Is there an issue more crucial than the safety of our children? I think not! It is an easy thing for a church to become entirely too casual about child safety and security. And just how many of our churches already possess virtually forgotten security systems lapsing back into an "Oh, everybody knows little whosits folks." Not!

By this late date, we are all too familiar with the many horror stories of child abduction. My favorite happy ending story is the one where a church with no security system, allowed dear brother Rhubarb, whom they all knew, to just walk in unquestioned, unopposed even, to pick up his grandbaby and vanish for a period of time!

The nursery staff, who weren't privy to a secret and impending divorce, allowed granddad, who had decided that nobody deserved his grandbaby, to just walk in unopposed, even unquestioned, into the church nursery to pick up the baby and then to vanish.

A church does not have to have a full time minister to children in order to still be very concerned with the safety of its children. One of the bloodiest fights that still faces the church is who can pick up a child and when. The ultimate and most relevant question is not whether a church needs a security system but if they don't, why not?