Thread by @JennMGreenberg

An elder who was involved in a pastoral search team for his church recently asked me, "How do we weed out candidates who are abusive or who will mishandle abusive situations?"

My response (in part) was to give each candidate a set of for instance questions. Nothing shocking or clearly criminal, but things that enablers and abusers would be tempted to hush up.

For example:

"You find out a 16YO girl and my son, who just turned 21, are sexting and there's embarrassing photos. What do you do?"

Go ahead and make it awkwardly personal using "my son" as an example. Put him on the spot. You want to know: does he have the backbone to stand up to you?

Here's another:

"Say we have a warm and friendly elder volunteering in nursery. You notice he's been sitting kids in his lap and helping kids use the bathroom by himself, in violation of our safety rules. You confront him. He says it's NBD, he's just fatherly. What do you do?"

And another:

"You find out a woman in our congregation has been drinking too much. Upon talking with her, you discover her husband is verbally abusive. He's also gotten mad a few times and thrown things at her in front of the kids. How would you handle this?"

These are all situations where abusers and enablers are going to want to hush things up, in-house an investigation, and resist involving 3rd party investigators, legal counsel, or law enforcement.

It's not a silver bullet, but it can help you ID red flags.

Oh! And reverse the gender roles. Reach for odd examples that should throw up red flags:

"Say we have a 17YO boy in youth group who starts cutting himself, smoking pot, and acting weird. One of the moms, who he looks up to, gives him her Xanax to manage anxiety. What do you do?"