Religion · Montpelier, VT Metro · August 19, 2026
VT Church Elder Charged in Child Sex Abuse Case; Nonprofit Stays Silent
What Alinsky tactic is being used
One of the thirteen rules is in play here.
Rule 4
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
Child Evangelism Fellowship exists on the promise that it is safe to hand it your children, and it publishes that promise in its recruiting and camp material. What the story records is the gap: a one-paragraph statement, references to Buzzell scrubbed from the site, social media pages taken down, and no answer to the plain question of whether families whose children attended his events have been told. Anyone who wants to discredit the ministry will not need to invent anything; they will simply put CEF's own child-safety language beside its refusal to say whether it called the parents.
Counter-Rule 4 · Radical Integrity
Close the gap between stated values and actual practice before anyone else finds it. This tactic only works where the gap is real.
Close the gap yourself before someone else measures it. This month, ask your own church for the actual child-protection policy document that governs any children's ministry it runs or hosts — policy number, date adopted, who signed off — and read it against what actually happens on a Sunday: are two unrelated adults present, are background checks re-run, is there a written rule that civil authorities are called first. Where practice falls short of the paper, write down the specific gap and put it in front of the elders in writing, and refuse the temptation to defend a policy you have not read.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
Know where you stand
The free 4-minute assessment identifies your mountain and your institution’s capture phase — so alerts like this one arrive matched to where you actually stand.
Facing this yourself? Ask. Describe what is happening and get what the book, Scripture, and the law of your state say, with the exact words to use. Your first one is free.