Churches and Christian organizations must move beyond safeguarding policies and compliance measures to create cultures where children are genuinely safe, speakers said during the first webinar in a three-part series on child protection.

The Sept. 30 webinar, “Dignity & Reality,” was organized by Viva Network as part of its Cutting Edge practitioner engagement series, which connects churches and organizations serving children at risk around the world. The three-part series followed the publication of God’s Heart for Child Protection and Safeguarding and explored how churches and faith-based organizations can respond to challenges preventing children from being safe.

The webinar explored two foundational truths: every child is created in the image of God and has inherent dignity and worth, while abuse, exploitation and neglect remain realities affecting children across cultures and contexts.

Justin Humphreys, founder of Integra Safeguarding and chair of the Global Child Protection Alliance, opened the session by describing child protection as not only a legal or social issue but a theological one.

“Protecting children should reflect our deepest beliefs about human worth and justice,” Humphreys said.

He said the changing nature of abuse requires churches and organizations to rethink how they approach safeguarding. Children can be harmed within families, institutions and communities, as well as through digital environments. The rapid growth of online abuse, combined with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, presents new challenges requiring new strategies and partnerships.

Humphreys argued that safeguarding should begin with the biblical imperative to protect children rather than with policies, protocols or training alone.

“The goal is not just to respond to abuse,” he said, “it is to build cultures and societies and understandings where abuse cannot thrive and flourish in the first place.”

Children as dignified participants

William Maweu, a PhD candidate at Fuller Theological Seminary and co-founder of Amani Complex International in Kenya, addressed child sex trafficking. He challenged approaches that portray children primarily as passive or helpless recipients of protection.

Instead, he called for children to be recognized as dignified human beings with agency, voice and the capacity to contribute to decisions affecting their lives.

“Children can participate” in efforts to address exploitation, he said, emphasizing approaches that protect children with them rather than simply for them.

Maweu also highlighted the role of the church in confronting systemic causes of trafficking and bringing together policymakers, legal actors, faith communities, media, law enforcement, families, children and survivors.

He encouraged churches to use creative approaches such as music, theater, dance, poetry, digital media and storytelling to allow children to participate in advocacy. Such approaches can also provide therapeutic opportunities for survivors, he said.

Challenging accepted practices

Christina Rai, network coordinator with the Children at Risk Network in Nepal, focused on child marriage, highlighting how deeply rooted cultural practices, poverty, limited access to education and other factors can contribute to the problem.

She described community-based Child Protection Vision Groups that bring together children, women’s groups, schools, health workers, churches and government representatives to identify and address child protection concerns.

In communities where child marriage had previously been accepted as a cultural norm, awareness efforts have helped change attitudes, with children themselves becoming involved in advocacy and local governments allocating resources to address the issue.

Rai stressed that lasting change requires collaboration. Churches and organizations can initiate action, she said, but working together allows communities to share knowledge, skills and resources and reach more people.

Protecting children in the digital age

Gigi Tupas, senior lead for engagement and partnership at International Justice Mission Australia, addressed online sexual exploitation of children, drawing on her work in the Philippines.

She described a crime that connects perpetrators in different countries with traffickers who have access to children and facilitate their abuse for paying customers overseas. An IJM study estimated that nearly half a million Filipino children were trafficked to produce child sexual exploitation material in 2022.

Tupas called on churches to become places where children are protected before harm occurs, not merely places that respond after abuse has taken place.

As technology and artificial intelligence develop, she said, safeguarding will require collaboration between churches, governments and civil society, as well as stronger accountability for technology platforms.

From compliance to culture

Martin Kapenda, lead director of Tehila Zambia, brought the first part of the webinar to a practical conclusion, outlining five lessons from safeguarding work with organizations and community leaders in Africa.

His central question was simple: Are the people we serve actually safer because of what we do?

Kapenda warned that having policies, procedures and training records does not automatically create safety. Safeguarding failures often reveal deeper problems of organizational culture, accountability and leadership.

He also challenged organizations to rethink how they interpret reporting. A lack of reported concerns does not necessarily mean an organization is safe. In healthy safeguarding cultures, people may actually report more concerns because they trust that they will be heard and protected.

Other lessons included the importance of recognizing power imbalances, building a culture of openness and accountability, and treating safeguarding as a continuous learning process rather than a compliance exercise.

“Safeguarding is not a destination that organizations eventually reach,” Kapenda said. “It is a continual process of listening, learning, improving and leading.”

For organizations that feel overwhelmed by where to begin, Kapenda recommended starting with the basics: understand the children being served, listen to children and local communities, examine how power operates, identify local protection systems and adapt safeguarding language and practices to the local context.

The webinar ultimately returned to its opening theological premise: safeguarding is not simply an organizational requirement but an expression of how the church understands the value and dignity of children.

The three-part series aims to help churches and faith-based organizations examine some of the most pressing barriers to children’s safety and consider how they can create environments where children can flourish. The next webinar in the series is scheduled for Oct. 28. You can register here