This past Monday we officially unveiled our Safepoint Policy. When it comes to digital ministry, much of the work being done is entirely novel. Thankfully, we have some precedents to lean on in the traditional church context, but our work often comes to down to mostly rewriting the book and/or reinventing the wheel. This is the case with our approach to providing safety within our community.
Long-time church goers will be familiar with the term 'safe sanctuary' as the policy that provides safety for children and youth in our physical church buildings. With Checkpoint, that kind of situation doesn't really exist. Nevertheless, we are wholeheartedly devoted to discerning how safety does apply in our community. While we aren't meeting physically, we are focusing on our three major platforms (Twitch, Discord, YouTube) and working to provide safe community beyond the Terms of Service (ToS) provided by the platforms themselves.
I would encourage you to check out the webpage and read through the full document that we've put together to best familiarize yourself with how we're working towards the safest possible community. We've been thorough, but we acknowledge that this is a living document that will continue to take shape and evolve just like our community has done over these past nearly two years. If you are active on our Twitch and Discord, you've likely already seen some of these findings be slowly and gently implemented into our context. Our Guardians are an example of this change. This is a huge step in the right direction of the future of our church and in digital ministry in general.
Speaking of other digital ministries, please don't hesitate to reach out to checkpointchurch@gmail.com to learn more about adapting and using this document in your own digital context. We see our work as a collaborative one and we are certain we can learn from your context and/or share what we've learned to better provide for what God is doing in your context.