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In a recent survey of nearly 3,000 church leaders, an overwhelming number said they believe churches should welcome known sex offenders, despite their criminal pasts.

Nearly 80 percent said sex offenders should belong to a church, while only 3 percent thought they should be completely excluded, according to the "Sex Offenders in the Church" survey conducted by Christianity Today International, Your Church Today's publisher.

The purpose of the research, which took place online in April 2010, was to learn the attitudes and actions churches are taking to help integrate known sex offenders into their faith communities. The 2,864 people who participated in the survey included ordained church leaders (15 percent), church staff (20 percent), and lay leaders (43 percent).

With so many church leaders apparently willing to make a place in the pews for known offenders, a significant question arises: How can they do this and still keep their congregants safe? The following four highlights from the research may help provide an answer:

Say "sex offender" and most people immediately assume "pedophile." While child molestation is a sex offense, many other crimes also fall under the definition of the term. For the "Sex Offenders in the Church" survey, sex offenders were defined as: "One who has committed a sex crime that involves any illegal or coerced sexual activity, such as sexual assault, sexual battery, sexual abuse, rape, statutory rape, date rape, prostitution, as well as indecent exposure, and lewd acts, whether against a child or adult."

More than half of the survey respondents felt that standards for a sex offender's participation at church should be determined, in part, by the seriousness of their crime. Richard Hammar, a noted church legal expert and senior editorial advisor for Your Church Today, affirms that not all sex offenses pose the same degree of risk. However, in the article "Sex Offenders in the Church" (Church Law & Tax Report, Sept/Oct 2010), he cautioned churches about the potential danger of "erring on the side of mercy" in dealing with known offenders. "Many sex offenders are classified as 'tier 1' on a sex offender registry," he said, "not because they committed a lesser offense, but because they 'plea bargained' down to a tier 1 offense."

If a church allows a known offender to serve with children or youth, and this individual reoffends while on church property, Hammar said a jury likely will be incredulous that a church would expose its most vulnerable members to such a risk, regardless of whether the offender only had a minor sex offense in his past.

"No court has exonerated a church from liability for the molestation of a child on the ground that the offender was merely a tier 1 offender who did not impose a duty on the church to implement reasonable restrictions," he said.

So while not all sex offenses are the same, a jury won't necessarily see it that way. "The mere inclusion of a person on a sex offender registry is likely to be viewed by most juries as a serious risk warranting reasonable precautions and restrictions," Hammar said.

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