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You Skipped the Background Check Because You Know Them · The Healthy Church Staff Podcast

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: You ran a background check of the nursery file.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: The filled out form, you paid the fee, you got the report back, you put it in the file.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: You hired the youth pastor because his dad is an elder.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: No screen, no references outside the family.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: You've known them, you've known the family for years.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not discernment.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's a shortcut with the last name.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna talk about that today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at chemistry staffing.com.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: All right, this is not a legal seminar today on the webinar or on the on the podcast.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not the personnel file that you forgot after they started.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is a screening that you never ran on the way in, the background check.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times, background checks don't happen because of this one sentence.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: We've known them for years.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a volunteer who's been around forever who became staff.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's the elder's kid, it's the person that grew up in the third row.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: You've known him since he was five.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: My wife used to change his diapers, kind of a thing.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: You tell yourself, you already did the word.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: You watched him, you trusted him.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: The room actually, you can tell yourself the room would actually be a little bit offended if we asked them for a background check.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you just skip it, right?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing someone is not the same as screening someone.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And being familiar is not a background check.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: A last name is not a reference.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you already know this, you already know how to do this.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: You do it for strangers.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: You screen the stranger, you screen the new hire from outside, right?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: You screen the new kids' ministry volunteer that just came into your church.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: They filled out the form, you paid the fee, you waited on the report, then you told you let them hold other people's kids.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Youth pastor got a title because somebody raised him.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a second bar.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Same building, same students, but it's a different bar for both the person that you kind of let skip the process and those that you may jump through all the hoops.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd require it of a person that you met last month, you should require it of the person that you've known since they were baptized when they were a teenager.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you don't really have a screening practice.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: You've got a vibe, and vibes are just incredibly dangerous to go on.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: A vibe is how you tell one person that they're trusted and another person that they're at risk.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: The difference is not in the character, the difference was proximity.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: So the volunteer to staff jump is usually where this gets hidden a lot of times.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: They were already here.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: You just called it formalizing the relationship, moving from volunteer to a part-time staff position, maybe.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they ran sound, maybe they ran students, and you decided, hey, I'm going to put them on the payroll.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And nobody ran the screen.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody asked if the volunteer file even existed.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: You treated, we've known them as your whole process.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the new role is a new door.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Keys, access, authority.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that they already had a badge does not mean that you already did the work.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Promotion is not a loophole.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Internal candidates are not exempt.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I know a lot of you think, well, I just I skipped it, I didn't want to insult them.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you thought maybe a background check on somebody that you would love would look like you're suspicious of them.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're trying to be a family, not a corporation.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Those are all decent kind of things to think, right?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's decent.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a shortcut with a last name or somebody that you know that's familiar that becomes a story sometimes that you just never wanted to tell.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Kindness that refuses the same screen that you give a stranger is not trust.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bet that you placed in other people's kids.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: It usually doesn't blow up in the interview, it blows up on a Tuesday two years in.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: When the thing that you think you would have seen on the way shows up in the hallway.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or when the board asks what you ran as far as background check.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: When you have to say, We knew them.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: We knew them is not a process.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to help you out here.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you have people on your staff that you've not run a background check on, we knew them is not a process.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: We knew them is the sentence that you say after the damage is occurred.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't discern what you refuse to look at.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: The screen is not a lack of faith.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is how you refuse to make the congregation pay for your comfort.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do the boring thing while the story is still unwritten.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same screen, it's really simple.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same screening process for everyone.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: List everybody on your staff, every volunteer and kids and students.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Not the people should look at.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Every single person.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if anybody skipped the screen, the same screen you'd be requiring of a stranger, run it.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Don't wait for a story.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Don't wait until a parent asks.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Don't exempt the last name the volunteer turned staffer or the person you know that you've known forever that sits in the third row.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Tell them why out loud.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, we do this for everyone, including the people that we love.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: That sentence is the opposite of suspicion.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's all in how you present it, and it's how you prove the practice isn't actual practice.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Here's your bottom line for today, and it's really important.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: You screened the nursery volunteer and skipped the youth pastor because you knew his dad.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: That is not discernment.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's a shortcut with a last name, and it's a remedy for a future disaster.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: This one is awkward.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I also know that you don't want a shortcut to become a story.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why you're listening to this podcast.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: I would encourage you, man, if you are behind, and I hear churches all the time that not as much as I used to, but I still hear this from time to time.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Churches that don't run background checks, particularly on volunteers or on kids and teens, because of the expense.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let me admonish you now.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: You are you're flirting with fire there if you don't run background checks because of the cost.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's the cost of doing business, it's the cost of being a church.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: I wish we run background checks on candidates.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: I wish we didn't have to do that.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, do I wish that we could go back to my my word is my bond.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, in in our culture today, background checks are an absolute necessity.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not doing them, man, do it wipe everything off your desk today, get a list of people, and get a policy.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you need help with that, you can reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: We've got some trusted background check providers that we really trust that can really help you work through that.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Podcast at chemistry staffing.com.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Also, head over to churchstaffassessment.com, take the free Church Staff Health Assessment.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: I would appreciate it.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: That it would really help us out as we do our assessment this year on a couple thousand staff all across the country.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that's it for today.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I will be right back here tomorrow on the healthy church staff podcast.