"This [article series] should be required reading for everyone involved in or concerned about youth ministry," an Evangelical Press Association judge wrote about an award-winning roundtable interview of five church leaders, which was conducted and written by Christianity Today's Church Law & Tax Team. The interview became the basis of a five-part article series on churches and youth ministry safety that received first place in the article series category during the EPA's recent 2015 awards ceremony where Christianity Today was honored with 49 awards.

Ashley Emmert, who led the interview and article series, was willing to share how it all happened and why safety in youth ministry is such an important topic.

How would you describe the purpose of this article series?

The purpose of the roundtable article series was to cover material that presented itself during the Youth Ministry survey, a Church Law & Tax Team project conducted in 2013 with Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Company, as well as specifically cover issues of sexual abuse prevention—a topic that we found greatly lacking when we surveyed churches about their safety training habits.

Why is the topic of youth ministry safety an important topic for churches?

Because my generation—Christian late 20-somethings—has walked away from faith in droves. I think inappropriate relationships or inappropriate youth ministry settings have played a huge role in that.

Plus, if youth ministry is where a student should be maturing and growing in their faith, it has to be a safe place for them. Parents need to know they can trust the pastors they're leaving their kids with. And more importantly, kids need to know they can trust their youth pastors and leaders. Church leaders must pay attention and take proactive measures to build and maintain that culture of trust.

The EPA judge wrote that the participants were chosen well. How did you decide who would be the participants?

I chose from people I knew—Laura Leonard, a volunteer in youth ministry, and Wes Trevor, a youth pastor I went to college with—and people who had been recommended to me. We wanted as wide of a cross-section as we could get. And it was important that we had a female voice.

How did you decide what questions to ask during the interview?

We based those questions on felt needs for youth ministers, and on the survey we conducted. And then some of it was just off-the-cuff, conversation-based questions that I felt needed to be asked during the roundtable itself.

From the work you had done previously with the Church Law & Tax Team, I'm sure you were pretty familiar with the topic, but do you remember learning anything new from this interview or from your work prepping for the interview?

I learned that youth pastors are concerned about not having a safe or consistent place to discuss safe youth ministry boundaries, or possible attraction to students. The more safe accountability they have, the safer everyone is!

What else did this roundtable interview lead to?

The Draw the Line: Relational Boundaries for Safe Youth Ministry eBook! It also helped shape our efforts this year for another roundtable interview with key leaders and experts on the topic of child abuse prevention in churches.

Is there anything else you'd like to add? Any interesting stories from the whole process of taking this from idea to the final published form?

All of the participants we worked with were incredible! I was so thankful that they were willing to schedule this roundtable into their busy schedules and give us their wisdom in this important conversation—it was an amazing thing to be a part of. And I'm so thankful for Andrew Finch, who did first edits on all of the conversations and found good places to split them by topic! He was a silent participant in the roundtable, but his presence was incredibly valuable!

All five parts of this award-winning series are:

The Church Law & Tax Team is continually equipping churches with a number of articles and resources to keep youth safe, including the Reducing the Risk kit, the downloadable "2015 Child Abuse Reporting Laws for Churches," and another roundtable article series that published in April, which is National Child Abuse Prevention Month.

Michelle Dowell is editorial coordinator for the Church Law and Tax Group at Christianity Today.