lot of the questions come in.

At what point does this become criminal? And I would say that certainly when there's a large age and power gap between the children, that's when it's most serious.

Let me repeat our email address one more time because this is a serious issue, and I want as many people to have the questions that they always wanted to know or always wanted to have answered but were too afraid to ask.

I want our listeners to ask them today. And as I said, you may remain anonymous.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

So you hear from a little child, perhaps, you're a parent, and your little child tells you that he or she has been involved in some kind of playtime that involves undressing or exposing themselves, and they may be even saying this to you very innocently as if nothing of consequence happened.

What should be the first thing a parent does? Yeah, I think that probably one of the things that we've learned the most is don't make decisions by yourself and alone.

There are some tremendous resources out there in terms of hotlines and groups that you can contact to explain the situations to them.

We find that our local police department is a wonderful resource. We can run scenarios by them, and we encourage parents to do that regularly, that when something happens and they feel uncomfortable or unsure, if there's any doubt at all, err on the side of getting some good input.

And if people are concerned about maybe speaking anonymously to the police, we typically keep a list of child counselors here in our area, and we encourage them to call one of them because they're also well -versed in these things and would know the right ways to report something if something was actually criminal, or be able to talk to them about different developmental stages for these children to help these parents determine what really happened with their child.

Well, as far as the very first thing, however, should you first contact if the parents of the other child or children involved in this activity or incident are known to you or are in your church, perhaps, should you contact them before you contact the pastor?

Should you contact them before you contact the police? What would be the situation with that kind of a thing?

I know that, I mean, I don't know this, but I would imagine it would anger me if my child was involved in something like that and I was not notified before the police were, but if you could, just tell us about that.

Yeah, and quite honestly, Chris, this is where it gets complicated from the very beginning because so much of it depends on the ages of the children, what actually is being alleged by the child.

So I'll give you a scenario. It's two five -year -old girls and they're downstairs in the basement playing house and one of the girls tells her mom, hey, you know, we were playing this game and, you know, we touched each other or so -and -so touched me.

How you handle that situation in terms of contacting the parent might be very different if the child was downstairs with a babysitter and the child says that the babysitter stuck something inside of me.

If you get the gravity of what I'm trying to explain here. Yeah, I'm assuming you're speaking about a babysitter that would be a child but an older child.

Exactly, and was the child eight or was the child 15? Was the child of the same sex or was the child of a different sex?

And so I think the gravity comes out in terms of what's actually being alleged and that's what can make these situations incredibly complex and difficult to navigate through because depending on what's being alleged, it might actually determine what your next steps are.

And as Christians, our default mode is always to walk in the light with one another and to do things in community and in fellowship and to respect a parent's rights to parent their child and to lead them and guide them, but when crimes are committed, it becomes complicated.

Now, if it is an activity involving children of, you know, five or perhaps you could even give me the cut off age when you think it's appropriate to keep it out of the necessity of contacting the police.

If it's a five -year -old saying that another five -year -old undressed or did something what is your first, what is your counsel for a first reaction?

Should you call the other parents first? Should you call the pastor first? What would be your input and when in your opinion, and it may be,

I know this is probably not an exact science, but when and is it necessary to call the police at certain age levels?

Yeah. And so I think in terms of it's very much a sliding scale in terms of developmental levels and how much a child can communicate.

And so when it's two children of the same age that are in the same developmental stages and depending on the nature of what's going on,

I think it's always wise and prudent to get the other parents involved in what's going on.

It is a sliding scale though, as the situation becomes with greater disparity between ages and power and the degree of seriousness of what's actually being alleged.

And so with regards to talking to the parents, yeah, typically I think in a developmentally appropriate age where people are trying to figure out, hey, this wasn't good, but we don't think a crime is committed.

Talking then to pastors or I would add in biblical counselors or some other child protective agency to get some help in navigating if there's any question about whether a crime was committed, because pastors aren't really the ones to adjudicate how a crime is being committed or whether a crime was being committed.

That's actually for the police. Now, one of the things that is concerning to me though, when you mentioned child protection agencies, we're in some very scary times these days, and we don't even know where the left especially is going to take this country as far as what is going to be deemed to be criminal activity.

I mean, we could reach a point even within this administration, who knows, where it is considered a crime for a parent to teach their children that homosexuality is wrong.

So shouldn't there be some caution about, unless you're talking about actual criminal molestation, a teenager versus a prepubescent child or just such a situation where there is obvious perversion and criminal intent here, shouldn't we try to keep these kinds of agencies out of the picture as often as we can and for as long as we can?

Well, we might have a disagreement potentially just with regards to God's provision of the authorities for us, and I don't deny the fact that things in our society are quite a bit different than what the

Bible would prescribe, and so I'm not saying that I don't consider that as well, but that's why

I think for me and what I tried to research in my paper was actually knowing what actually constitutes abuse, what actually is a crime, becomes actually a very important thing because as long as we can morally accept that something actually is defined as a crime, that should then give us the right pathway for how to deal with it, and so I think taking a couple steps back,

I think people need to be very aware of what does constitute child abuse, what does constitute sexual abuse in ways that the

Bible would describe it, and if it is actually criminal behavior, well then what are the authorities that God has set up to deal with crimes and criminal behavior?

And so conceptually, that's how I had to try to think about it because slippery -slope arguments of where things could go,

I recognize that there is at times high degrees of probability that that might happen, but at the same time, when we know that certain criminal activity has occurred,

I think we do need to find that pathway within the authorities that God has provided for us to see that these matters are dealt with fairly.

Yes, I guess the reason why I reacted the way that I did is that I know at least one pastor who adopted children in Massachusetts, and Massachusetts is such a leftist state that being a pastor married with children, married to somebody of the opposite gender with children, is a mark against you when adopting.

I'm not saying it's the same in every state, but they had to tread very lightly during the adoption process, and lightly and prayerfully, because they could have been prohibited from adopting because of the very nature of the fact that the adoptive parents are conservative

Christians. And I just have this very pessimistic view, perhaps overly pessimistic, but of agencies, depending upon where you live, looking for opportunities to remove children from the homes of Christian parents.

That's really why I brought that up. Well, and quite honestly, within the context that we dealt with here in our church many years ago, we had a very strong homeschooling movement within our church, and at the time, homeschooling was not viewed favorably within society, which is kind of ironic now with where we are with COVID and everybody's homeschooling their kids.

Yeah, one of the blessings of COVID. Well, you know, but back in those days, part of the problem that we encountered was situations where—and

I'll make this conversation a little bit easier—there were some very clear situations where an older child abused, sexually abused a younger child, and there was a significant age and power disparity between the kids.

There was no questions asked. And actually, the child confessed to the crimes.

He was prosecuted and all that as a minor. But during the time when we were initially discussing with everybody involved, both sets of families, because everybody knew each other, there was a great concern about getting the authorities involved.

And at the time, we made sure that the authorities were involved, and they actually adjudicated the situation properly.

But over time, people started having reservations about, why wasn't more done to it?

And so that's part of the nature of child -on -child abuse within the context of the Church, is that different people involved in the situation might view this differently.

And that, as a pastor, is one of the key challenges of, how do you help both sets of families who might view this differently?

One might view this as, hey, these are kids being kids, not in this particular situation I'm referring to, but typically this is where it gets very complicated, because not everybody views these situations the same way, even within the

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Give the gift of health and don't be a dead end to truth. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you've just tuned us in, our guest today is

Vince Henders, Executive Pastor at Redeeming Grace Church of Fairfax, Virginia.

We are discussing child -on -child sexual abuse responding in the context of the local church.

Our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

U .S .A., and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

We do have an anonymous listener who wants to know, perhaps you can tell us now when it is a crime for such activity to be involved with children that would require us just to inform parents and not necessarily the police.

Yeah, I think just even by the way that the question is framed, if it's a crime it needs to be reported to the police.

I think what she or he is asking is when is it a crime?

It's when you're involving children, when you're involving prepubescent children. Yeah, so there's a lot there in terms of, and that's why in my paper what

I say is I think we all need help from outside of ourselves to get clarification on what these things are.

So, for instance, every state has different statutes as to what constitutes a crime against a child.

And so there are certainly guidelines that the federal government comes out with that certain agencies come out with like the

CDC and others as guidelines, but every state has their own statute. And that's the point, one of the points of my paper is you actually need to know what the local statutes are in your area as to what constitutes a crime.

So it would probably be, well not even probably, it would be extremely wise for pastors and elders and deacons to become familiar with these facts even if nothing is occurring in the church right now that they know of.

Absolutely, because that's what happened to us is when it did occur we got caught basically not knowing all the details of how this actually works.

We didn't know what was considered to be a crime versus, oh, these are two kids, you know, acting inappropriately or a group of kids acting inappropriately.

And that's what led us down some of the wrong roads in terms of the counsel that we gave is that we didn't understand that some of these activities were actually criminal.

And that's where I said you need to understand in doing the research and in talking to different professionals in this area, biblical counselors and others that I've spoken to, like at the

Christian Counseling and Education Foundation, they were like, hey, you need to know what the laws are in your state.

Yeah, that organization has proven to be very valuable for me, not only to get guests for fascinating interviews, but to be of help to the body of Christ facing all kinds of issues,

CCEF, and I will hopefully have that website handy for our listeners as well to announce.

So tell us what does care look like for the families involved in the midst of a crisis like this?

Yeah, and that's a great question because care has to be viewed as a long -term thing because the situations involving the kids, and again,

I'm focusing more on when it was an actual crime as opposed to children inappropriately interacting with each other.

Not to minimize that, but that wasn't the focus of what I was looking into. But first of all, let's just take the children involved, and that's always the most important thing is to never forget the children.

If the child that was the victim in the situation has been in a situation where a crime has been committed against them, a sexual crime, even adults say it takes years to get over.

How much more a developing child when something like this happens to them, how grievous it is, how confusing it is, especially if it was somebody that they trusted and somebody that they knew or somebody who was a family member.

It's devastating and one of the things that we've noticed is that or in researching this is that there needs to be a care team around that child and that family so that they can be supported through this time because not only will the child deal with these things and need to, by God's grace, learn how to process through these things in a way that's redemptive, but the families are devastated, the parents themselves, the siblings, other relatives who might be involved in the situation or find out about the situation.

The whole range of emotions comes into play. Anger, fear, worry, just all the natural emotions that come across when great crimes are perpetrated, especially when it's done against one of our own children.

The desire for justice is strong in those moments and that's a good thing, but if it's not couched in biblical thinking, it can become vengeance.

It can become malicious. It can become hurtful and so I think caring for the victims is going to have its own particular special needs and this is why

I think having a care team and a plan that's a long -term plan for how to care for the families is really important and similarly with the perpetrator.

We believe in a redeeming God and we know that God can change hearts and I know

He changed my heart and He changes anybody's heart who comes to Him in faith and so if a child has committed crimes, we want to work with them and their family as best we can, but that child's going to be struggling with guilt and shame of what they've committed, but the family will also be struggling with, how are people thinking about that?

Who knows about this? How is it talked about within the context of the community? And this is when the complexities of this situation really come to the fore because a lot of times these families in the

Church have common friendships and so who's going to care for which family can inadvertently create sort of a dividing line or a wedge between other families in the

Church as we're all trying to do the same thing and that is to redemptively help both these families.

Now, other than the children involved themselves, who are other victims involved in this that we might not even immediately think of?

Well, going back a little bit to what you were saying earlier about, you know, who do we first tell? I've been made aware of a situation where a younger child came home and said that they were abused at somebody else's house and the other family was a very close family and the question was, should they call the parents or should they call the police?

And they ended up calling the police and they were glad they did because they needed to obtain the evidence for that and so who are the other victims?

Well, sometimes that's part of the investigations to find out, are there other victims? Because who else has that child been interacting with?

So just because one situation comes to light, it can sometimes be naive to think that that's the only time that it occurred.

It may have just been a situational event but it also might be something that's a pattern of sin in that child's life and that takes some discernment to figure that out.

When we come back from the break, the midway break, I'd like you to think about plans that our listeners should be informed about that should be put in place to protect other children from being victims.

And this is our midway break, folks, and as you know, if you listen to this show every day, the midway break is longer than the other breaks in the show because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to localize this show to Lake City, Florida geographically and they do so with their own public service announcements and other local announcements that they make during the middle break.

While they do that, we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials. So please use this time wisely.

Please write down as much of the information as possible provided by as many of our advertisers as possible so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize our advertisers and that will result,

God willing, in our advertisers wanting to stick around and remain our advertisers and that is going to,

God willing, lead to us remaining on the air for a longer future. We absolutely positively depend upon our advertisers and the finances that come through those advertisers to exist.

So please try to patronize our advertisers as much as possible and when you can't actually purchase a product or use a service or visit a church, please at least reach out to them and say thank you for sponsoring

Iron Trump and Zion Radio. That is if you do truly thank them for that and you want the show to remain on the air.

Also use this time to write down questions for Vince Edwards and send them to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name, city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. We'll see you next time.

I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear Saints at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Quorum who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in his

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That's hopereformedli .net or call 631 -696 -5711.

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Quorum, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

Chris Arnsen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, announcing a new website with an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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G for group, dot org forward slash podcast. Hi, this is

John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the

Arn Sharpen's Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions, while always defending the key doctrines of the

Christian faith. I've always been happy to point people to this podcast, knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet where folk won't be led astray.

I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide. This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised

Chris up for just such a time. Knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.

I'm pleased to do so, and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

Arn Sharpen's Iron financially. Would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?

I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at Arn Sharpen's Iron radio dot com, where you can click support.

That's Arn Sharpen's Iron radio dot com. We are excited to announce another new member of the

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In Psalm 139, verse 14, the psalmist offers praise to the Lord like this.

I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made and wondrous are your works that my soul knows very well.

He saw God's goodness and mercy, kindness and the beauty in what

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When the whole world is searching for a solution, God in his infinite mercy has given us what we need to address this illness, which can be pretty serious.

Such is the beauty of his design. Knowing that design, how can we not erupt in praise to our great

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Gary DeMar, president of American Vision, had to say about Iron Trump and Zion Radio recently.

Good to be back. Chris, I always enjoy our time here. I have to tell you, you're one of the better interviewers out there and I've been doing this for 30, more than 30 years.

Wow, that's some compliment. How much do I owe you for that? You don't have to owe me anything.

We're in good shape. I'm glad you said it on the air, so I don't have to brag about myself.

Tell your friends and loved ones about Iron Trump and Zion Radio, airing live Monday through Friday, 4 to 6 p .m.

Eastern Time, at irontrumpandzionradio .com. Lindbrook Baptist Church on 225

Earl Avenue in Lindbrook, Long Island, is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century. Our church is far more than a

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman and I invite you to come and join us here at Lindbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

Call Lindbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402.

Or visit lindbrookbaptist .org. That's lindbrookbaptist .org. As host of Iron Trump and Zion Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey.

Pastored by Alan Dunn. Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshipped and how he shall be represented in the world.

They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship

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.com. That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com.

Or call them at 908 -996 -7654. That's 908 -996 -7654.

Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Trump and Zion Radio. Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Ironson on Iron Shepard's Iron Radio.

I would like to introduce you to my good friends Todd and Patty Jennings at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

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Church, and to Christ. That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service at CVBBS .com.

That's CVBBS .com. Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio depends upon the financial support of fine Christian organizations to remain on the air, like the

Historical Bible Society. The Historical Bible Society maintains a collection of Christian books, manuscripts, and Bibles of historical significance spanning nearly 1 ,000 years.

The mission of HBS is the preservation and public display of ancient Scripture, dissemination of Scripture, to provide tools equipping believers and Christian apologetics with evidence for the

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James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here. If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know

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Before we return to Vince Hindus, we have some important announcements to make that I hope you make note of.

First of all, we've got a first -time guest on tomorrow, Jeremy Stolnecker, that I think will be a blessing to you.

Jeremy is going to be discussing his book March or Die Basic Biblical Principles in How to Find Hope in Adversity and he's going to be joined by a first -time co -host with me on my program to interview

Jeremy, Gabriel Wrench, who is a host at Cross Politics Studios.

So make a note to tune in tomorrow, February 16th, to that interview. And also, folks, if you love this show and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com

click support then click click to donate now. You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card in that fashion.

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Please try to remember folks that I have a great love for the church.

I have a very high view of the important, the vital role of the church in the body of Christ.

So therefore, please don't punish your own church financially by giving to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially by siphoning money away from your regular giving that you're accustomed to to them, your local church where you're a member in order to give to us.

In other words, please don't rob your own church financially to bless us. So, also, folks, please don't put your family in financial peril if you are really struggling to survive by giving to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Those two things are commands of God and Scripture providing for your church and your family. Providing for my radio show is obviously not a command of God.

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I thank all of you who have been doing that going all the way back to 2005. I have faithful generous listeners who have been giving every month sometimes sometimes even more than that to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I have new listeners or should

I say new givers new donors who have been giving recently for the very first time. I thank

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But if you are one of those that have been listening for a long time you're one of those tens of thousands of listeners that download the show every month who have never given please help us if you want us to stick around go to www .IronSharpensIronRadio

.com click support then click click to donate now. Also I have been instructed I'm so ignorant of technology

I have been instructed that I should be every day reminding our listeners if you are not already getting this program by podcast apparently there's a lot of people who think the only time they can ever hear the show is by listening live.

Now you can go to iTunes and subscribe to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio via podcast perhaps

I will get my webmaster to give me in great detail that information on how to do that very soon so that I can include that in my announcements but I am just totally ignorant of all that stuff.

So tell your family friends and loved ones that they can go to iTunes and subscribe to the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio podcast so you can make sure you hear it every day and I assume that will be the podcast is the day after the live interview.

Also folks if you are not a member of a local bible believing church I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the planet earth and I have helped many people in my audience find churches sometimes even within a few minutes drive of their own homes that they didn't even know existed all over the world.

So if you are in that category of not being able to find or not being aware of a good biblically sound church no matter where you live on the globe send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com and I may be able to help you find a church. And that same address is where you can send in a question for our guest today

Vince Henders who is executive pastor at Redeeming Grace Church of Fairfax Virginia.

We are discussing child on child sexual abuse responding in the context of the local church. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com

and Pastor Vince you may recall right before the break I asked you what plans should be put in place to protect other children in our churches.

You know one of the things that I think is really advisable for churches to do is to create a child protection advisory team that will actually look at your child protection guidelines for things that happen within the context of the church things like screening and supervision room layouts and things like that but that team can also then help establish some guidelines for church activities that are either formal or informal that occur within people's homes and off -site so for instance you might have a small group ministry at the church where children and families come together periodically for bible study or a community group and there's a need for the children to be separated from the adults so that the adults can have their discussion time that advisory team can be really helpful in thinking through what are some of the best practices to make sure that children are protected in that context who's watching them who's making sure that there's just a safe context for those children to be interacting with each other because much like we do when we gather together formally in church context at like a children's ministry or Sunday school classes we have two adult rules and we have bathroom monitors and things like that but the question comes in when it's less formal people having events together in their homes or on vacations together how are people thinking about those interactions with the children and making sure that children are kept safe excellent we have interestingly and I have no idea if these were connected to each other by those that have written in questions notifying each other but it's interesting that I've gotten two emails very close to one another who are asking about human trafficking sexual trafficking the first is just a request from Patricia Holbrook who is the assistant to the president at She is

Safe and she's asking me to arrange an interview with Michelle Ricketts and I would love to Patricia and I would already have interviewed

Michelle in the past so I would love to have her on again I remember finding her interview extremely valuable so thank you for that reminder and thank you for listening today and encouraging me that this is proving to be very compelling and fascinating to you and we also have a listener

Mary in Redding Pennsylvania who volunteers with ministries that are involved in preventing human trafficking and rescuing people out of it and she asks let's see here

I'm looking for the question here what role does

TikTok and social media play in the dynamics of child abuse that you were talking about yeah

I think we live in an age and especially kids growing up in the eye generation the iPhone generation where they walk around with access to the internet all the time

I think it's a real game changer in terms of the ways that children are exploited because of the internet

I think the internet can be a great tool but it's also it's got a lot of power and a lot of energy to it and I think so many of the studies that come out that talk about how children are being groomed by other children using the internet getting them to like each other getting them to befriend each other creating a safe space and a context for children who have bad intentions the internet can be used quite dangerously in terms of getting the attention of other children that they want to prey on and so I think the internet things like TikTok things that are sometimes even glorifying sexual behaviors or making light of things that the bible is very explicit about being not appropriate or sinful

I think these things all water down our culture and make it actually more susceptible for children to be abused yeah and the even more sinister satanic aspect of this is that social media is infamous notorious for adults pretending to be children luring children into sexual conversations or conversations that are intended to be a lure and a trap for actual physical contact for meeting up somewhere where the person on the other end of the computer screen is not a child of similar age but an adult so that's even more of a frightening and horrifying reality isn't it yeah and I think for older children that are trying to prey on younger children

I think they can sort of weaponize social media in terms of bullying them they can threaten them with saying bad things about them on the internet and that is such a powerful force right now for children

I think it really is a strong weapon that perpetrators use to or against potential victims so as a pastor what kind of pastoral counsel would you give to parents involving the policing for lack of a better term of social media and tiktok and everything else cell phones everything else that younger children are being given as a privilege these days that never would have had such privileges years ago it's just amazing to see prepubescent children walking around with cell phones and I understand the great value of that on one hand because you want your child to be able to call 911 or call a parent at any given moment at the same time this really dangerous level of liberty that is given to children with computers and stuff is getting out of hand but if you could tell our parents especially and even pastors who will be counseling parents about some guidelines in that area

I think one of the first things we do when we do parent equipping and discussions with our parents about computers and social media and things like that is going to sound sort of obvious but just reminding them that they're responsible for the safety of their children their minor children and that they really that's a god -given responsibility and so it's sort of not okay just to go along with what all the other kids in the class are doing or what the other parents are allowing them to do the parents have to have a conviction from God about how to train up their children the way that they should go and that responsibility is first and foremost to God but then it's also for the good of their children and so training those children how to protect themselves but then also training those children how to conduct themselves are both god -given responsibilities to parents and I think it really highlights the need for parents to stay engaged with their children throughout their upbringing

I think when parents become detached from their kids and more space develops between the relationship with the parents and the child some of it's natural as kids grow up we want them to learn how to make friends and do that but they need guidance in that time there's a discipleship aspect of this where we teach our children to know what's okay and what's not okay we teach our children to know how their body should or should not be touched we teach our children how they should or should not touch other people's bodies and if that is not an ongoing conversation that starts when a child is very young but then continues on through adolescence and puberty and on into adulthood as we are training them and equipping them to be responsible

God -fearing adults if that breakdown happens along the way those children will hear about this stuff from other sources and typically it's not good

I think that an important aspect of this as far as getting churches prepared to handle these situations ahead of time would be have have steps in place to have members mobilize to assist and at the same time it's very important to make sure that even though we want sufficient voices weighing in on the complex issues related to the perpetrator's behavior and these kind of sex crimes and so on we don't want to sensationalize it or create a culture of gossip if you could give us some counsel on both of those things yeah

I completely agree and I think that's where training and equipping members to be mature responsible adults in the context of the community that can carry one another's burdens that can provide godly counsel and care in difficult situations like this is really part of the role of the church and that is that we want to make and equip growing disciples of Jesus Christ who can really walk things out with people in the way that the

Lord wants us to and so I think the best resource in terms of caring for families caring for perpetrators helping parents navigate these things is really training our own members to be the counselors that God intends them to be so that they can effectively walk these things out in the context of community again in the way that God describes for us to be a body together that's knitted together and the reality is some parts of the body are going to be really skilled at helping in some situations and they're really going to help in situations like this and I think we have to create a culture in our churches where we are identifying those gifted people and then deploying them to be able to be used in these contexts in a way that's redemptive and really brings about the healing and hope that God intends for and prepare our listeners and our pastors listening and all leaders in the church what will happen typically when people in the church find out of occurrences of child on child sexual abuse what problems might arise between the families or within the church this is when it gets really really complicated because everybody in a good way it starts off with very good intentions everybody wants to make sure that children are safe and that should be everybody's common goal but how you protect children people have differing opinions

I'll give you an example so if a child has committed a crime he's been convicted of that crime as a juvenile but he has a sealed court record morally what's the responsibility of the church to inform other parents about what's going on with that child why is he being escorted when he's at a youth event why is he not allowed to be unattended while on the church grounds but it gets complicated when people say well they're going to have a birthday party and that child is going to attend do all the other families that are being invited are they all informed and I just give you that as an illustration it gets really complicated and so the questions get asked is my child safe can then morph into how about other children and what about other scenarios and when is this situation deemed safe in terms of interacting with this child and that's where a lot of the conflicts come in it can be conflicts not only between the two families involved or multiple families involved if there were many children but then also the families that get involved caring for either the victim or the perpetrator the web of complexity gets pretty significant at that point and so that's where a lot of the questions come out and that's why having a team of advisors within the church having some moms on that team having some otherwise level headed spirit filled members on that team can help navigate those waters with the people in the church so that everything doesn't all come down to the pastor having to make the decision about everything that's actually what you don't want you don't want everybody looking to the pastor to be the answer person for these very complex situations you want a team of godly members involved helping to lead the church through this we have an anonymous listener who says one of the reasons why

I am apprehensive on quickly calling the police in certain circumstances is by tragically having a teenage child who may be only one or two years older than another teenager who are involved in consensual sex as boyfriend girlfriend where the older child is being labeled for life as a child molester or sexual predator which although we would all agree as Christians this behavior is wicked and damnable but at the same time when it comes to the legal area of criminality

I think it is an injustice to label a child like that a criminal in such cases of consensual activity between two children yeah so that's a hard one to parse out a little bit because if it's consensual is the caller or the person that's written in are they now saying that the person is now saying it was not consensual and actually that a crime was committed against them no

I got the impression that the person was asking about let's say for example even though the listener didn't say this specifically an 18 year old boy is dating a 17 or 16 year old girl and or they may even be more seriously involved than just dating and they're involved in premarital sexual activity which no one as a

Christian who is a true Christian would view that as acceptable behavior it's wicked it's damning but at the same time if it was your own son for instance involved in this would you want him labeled for the rest of his life as a child predator or as a child molester because the girl involved happened to be younger and I'm assuming perhaps even the reverse could be true maybe a 18 year old girl could be brought up on such charges if she is dating or romantically involved with a 16 year old boy but if you follow

I'm assuming that's what the listener was asking about it seems fairly clear to me in the way it's written yeah and I want to be a little bit careful because once we get into 18 year olds we're actually talking about an adult with a child and so what

I was focusing on was more child to child stuff I can only speak anecdotally to this and I haven't looked into it a whole lot but and this is why

I do contact the authorities when there's two consenting young people who get found out about something

I'm not aware of anybody who rushes to the police to say anything about that I think they try to work that out in terms of the context of the church unless one of the people in that relationship actually claims that a crime was committed against them and so I'm not exactly so you're saying you're basically agreeing with the listener that when it's a case of consensual activity amongst teenagers that you shouldn't your first step unless you have any inkling that it's a crime where there was a victim who didn't voluntarily participate that you should hold off getting the police involved

I'm assuming that's what you just said well maybe let me say it a different way I'm not saying that all sexual sin has to be reported to the police by children

I'm not saying that at all I'm saying when a crime has been committed I think we have to think about what's the law's involvement there and I think some of this came out in the earlier part of our discussion where we were trying to look at hypothetical situations and that's why this gets a little bit hard because there are so many scenarios and that's why there's not a one -size -fits -all and that's why the results of my paper are

I think we need advisors in situations like this and so if a 14 -year -old and a 16 -year -old get caught having sex

I don't think the first thing that people need to do is to think immediately to call the police unless the 14 -year -old is saying

I was raped you know it's just a very different scenario so consensual versus rape those would be two different pathways

I would think in terms of yeah we have a listener who has been a guest on this program her name is

Dr. Latine C. Scott she is the co -author of a book called

Protecting Your Child from Predators How to Recognize and Respond to Sexual Danger and I interviewed her and Dr.

Beth Robinson her co -author twice on that book if by the way if anybody wants to look up those interviews afterward you go to ironsharpensironradio .com

and you type in the search engine Beth Robinson the reason why

I mention her is that I've only interviewed her twice on this issue whereas I've interviewed

Dr. Latine C. Scott many times on different books but anyway these two interviews will come up if you type in Beth Robinson in the search engine but we have a question from Dr.

Latine C. Scott who says please ask your guest if he thinks the woke culture has brought healthy or unhealthy attention to the child on child sexual abuse problem or has wokeness taken people's attention away from this aspect of sexual abuse in our culture since the emphasis is typically on adults it's a very good question

I think in general and I guess defining terms woke culture and things like that I think a lot of this stuff has just depicted how confused our society has gotten because the farther and farther we move away from the bible as our standard for how we think and how we live

I think it just creates more and more confusion and so I can see scenarios where quote unquote woke culture being more aware of victims actually could be helpful in some scenarios and yet at the same time

I think it can actually be devastating because there can become a witch hunt mentality where everybody who does anything inappropriate is now demonized sort of like your previous question saying hey the labeling that's going on right now the cancel culture that's going on right now

I think this can have devastating effects on children if we're not careful in how these things are applied yeah in fact

Latane went on in a clarifying email that a part of the woke culture the accusations of sexual abuse sometimes involve words and touches that could possibly be seen as harmless in days past and today they're being made equivalent to actual sexual harassment sexual molestation sexual assault if you follow what

I'm saying or if you follow what she's asking so it goes right along with what you said about witch hunt yeah and I think that can be very difficult and yet on the same side and here's where I think it really gets hard and I'm a father with three daughters so I am very aware of that and they're adults now but when they were growing up I was just always very aware of my

God -given responsibility to protect my child and if somebody did inappropriately touch them or if there was something not just sinfully but criminally done to them

I would want to be able to get after that and make sure that justice was served so to speak in that situation but this current climate where everybody can accuse everybody of all kinds of things

I think actually just muddies the water more and more and that's why we need the spirits help in leading us and guiding us in how we train up our kids but also in how we handle these things as adults and as parents and Latane Latane's question was very what should

I say was longer than what I read for the sake of time restraints so I hope that I read your question correctly adequately

Latane and thank you very much for submitting the excellent question and also I want to remind our listeners that Dr.

Latane C. Scott and Dr. Beth Robinson will be my guests guests this coming or should

I say next Tuesday not tomorrow but Tuesday the 23rd of February they will be my guests to address another book that they have written together a new book on teenage sexuality and how to approach that issue

I don't have the exact title in front of me if Latane you're listening perhaps you could email me that title so I have the exact title but mark your calendars for Tuesday the 23rd of February 4 to 6 p .m.

for that interview we're going to our final break right now and if you have any questions send them in now because we are rapidly running out of time chrisarnson at gmail dot com chrisarnson at gmail dot com as always give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter don't go away we're going to be right back with vince henders after these messages james white of alphanamega ministries here if you've watched my dividing line webcast often enough you know

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That's historicalbiblesociety .org, and now we are back with our guest today, Vince Henders, and Vince, how should the church leaders communicate what is known about the situation of child -on -child sexual abuse to others in the church, and what should be done if people want specific details about the sexual abuse?

They keep asking for more and more information. How do you respond to both of those?

Real difficult issues, especially when it's a child that's committed a crime, he's got sealed court records, there are limits to what you can say publicly about his crimes, and yet at the same time, there's a moral responsibility to talk to the other families in the church, and that's where, again, each situation is going to have unique characteristics to it.

It depends on who the child is, how prominent they are, who they're interacting with, what's their sphere of influence, all those things need to be factored in to decide what's the appropriate level of communication to church members so that they can also protect their children, because at the end of the day, protecting children is a significant responsibility of the church leaders, and so wisely knowing how to do that without unnecessarily labeling a child something that's going to be hard to come out from under for the rest of his life, yet at the same time, recognizing that there's this responsibility to care for other children, those are the types of things that need a multitude of counselors, and that's why, if I had to say one thing for pastors out there, these are really complex situations and you don't want to do this alone.

You want to have other mature women and men with you, helping you to make these decisions about who to communicate with and what to communicate, because some people will want to know information that you're not at liberty and or shouldn't disclose to them, yet at the same time, there can be the opposite error, and that is not saying enough so that children aren't actually protected, and there's a balance there.

And of course, the Scriptures put right among some of the most damning and serious sins.

The Scriptures list gossip as one of them, and we have to be very careful not to use these horrible incidents, troubling occurrences, as a reason for what people might use as juicy gossip, if you follow what

I'm saying. Yeah, and sometimes they even hear about it, sometimes because somebody involved in the situation might just be speaking too freely about it, so sometimes they're pursuing gossip, sometimes they're sort of just exposed to it, but then they have the dilemma of what do they do with the information that they've been told, and that's when the questions come, and that's when the phone calls come in.

Hey, I heard such and such happened. Hey, you know, who else knows about this? What else is being done?

And that's where being able to have a team of people who are there with you, it really calms the situation down quite a bit when people know that a handful of mature, godly, respected leaders in the

Church, including women, are involved in the situation.

And quite honestly, a lot of times moms involved or who hear about this want to know that other women's voices are being heard in the discussion about how this is being handled.

Now, how do the leaders of the Church monitor how the situation is affecting the Church members?

Yeah, and I think that's where just a lot of hands -on pastoral ministry where we're following up with people on a regular basis, and I think as we expand the circle, we follow up with people.

We ask them good follow -up questions, especially for the care providers. Hey, how are you doing with this?

It's a weight of responsibility to know this information. How are they doing? And then if we start to hear things coming to us, not through redemptive channels, but more likely through hearsay or gossip, then we go back to the source, or as best we can to the source, to let them know that that's inappropriate behavior in God's community.

Well, I'd like you to summarize in just about two minutes what you most want etched in the hearts of the minds of our listeners today.

Yeah, I think for the listeners, and especially I'll just talk to the pastors out there, you know, when crimes are committed against children, it's a really serious thing, and we don't get trained for all the different nuances of that in seminary, and most likely we don't have that kind of professional training in other aspects of our lives either, and so taking the humble path to make sure that you get the help that you need as a leader to lead your

Church effectively, to ensure that victims are properly cared for, that perpetrators and their families are dealt with fairly and justly.

These are complex, multidimensional situations that require a multidisciplinary approach, and what

I mean by that is make sure you have other wise, godly counselors who have some specialty in these areas coming alongside you so that you do this together as the body of Christ, and so that would probably be my biggest thing, and at the end of the day, don't forget the victim.

Do not forget the victim. These are children who've been sinned against, who need to know that their

Church cares about them. Church loves them, and they're going to protect them, and they're going to watch over them, and they're going to walk this out with them no matter how long it takes.

Well, thank you so much, Vince Inders, for being such a valuable guest today, and I want our listeners to know that the website for Redeeming Grace Church in Fairfax, Virginia is rgcfairfax .org.

I want to thank you so much. I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater