From Scramble to Strategy: How Southern Baptist Churches can Pre-Game a PR Crisis

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Born and raised in Central Florida, Robbie Harper is a sixth-generation Floridian and the founder of Blue Bridge PR, a firm dedicated to helping Christian businesses and nonprofits communicate with clarity, build trust, and strengthen their reputation. A graduate of Stetson University with both a bachelor’s degree and an MBA, Robbie began his PR career as a senior account executive representing large corporate law firms, securing national media coverage. In 2015, he launched Blue Bridge PR to serve leaders—especially faith-driven organizations—who want to be trusted voices in their communities. His work has earned national placements, including Forbes and The Wall Street Journal, and focuses on media relations, thought leadership and crisis communication planning. Robbie is active at Stetson Baptist Church in DeLand, Florida, where his wife, Nicole, serves as children’s minister. They live in DeLand with their three children.

When misconduct allegations surface, the clock starts ticking. Phones buzz, social media erupts, and the very people a congregation longs to protect begin asking hard questions. In those first frantic minutes, improvisation invites confusion; preparation invites clarity. Our churches—already under a media microscope for their handling of abuse—must have a plan in place long before a pastor’s phone lights up at midnight, even if the allegations are false. 

Start With an Honest Risk Audit

Begin by tracing every doorway that leads adults to minors. List each ministry, volunteer role, and physical space, then match that map against the policies you think you follow. Gaps appear quickly: outdated background checks, lapsed training records, unattended classrooms. Document those gaps now, while nobody’s panicking, and set realistic timelines to close them.

Build a Lean Communications Team

One voice, two backups—that’s it. Whether it’s the senior pastor, a communications director, or an elder trained in trauma care, pick a spokesperson who can balance pastoral warmth with legal precision. Publish this chain of command internally so volunteers know exactly where to send reporters or distraught parents. Nothing derails a response faster than contradicting statements from well-meaning staff.

Pre-Write Your Core Messages

Crisis statements should never be drafted in a crisis. Write a handful of succinct, factual paragraphs today that address three audiences:

  1. Parents of minors who need immediate reassurance and action steps.
  2. The congregation at large, hungry for transparency and theological framing.
  3. The media, focused on timeline, safeguards, and law-enforcement cooperation.

While the details will change, the backbone remains: acknowledge the report, state your commitment to protecting the vulnerable, explain current safeguards, outline next steps, and defer investigative specifics to authorities. Store these drafts—along with contact info for local law enforcement and child-advocacy centers—in both printed form and a cloud folder accessible from any device.

Lock Down Your Channels

Decide now where each message will appear. Draft email templates, tag parent phone lists, ready social posts in “draft” mode, and keep a simple press-statement document handy. Confirm admins for every account and enable two-factor authentication; the last thing you need is a hacked Facebook page in the middle of a crisis.

Practice Like It’s Real

A plan untested is a plan untrusted. At least once a year, run a tabletop drill: simulate an allegation, walk through phone trees, read the holding statement aloud, and time how long it takes to alert parents. Afterward, debrief—what felt clunky, who got skipped, which email bounced? Update the playbook and repeat until the response becomes muscle memory.

Keep the Focus on Victims

Policies and press releases matter, but pastoral care matters more. Line up licensed counselors you can call at a moment’s notice. Draft a checklist that prioritizes safety, reporting, and long-term support for anyone harmed. Communicate those care pathways as clearly as you share investigative updates.

Review and Refresh

Laws change, leaders move, new ministries launch. Mark your calendar for an annual policy review—preferably before the busy fall season—and invite an outside expert to critique your plan. Fresh eyes prevent blind spots from becoming headlines.

Preparation isn’t pessimism; it’s stewardship. By auditing risks, clarifying voices, pre-writing messages, securing channels, and rehearsing regularly, Southern Baptist churches can respond to allegations of abuse with integrity, compassion, and credibility—protecting the vulnerable and preserving the witness of the gospel when it matters most.

  • Advising on Whether to Limit Liability or Care for Victims
    While abuse of a child by an adult is terrible, it’s usually straightforward to evaluate what is happening. But what about sexual misconduct between children? Is it always abuse? No. Is it always illegal? No. And what should we do about it? The impact on children’s lives is not measured by whether the actions are abuse or a crime—so we must take it seriously.[1] As we evaluate how to respond, it may help to use as an example several common situations. We’ll take the perspective of behavior that is discovered by a church or ministry, but parents will also have to evaluate situations they uncover.
  • ‘Don’t Leave Here and Do Nothing’: SBC Panel Calls Churches to Act on Child Exploitation
    State and federal officials, survivors, and ministry leaders gathered at the 2026 SBC Annual Meeting to move Southern Baptist churches from awareness to action on child abuse, sexual exploitation, and human trafficking. She was going to church the entire time it was happening. That was the disclosure Olivia Littleton, senior director of Survivor Services for One More Child, made to a room full of Southern Baptist pastors and ministry leaders at the 2026 SBC Annual Meeting. A survivor of sexual exploitation herself, Littleton made the point with quiet precision: the children the Church is trying to protect may already be sitting in its pews.
  • Shawn Thornton, president of Joni and Friends, addresses attendees at Stand Up: Standing for Vulnerable Adults Against Abuse and Exploitation, a luncheon event hosted by the Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention during the SBC Annual Meeting in Orlando, June 9. The gathering focused on equipping Christians to protect and minister to people with disabilities, who according to the U.S. Department of Justice are more than three times more likely to experience abuse than people without disabilities. Photo by Sonya Singh
    ‘When the Cute Factor Fades’: SBC Confronts a Gap in Disability Ministry That Leaves Vulnerable Adults at Risk
    It starts, Shawn Thornton said, with what a father once described to him as the “cute factor.” When a child with disabilities is 5, 7 or 8 years old, people in the church light up around them. They talk to them. They engage. There is something about a small child with a disability that draws the Church toward them. But as that child grows, the hormones kick in and the body changes, and the behavioral complexity of adolescence sets in. The cute factor, Thornton said, was gone. And with it, too often, goes the ministry. “The church just misses that opportunity to pick up right there and provide a supportive, healthy community,” said Thornton, president and CEO of Joni and Friends, who opened the Stand Up Lunch in prayer at the 2026 SBC Annual Meeting.