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There are nearly 450,000 congregations in the United States and Canada. Using a conservative estimate of 20 volunteers per church, we have a total of nine million church volunteers. If there are on average three employees per church, then we also have nearly one-and-a-half million staff members.

That's more than 10 million volunteers and staff members. Do you think every one of them is squeaky clean? Not a chance. People sometimes hide who they really are. Job seekers lie on their resumes. Potential volunteers and employees hide driving records, job safety history, and arrest records. Some even hide their real names and social security numbers.

Even worse, says Brad Snellings, chief sales officer at Protect My Ministry, there are 400,000 registered sexual offenders—a number that continues to grow. He also found that one church out of every 25 reports allegations of sexual abuse in any given year. It has been found that a sexual abuser typically abuses three to six children every year before being stopped.

Why do people lie about their pasts? Aren't church people beyond such behavior? At best, people hide past mistakes because they are trying to find a fresh start, leaving the past behind. At worst, they are hiding from the law, or looking for new fields for sinful activity.

Thankfully, several companies in the last 15 years have developed background check services designed for churches and ministries. Their work has grown tremendously, both in the number of churches using their services and in the types of programs offered.

Some background-checking services provide "instant" results (completed in just minutes) and include verification of social security number, the form of identity the person presents, and a check of motor vehicle records. Other services, such as a credit bureau record check, criminal history record check, or listings on the National Sex Offender Registry or the Office of Foreign Asset Control (also known as the "terrorist watch list") take two or three days to complete.

Most criminal and identification records are maintained in county offices. There are over 3,300 counties in the United States. In some cases, county records are aggregated at the state level. "Counties will report information to the state level, but there is no mandate of the type of information reported into a national database from the states," says Snellings. So information from state or national databases not derived from county records may be hit or miss. A quality service provider will guarantee to perform due diligence and contact a county for the search. Snellings says that there are two ways to access county records—online (through paid access), or manually, when the search firm sends a court runner to trace records.

The type and depth of a background check depends on whether the person is a potential employee or a volunteer, whether the person will have access to financial records and data, and whether the person will have contact with vulnerable people such as children, the elderly, or the disabled.

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