ECAP Standards Process
The Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention (ECAP) began because evangelical ministries have a prob...
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Articles
Articles
Working Together to Prevent Abuse
We are often asked about the role of a ministry association, district, presbytery, or denomination i...
Articles
Safeguards 4 Kids Press Release
Jacksonville, FL – In 2024, the Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention (ECAP) is hosting a ser...
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Articles
Five Ways You Can Protect Your Kids From Sexual Abuse
There is a growing alertness among parents, educators, caring adults and the church about the need t...
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Lessons Learned After a Year of Accreditation
On January 9th, 2023, ECAP launched our Accreditation Program, engaging ministries that serve kids i...
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Cultivating a Safe Environment: The Mission of the Child Safety Team (Part 2)
In a previous article, we addressed why you need a child safety team to develop and maintain your or...
Articles
It’s A Team Effort: The Necessity of a Child Safety Team (Part 1)
One of my favorite pastimes after a long day of work is to sit and watch just about any sport.......
Articles
Special Needs Abuse: Speaking for the Voiceless
What does it look like to speak up for the voiceless? Many Christians rightly support causes related...
Articles
Ministry Collision
A collision is the point where two forces make direct impact. Ministry and compliance with state and...
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Running an Investigation
Used with Permission from Telios Teaches Additional resources are available, hyperlinked throughout ...
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Articles
How Good Is Your Ministry?
How good would you say your church is? Not, “How good are your programs?” or “How good is your...
Articles
Blue Sunday: Sanctuary for Survivors
“As I listened to your testimony and what happened to you,” he said, “I realized that I was ab...
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Articles
Bible Passages on Child Safety and Abuse Prevention
Old Testament “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them ha...
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Directors’ and Officers’ Duty of Care – Pay Attention and Take Responsibility!
This article can help organizations seeking to comply with ECAP Standard 1: Governance. We believe ...
Articles
Gift or Gag? Considerations for NDAs in Misconduct Claims
From our friends at Telios Law: In the face of abuse and misconduct allegations, organizations facin...
Articles
Why We Must Teach Kids Safety Skills
Young people are in crisis. There is danger and evil, sickness and disease, corruption, deception, a...
Articles
Child Protection for Small Churches and Church Plants
Every Christian organization that serves kids wants to keep them safe. However, each organization is...
Articles
Why Should Church Plants Join as ECAP Members?
Why have a separate category for church plants? Church plants are in a unique phase of organizatio...
Articles
Pastors and Porn: A Churchwide Pandemic
Pastors and Porn. Two words that aren’t typically put together. We rightly expect our ministry...
Articles
ECAP: Start Here
One of the most common questions we receive at ECAP is, “Where do I start?” The task of building...
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Press Release: ECAP Launches Accreditation Program
For Immediate Release, Dec. 15, 2022 Contact Briggham Winkler, [email protected] JACKSONVILLE, Fla. ...
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No Longer Optional: Why Child Protection Policies & Procedures are Necessary for Most Churches
Benjamin Franklin once famously recognized that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.�...
Articles
New Book Addresses Handling Misconduct Allegations in a Ministry
From our friends at Telios… FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monument, CO, October 25, 2022: Attorney and...
Articles
Child Safety for Church Special Events
Barna research indicates that more than 60% of Christians became believers before the age of 14, ind...
Articles
The ECAP Accreditation Process–Interview With Jeremy Herron
This article is an interview of Jeremy Herron, the Director of Providence Kids and Providence Academ...
Resources
Child Safety Accreditation Q&A w/ Jeremy Herron
Learn more about ECAP Child Safety Standards and Accreditation with an ECAP Charter Member! H...
Articles
Identifying Predatory Behavior
Whether you are a teacher, children’s ministry director in a local church, or camp administrator, ...
Articles
When Pastoring Abuse Victims, Be Sure to Care for Yourself
This post originally appeared on The Gospel Coalition’s website. You can read it here. In my w...
Articles
12 Things To Consider When a Sex Offender Wants to Come to Church
This article originally appeared on Gospel-Centered Family’s site. You can read it here. In 20...
Resources
Handling A Child Abuse Allegation in Your Church
Follow this link to watch “Handling A Child Abuse Allegation in Your Church” livestream ...
Articles
Records Retention for Ministries
This post originally appeared here. Thank you to Brotherhood Mutual for letting us share with our au...
Uncategorized
I’m a Small Church Pastor, How Can I Make My Children’s Ministry Safe?
Several years ago, as one of the authors of the Plan to Protect Manual, a protection manual for chur...
Articles
Three things a Child Abuse Pediatrician Wishes Every Congregation Knew
As we sat together in the exam room waiting for the nurse to come in, Josie* was coloring a picture....
Resources
Child Safety Coordinator White Paper
Download the CSC White Paper A Critical Factor in Child Safety The Evangelical Council for Abuse Pre...
Articles
Grooming or Mentoring? How Do We Tell the Difference?
Experts constantly tell youth organizations that in order to protect children from sexual abuse, we ...
Articles
Who Protects This House?
As parents of little girls, we find ourselves laying in their beds every night to pray, read, talk a...
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How Denominations Can Lead In Child Protection
“… and a little child shall lead them.” (Isaiah 11:6) Isaiah is clear: children have a promine...
Articles
Wolves Feasting on Lambs
Pastors and church leaders should be biblically aware that predators will prey on their church. One ...
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ECAP Statement on the SBC Sexual Abuse Task Force Investigation Report
We at the Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention were heartbroken when we learned about the depth ...
Articles
Preventing Child Sexual Abuse
This post originally appeared at https://www.nstlaw.com/child-safety/sexual-abuse/ THE TERRIFYING TR...
Articles
A Better Way to Handle Abuse
This post originally appeared on Relational Wisdom’s website: https://rw360.org/2015/07/20/a-b...
Articles
Sexual Harassment: Lessons from Failure
Since 2007, Christianity Today (CT) has led the charge against sexual misconduct in the Christian wo...
Articles
California’s AB506 Law: What It Means for Ministries Nationwide
In early March of 2020, I was invited to attend an event in Pasadena, CA, where I was introduced to....
Articles
National Child Abuse Prevention Month 2022
April is National Child Abuse Prevention month. The purpose of this month is to recognize “the...
Articles
Spotting and Preventing a Child Sexual Predator
Sexual predators walk among us. They are both men and women, young and old, and they are from all ty...
Articles
Sexual Misconduct Part II: Policies and Investigations
This post originally appeared on the Simms-Showers Blog. Recently, we wrote about how nonprofits, mi...
Articles
How Churches and Nonprofits Should Address Sexual Harassment In The #MeToo Era
This post originally appeared on the Simms-Showers Blog. The #MeToo generation has captured headline...
Articles
Reducing the Risk of Child Sexual Abuse: A Call to Respond
The warning signs existed 30 years ago. Will we heed the call today? About 30 years ago, attorney Ri...
Articles
A Healthy Church is a Safe Church
Every (good) seminary instructs students about healthy churches. From a biblical perspective, what a...
Resources
2021 National Conference Videos
In June of 2021, the Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention hosted its first conference on Prevent...
Articles
Site Hardening: Predator-Proof Your Home
By Wendy Patrick, Ph.D. In many cases, the predators who threaten us are not strangers. They are ne...
Articles
God’s Healing Word–Scripture and Speaking Up About Abuse
“Why didn’t we say anything?” This is a question my cousin and I recently pondered. We were ...
Articles
6 Steps for Creating a Child Protection Policy
Phoebe is a two-year-old that regularly attends your children’s ministry. She’s not fully potty-...
Articles
Reporting Child Abuse: What Is Your Duty?
This post originally appeared on the website of Simms-Showers, LLP. You can read it here. Consider t...
Resources
Telios Law Recommended Resources
You can find out more about Telios PLLC here. Books God Made All of Me, by Justin and Lindsey Holcom...
Resources
Child Abuse & Maltreatment–NST Law
This post originally appeared on NST Law’s website. You can find it here. KNOWING WHAT TO LOOK...
Articles
Displaying Hospitality In A Broken World
As a mother of two young girls, there is nothing more disconcerting than dropping your child off in ...
Articles
Hiding In Plain Sight
This post originally appeared on Gospel Centered Family’s Substack. On Saturday night, Novem...
Articles
Child Safety Standards Accepted and Released for Church Implementation
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention (ECAP) has released the latest v...
Articles
#ChurchToo: A Call to Action
What does it say about our society when our sanctuaries are no longer sanctuaries? #MeToo started a ...
Resources
Accreditation White Paper
What is Accreditation, anyway? And why should ministries that serve children care about it? In this ...
Articles
Restoring Faith
This post originally appeared in the Houston Chronicle’s Op-Ed column on June 16th, 2021....
Articles
ECAP Blog–Purpose Essay
Why Another Blog? Education At ECAP, we believe that one of the best ways to prevent abuse is by inc...
Articles
Statement on Organizations With a History of Abuse
At ECAP, our goal as an organization is to help churches and ministries prevent abuse. Our accredita...
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