About the Author: Gabe Brown is a vice president in the affiliates division at Brotherhood Mutual. Over the past 25 years of service in the company, his firsthand experience serving in the mission field has come into play by helping ministries understand how to protect domestic and international operations. His heart for missions has taken him to Africa and Central America.
In today’s fast-paced interconnected world, ministries continue to expand their reach. While the need to make an impact is strong, it’s also integral for ministry leaders to understand and manage the risks that come along with evangelizing both domestically and around the globe. What does it take to ensure the safety and success of our volunteers and staff and the missions operation itself? Let’s explore what every ministry should know to be well-prepared for the journey ahead.
#1 Communicate the Reality of Risk
Before sending employees or volunteers out to the mission field, it’s important to communicate the reality of the risk. People are willing to go, so be fully transparent about the situation on the ground.
Ministry leaders often understand the totality of the risk, but a ministry can run into trouble if it doesn’t fully convey those risks to its employees and volunteers. If a ministry minimizes the reality of the risk when communicating with workers, there could be a lawsuit, especially if something bad happens.
Volunteer travelers or ministry workers could sue your ministry claiming negligence. My advice to ministries is to give an accurate picture of the risk and accommodations when recruiting volunteers.
#2 Watch Out for Surprise Liability
Providing financial support to an organization in a foreign country could lead to what’s known as vicarious liability. For example, supporting a school can create liability if a teacher is accused of something improper. Even if you’re only sending money, but you’re the primary source of funding, you could be held responsible.
Counseling activities, leadership issues, accusations of misconduct, and many more risks can derail ministry efforts. As a leader, you’ll want to make sure your insurance carries over to long-term foreign operations.
Even if your organization or people are innocent, there are still costs and complexities associated with navigating the legal system in a foreign country.
#3 Be Prepared for Accidents
The risk of getting injured increases the longer a volunteer worker is in the field. Without appropriate care, even minor injuries from a fall or cut can become life-threatening, requiring medical evacuation or hospitalization. The risk ministries take by not adding travel insurance is that their volunteer mission worker, and possibly their ministry, will need to raise funds to offset the costs. On top of that, the ministry could face a lawsuit claiming negligence for failing to adequately care for the volunteer worker.
Accident insurance helps cover medical expenses like hospital bills, emergency room treatment, medical or surgical treatment, and more. However, it’s more complicated if the mission worker is an employee living in the host country. They would need Foreign Voluntary Workers’ Compensation to help pay medical bills and to avoid the potential for a workers’ comp or employers liability lawsuit.
#4 Protect Against Abuse
Domestic child protection guidelines apply to long-term foreign operations, too. Whenever a ministry is working with children or youth in a foreign country, there is a risk of a claim of abuse. And if the worker is arrested, it only complicates the situation.
Make sure any long-term operations involving children or youth have a child protection plan in place. The plan should include requirements for training and supervision, background screening, and reporting incidents of abuse. To protect the ministry and defend innocent workers, it’s important to make sure your liability coverage extends internationally and provides coverage for sexual acts liability.
This is when occurrence-based coverage is really important. Occurrence-based policies are designed to provide coverage long after an event, as long as an alleged incident took place while the policy was in effect.
#5 Protect Your People and Your Mission
A recent study by Missio Nexus and Brotherhood Mutual found the majority of mission volunteers and workers will go anywhere, regardless of the risk. They also want to know there is a plan in place to protect them. One way to provide protection is through insurance.
Having insurance coverage* specifically designed for long-term international missions protects your people and organization from the financial impact caused by injuries, lawsuits, property damage, and more. When developing our unique Global Mission Protection program, we saw that ministries were getting foreign liability insurance from commercial carriers that didn’t understand the specific risks of Christian ministries. We found a way to help ministries extend their domestic coverage with Brotherhood Mutual to protect against risks in foreign countries.
Ministries sending workers overseas should seriously consider additional coverages like kidnap and ransom, workers’ comp, and medical evacuation coverage. The coverage is typically inexpensive and protects workers against financial hardship. Providing care through coverage also protects organizations against liability.
While ministries with a Brotherhood Mutual policy may already have some international liability coverage for short-term trips, you should speak with your agent to make sure all your foreign activities are covered, especially any long-term efforts.
*The coverage descriptions in this article are intended to help ministry leaders better understand Brotherhood Mutual’s MinistryFirst® insurance program. They do not provide insurance coverage of any kind, nor do they modify the terms of any Brotherhood Mutual policy. It is also important to note that some of the coverages described within may apply only to the broadened version of the particular coverage form discussed. For complete insurance coverage details, please refer to actual policy documents. Coverage for actual claims will be based on applicable policy documents applied to the individual facts of an actual claim event. All coverages are not available in all states. Note: Some insurance coverages may be underwritten by other insurance carriers and sold through Brotherhood Works Insurance Services, LLC, a subsidiary of Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Comapny.
