Church Safety and Security

To have a friend that is a pastor at the cowboy Church they all carry pistols and rifles all are trained

 

Ura-Ki, you bring up a whole new set of complex problems, we have church services, Bible study for the adults and sabbath school for the children prior to church service, a church grade school, that is an alternative to public school, which meets every school day and often has field trips etc, mid week prayer and study services, meals and social meetings for the elderly, scouting and youth group meetings, etc, all with different locations within the church complex and other places off the grounds, with different age groups, and a lot of overlapping times and locations. It is not a matter of closing a few doors, hiring a security service for 2 hours and watching 50 people attend a service. Since we practice outreach as part of our church goals, we are actively inviting new people into our facilities and even adding that unknown. So far we have had a lot of prayer and very few workable programs. And that doesn't even throw in an individual like the one in Texas.

 

I had to look up HESCO bastions. Oh my aching 19 year old back! Why didn’t they invent these things in the mid 1960’s, before I filled all those sandbags!
Good thread, Dart! To me it looks like an impossible task to secure a church. The more outreach all the harder.

 

Being an Agnostic, I still have found wonderful community and fellowship in church. I listen to their doctrine, I especially enjoy the parables but I am skeptical about the hocus locus. I believe in the power of prayer but not necessarily that it is a communion with the gods. It is the worth of a man to support the members of his tribe, community, fellowship, with his life if necessary. An armed congregation seems to be the most pragmatic solution to church security. I used to belong to a Pentacostal church that held weekly turkey shoots, don't see why IDPA would mind a few folks from the congregation.

 

In a mall you might have Gekko_45 covering your six.

 

Narrow window between being security conscious and being unfriendly. Your security team "should" usually be the first contact with unknowns, especially if they look troubled or uncertain, at the same time it is the goal of our church to both help the troubled and to lead them to the Lord. Sometimes asking for a picture ID and writing down the details might be good security, but it would most likely not help the outreach goals. Your security team members need to be in my mind some of the best members of the congregation and must know how to interact with people. We have a prison ministry, work with substance abuse programs, have family consoling, started out as marital but now also involves inter generational problems, and have found that all work best in a secure location outside the church proper. I have seen some really good suggestions on security in these posts and we will be discussing them in our next meeting, but the conflicts between our long term goals and short term realities are really creating some problems.

 

Hire Kevin Spacey to “frisk” the men before entering.

 

Thank you Yard for this post. My uncle brought this up last night. I mentioned the things I've read in the above posts. He asked me to attend their next deacon's meeting and explain this topic to them and the pastor.

 

We are moving ahead with new construction this spring, the origional building will remain, but the bulk of services will be in the new bjilding (s) having spent 2 hours on a 3 way with our church leaders and Sheriff, we have narrowed down concerns and will be including as many solutions as we can afford. I also got talked into moving 20k pounds of organ and every thing that goes with it, and installing it in a new purpose built chapel. Yea for me! Lol
We are also looking at how our parking lot is set up and building distance and obstacles between. My one remaining concern is site security, we normally have two armed greeters unmarked at the front, with two more armed ushers inside, plus the members, my concern is having so many armed inside with out a plan of action in place, so we need to address that issue further and likely will have to meet every one and implement a working plan so we don't have half the congregation jump up and start filling the place with aimed pistol fire! Sounds funny, but it's a serious concern.

 

YD, it has been my experience over the years that most churches don't want to even discuss the subject and when they do it's only to dissuade their members from any form of armed preparation. They just want to play the odds and hope it doesn't happen to them. They may call it faith but IMHO they simply refuse to accept the responsibility for the physical safety of their flock. Doesn't sound like much of a shepherd does it?

Once in a while they might say they have a couple of off duty Police officers in their congregations but they're not there all the time. So I keep it to myself and carry all the time just in case. There's hope however. Some are starting to wake up. God Bless.

 

There is a certain irony in the discussion of security and defensive measures for churches and their congregants. Such discussion would not have been out of place during the Reformation and Counter Reformation, where churches, much like secular fortifications, were designed and constructed as strong points as a refuge for congregants against the depredations of their theological opponents. These days, the enemy, as often as not, is from within.


Via:Exploring the ancient churches and fortifications of the Lune Valley

Fortified church - Wikipedia

Fortress church - Wikipedia