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2009-04-21 issue:

Mennonite churches discern if and how to minister to convicted sex offenders

Pastors, social workers, church leaders and more share their perspectives. All agree it is a long, painful process for victims, offenders and members.

by Anna Groff

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An individual who is a convicted sex offender asks to worship at your church. How can a church faithfully minister to both convicted sex offenders and to victims of abuse in the congregation?

Congregations have faced this challenge.


For people who are sex offenders “there is really nowhere to go,” says Beverly Miller, who experienced this issue firsthand in her former church, a Mennonite Church USA congregation.

“They are rejected everywhere they go, even in prison,” she says. “It seems like the church could be the perfect place for individuals convicted of sexual offenses to begin their transition into the community and to be held accountable for their actions yet also to speak to the fears of victims in the church community.”

Why can churches offer a unique space to offenders and victims?

“We have more to add than a strict legal perspective or a strict social work perspective,” says Dorothy Nickel Friesen, Western District Conference (WDC) minister. “We have the whole person in mind and the whole congregation in mind. That’s what makes it so complicated.”

Friesen also describes offenders in churches as a “highly reactive issue.”

“The naïveté and the thought that ‘this wouldn’t happen in a Mennonite church’ are deplorable and regrettable,” she says.

In fact, churches are unaware of the high number of unknown (and not convicted) sexual offenders sitting in their pews, says Paul Unruh, a clinical social worker.

“Usually a congregation is at a greater risk from the unknown offenders than the known offenders,” Unruh says. “All congregations have an offender, whether known or unknown.”

Congregations faced with “known offenders” who want to attend have spent years discerning how to, or how not to, be in fellowship with these individuals.

After consulting Mennonite Central Committee Canada’s “The Green Manual” and from firsthand experiences in her former congregation, Miller suggests four general steps for congregations ministering to sex offenders:

• First, the church must decide whether or not they are called to this ministry, she says.

• Second, the church forms an accountability group—a “circle of support” with the offender.
The manual recommends that the circle of support include men and women as well as a sexual victim representative.

“The ‘circle of support,’ as outlined by the manual,” Miller says, “is designed to encourage mutual sharing and accountability. At the center of the circle is the ex-offender, who is involved from the beginning and included in all decision-making.”

Miller recommends that other churches facing this issue should involve the offender in the process as quickly as possible.

“Don’t let it get to the point that you’re having so much discussion about it that you start forming divided groups in the congregation,” she says.

• Third, if discerned by the “circle of support,” the offender may attend church services after signing a covenant with the congregation to ensure safety of the children. The covenant addresses specifics such as which doors the offender will use to enter and exit the church and what church activities the offender may attend.

• Fourth, to encourage transparency, it is suggested that everyone working with children and youth has a criminal background and sexual abuse check on file at the church.

Marlene Bogard, minister of Christian nurture and resource library director for WDC, is trained to lead in “safe sanctuary” trainings, which provide information on abuse prevention and education on sexual abuse for church leaders, staff and volunteers.

Bogard says churches must realize they are vulnerable to pedophiles and wanderers (people who are curious and have sexual longings toward children).

Good prevention policies, including background checks and screenings, in churches also reduces the likelihood of an accusation, which “can do nearly as much damage to a leader and the congregation as actual misconduct,” she says.

For some congregations, the prevention and education piece is the “silver lining” in this overwhelming issue. Cleo Koop, pastor of First Mennonite Church, Halstead, Kan., says that by facing a sex offender, his congregation became more aware of the reality and pain of abuse.

“We are much healthier in that regard,” he says.

However, Koop admits that it is not a process without incredible pain. At First Mennonite, the convicted man has attended regularly for about six years, but not without creating conflict and consequences. In fact, 15 percent of the congregation left over the issue or related issues, says Koop.

“It’s been a long, arduous past,” says Koop.

Koop says if you asked the members of First Mennonite, some would ask, Why is he still here? and others would say he is forgiven—along with responses on the continuum.

And for many of the sexual victims in the congregation, the offender serves as a reminder of their pain.

“Don’t let this be the only thing that consumes [your congregation],” Koop says. “You never get done resolving it.”

Shalom Mennonite Church, Newton, Kan., encountered a man who was released from prison with multiple accounts of child sexual abuse and wanted to attend. This man no longer attends or lives in the area.

Through the process, Eric Massanari, Shalom’s pastor, says members made comments such as, “The church I joined would never welcome a known risk,” or, “The church I joined would never send this man packing.”

“Some of our idealized images of church needed to die and be reborn,” Massanari says. “Somehow God would need to help us reframe our image of who we were as a congregation.”

Massanari said hiring someone trained in conflict resolution to facilitate Shalom’s discernment process was one of the best decisions made. He says major theological questions emerged: Is the church called to offer sanctuary to the most vulnerable?  Or are we called to welcome all people?  Can the church always do both? “A single congregation can’t be all things to all people,” he says.

So what are the options for churches who want to address this issue? Unruh offers one way to address the issue: a “house church model.”

While not a perfect solution, these house churches could be composed of people aware of the issues and would not endanger children and youth, he says.

“Until we open ourselves to consider an offender ‘one of our own,’ as we have started to do with victims,” he says, “this problem will only perpetuate.”

Unruh describes sexual offending as a “secrecy disorder,” since the overwhelming majority of offenses occur with no one observing but the victim and offender. A “cure” for such secrecy is, of course, disclosure. 

But the catch is, Unruh says, the person who has offended should not become more isolated after the offense is made public—which may often be the case. When the offense becomes public, the offender often becomes even more isolated from healthy relationships than he or she was before.

“I believe in confession, repentance, forgiveness,” he says. “I do not believe in confusing those three with lack of accountability. … True forgiveness does not mean that things go back to the way they were.

“A person who has repented and been forgiven,” he says, “should still be held appropriately accountable to lead a safe and healthy lifestyle in the present.”

Read an account from a member of Ambler Mennonite Church.

Editor’s note: A sex offender is an individual convicted of a sex crime. The examples in this article are sexual offenders who have committed child sexual abuse.

Dreamstime.com | Illustration Dee Birkey

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Additional Notes

Resources for churches on sexual abuse:

"Broken Boundaries: Resources for Pastoring People" from the MCC Domestic Violence Task Force

Sexual Abuse in Christian Homes and Churches by Carolyn Holderread Heggen (Herald Press,1993)

"The Green Manual (MCC Pilot Project)" by Dave Worth, et. al. (MCC Canada, 2001)

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