Pastors warn underage of rules within youth group

Fourteen underage children were collared at a Masterton church youth gathering in a crackdown sparked after a 12-year-old girl disappeared from their ranks.
The number of underage children discovered on Friday night at a weekly Equippers Church youth meeting did not surprise youth pastor Hannah Hooker despite a tightening of their age limit after the young girl a week earlier left the gathering and spent the night at derelict Lansdowne School.
''We have always known there have been under-14s but we never counted them before,'' she said.
At Friday's service, youth pastor Hannah Hooker told the 125 teenagers attending that anyone under the age of 14 would need to come forward and from next week onwards provide parental consent for them to attend.
''As from next week if you don't have or give us your parent's right phone number we will be taking you home,'' she interrupted dancing and singing to inform the assembled teenagers.
''It's a way of keeping you safe; it's a way of keeping us safe.''
Senior pastor Willie Levy said the church was tightening its age restrictions after a Wairarapa Times-Age article about the 12-year old girl _ who says she stayed the night at Lansdowne School _ and her mother, who held the church responsible.
Mr Levy said the church had only thrown out kids from the service after several warnings and teenagers were kept in the premises from 7pm until 8.30pm.
A five-man safety team was on extra alert on Friday night as it patrolled the grounds around Equippers church on Akura Rd.
Nick Surtees, 28, a member of the church and safety patrol, said the children at the gathering were mostly well-behaved.
''We do what we can, but when kids want to leave we can't forcibly keep them here so we provide a safe place and do what we can for them,'' he said.
By 8.30pm on Friday the safety team was keeping a close watch on a group of a dozen teenagers who trickled out from the church to smoke cigarettes and chat next to the nearby railway tracks.
Debi Lodge-Schnellenberg, whose only child Hannah has been attending Equippers since the beginning of the year, called the church a safe environment that was doing all it could for the community.
She said if bad kids came to the church it was only because the church had to welcome everybody.
''I haven't seen young people drinking by the railway but it wouldn't surprise me,'' she said.
The church could only take so much responsibility for looking after the children and the rest fell to parents, Ms Lodge-Schnellenberg said.
''What I don't get is not knowing where my daughter is _ they are not a babysitting service.''