Read that again. Church Kidnaps Teens
Pay attention to where it says they use real guns, don't get permission from the parents, and think it's all harmless good fun.
When my children were small, there was this church bus that drove through the neighborhoods, picking up kids and taking them to church. Any child they saw outside was fair game for them. They didn't ask the parents if they could provide a bus service for their children to the church, they just grabbed every child they could see and hauled them off to church.
I'm pretty sure they brought all the children back to the right places afterwards, but I never found out.
I saw this church bus stop at my house, and then saw my daughter (who was 5 at the time and picking lavender out front with her brother), talking to this strange man and backing towards the house, pushing her little brother behind her. So I went out to see what was going on.
The man said he was just there to pick my children up for church.
I asked "What church?" because the name of the church wasn't on the bus, all it said was "Church Bus". He said the one down the street (which was actually 3 or 4 - we live in Oklahoma, you can't spit anywhere and miss hitting a church). I asked to see the permission form for picking up the children, thinking he'd gotten the wrong address and was willing to give him directions to the right address.
He said he didn't need permission forms, he was on a mission from God and it was his duty to bring every stray child to church.
I said my children weren't strays.
He said that because they were in the front yard, they were his to pick up.
I told him to wait right there, then went into the house, children ahead of me, and called the police and reported an attempted kidnapping.
The police back then were prompt, and they were at my house before I had time to walk back outside (the children were playing in the back yard). They found out the name of the church, told the driver he did indeed need permission to pick up children, took all the children off the bus (I gave them all cookies and lemonade so they were happy), called their parents and discovered over half the children were on the bus without parental knowledge. Some of the parents didn't even know their children were missing yet, because they'd sent them to the park to play and the driver had taken all the children at the park.
I raised such a big stink that the church had to issue a public apology and start requiring a permission slip that the children who were supposed to be picked up by bus had to give the bus driver -and he couldn't take them if they didn't have the permission slip.
He hated me after that. Until the day I moved, he would blare his horn and shake his fist every time he passed my house. He didn't think he had done anything wrong.
This church is the same way. They don't think they did anything wrong in forcibly kidnapping, with real guns!, children, and then holding them for interrogation. As far as I know, the churches don't send teens out as missionaries without their parents, and they don't send them out to dangerous places, so this sort of "preparation" isn't needed. If they sign up to be missionaries, as adults, they'd probably sign paperwork that says they may be subject to random actions resembling the circumstances they might encounter.
But not a 14 year old child. With real guns. Without parental permission.
I don't care how
"much thought [is] given to the safety aspect"
when it comes to using real guns against children, teen or not. To "shock the students", they
need to get parental permission
first, and they could use fake guns - most teens wouldn't know the difference. That said, I don't think churches should try to "shock" their children.
I don't think churches should kidnap children, or shock them, or subject them to terrors. They can wait until the children are adults before they do things like that, fully informed adults.