Willow Creek Community Church takes very seriously the safety and well being of the children, students and families that visit our campus. Our Elder’s stated purpose for providing detailed policies and procedures for the protection of children and students is to help implement and maintain a safe environment that will enhance everyone’s ability to participate freely in the life of the church.

To Protect our Children and Students
When children and students are active in a ministry, they are more likely to gain deeper insights from the teaching messages or from their serving opportunities, and will observe more Christ-like examples of servanthood in the adults who are working with them, when they are in a safe setting. Our intent is to provide an environment for children and students to learn, serve and grow securely.

To Protect our Adults and Leaders
Through the comprehensive screening process and following the guidelines in the Protection Manual that are based on Matthew 18:1-10, we are actively reducing the possibility of a false accusation.

We are also in a better position not to place a volunteer in a position where they may be consciously, or unconsciously, tempted to sin.

To Protect our Ministries
By protecting children, students, and adults, we are in a better position to support the ministry that is taking place throughout the church. Once regular volunteers have completed the requisite Protection Training process they are free to focus on their ministry work.

To Protect our Church
God calls us to be good stewards of the resources that He has given us, both our finances and our people. Should we ever have an incident that we could have prevented, some of our resources could be jeopardized. We believe that God is asking us, instead, to use our resources to expand our current ministries and to create new ministries so that we can reach even more lost people and bring them to know Christ our Savior.