When the Lord opens the door for me to talk, consult, and train with churches, classically I am talking to church administrators, facilities managers, executive pastors, and the staff member or volunteer that is in charge of security (or safety). When I first starting writing this article, I felt the Lord guide me to talk to you senior pastors or equivalent title. First, 1 Timothy 5:17 is my life verse; as amazing stewards of the gifts the Lord gave you, I double honor each of you. Focus on the gift the Lord has given you, and let others, like me, serve in the other areas—in this case, security, safety, and medical response.

Recently I had a nexus in another significant church leadership crisis and had a window to provide some recommendations to the leadership based on my professional security experience and church security experience. It made me realize how much we in the church security world do not speak to you, the senior pastor. We know you are gifted and a good steward of the gift of studying, teaching, preaching, and seeking the Lord’s wisdom, knowledge, guidance, and His voice for His people. But you may not have had exposure to the formal elements of security, safety, and medical response unless you had previous military, law enforcement, or first responder experience. 

You are brilliant in the Word, so I will take a moment to simplify the scope of church security, safety, and medical response. Also, I want to empower you to challenge yourself, your eldership, your vocational and volunteer leadership, your volunteers, and yes, even your congregants, to a level of excellence in understanding His church’s responsibility, liability, and scriptural needs to protect the Lord’s assets, people and mission.  

I have been doing security for churches and professionally for over 30 years. The following statement may shock you: In some ways, church security is the hardest form of security in the world. Do we want a thief in our church? Of course not Jim! No, we don’t want stuff stolen! But wait, don’t we want a thief to get saved, set free, and serve the Lord? The consequences for the thief’s crimes are not our mission, our mission is to lead them to the Cross.

Caveat: I don’t throw around headlines of bad church news articles. I figure if you have locks on your doors, you don’t need bad news that emphasizes the need for these security capabilities. If you need to hear some sad but true stories, I’m available, but I encourage you to focus on doing the right thing. Don’t focus on justifying the lack of need for security, safety, and medical response capabilities in the church.

So Jim, I need that Easy Button version. How should I think about the definition and scope of church security and safety? Great question, it won’t be at the Hebrew or Greek level … I hope that’s okay.  

Whether I am talking to a cowboy church pastor, a big commercial company or federal government officials, here is how I simplify these terms:

Security: The prevention, detection, and response to a crime or a violation of an organization’s (church’s) rules/policies. Notice I didn’t separate physical, cyber, personnel, fraud from this definition, that comes later.

Safety: The prevention, detection, and response to an accident (think spilled milk, broken glass, etc.)

Medical Response: The physical and technical capability of responding to medical issues and emergencies before a higher level of care (e.g. paramedic) is available during a security or safety incident.

Safe: The feeling by an individual, in an environment, where they feel the security and safety controls are adequate for them to be at peace to enter/enjoy/use the environment.

The Church: “Uh Jim, you’ve fallen off your rocker, I think we know this one.” Well, let me challenge you. For all the reasons we are talking about, “The Church” from operational ownership of security, safety, medical response, these functions need to be cared for… Wherever The Church (the legal entity) is operating as The Church: At your campus, at events in the city, on the mission field with a group of members, even online.  

I will talk briefly about team names later. That’s the least of your priorities at this point.  From an operational and legal perspective, your church does security, safety and medical response regardless of what you call it.

Only scary question: Who is the Chief Security Officer/Chief Information Security Officer of your church? Who is it from a governance standpoint when the ZNN reporter or FBI shows up at 3:00 am on Sunday? It is you and your elders, unless you have started a fully-governed church security and church safety program.

I am going to focus on security programs, since they are my primary expertise, but I have done more than my share of safety and medical response to know that these suggested solutions can easily cover all these functions.

So Jim, what are some of the most critical sub-functions we need to be thinking about? Here they are, in no particular order:

  • Physical Security Controls—Doing security for physical assets.
  • Personnel Protection—Doing security for people (leadership, staff, volunteers, members, visitors, etc.)
  • Response Management—The planning before, during, and after an incident (minor or major) happens.
  • New Project Management—Make sure security is included in the planning for all new events and projects.
  • Assessment Functions—Ensuring the organization is regularly verifying its security is where we believe it is.
  • Legal & Regulatory Compliance—Making sure, at a minimum, you are compliant with the security, safety, and medical elements of any laws, regulations, and insurance requirements, in your city, county, state, or federal, in areas you physically minister in. Some will include denominational requirements in this sub-domain, which is a good thing.
  • Human Resources—Making sure your hiring, training, and discipline processes incorporate appropriate security, safety, and medical requirements.
  • Information Security—Doing security for non-public information your church creates or is required to protect by third parties, no matter the form or use of the information.
  • Security of Organization’s Technology (Non-Security Technology) sometimes called “Cyber Security”—Doing security for all those electronic assets whether onsite or at a third party (e.g. giving websites).
  • Security Technology—Managing and securing all the security technology used by/for the church (cameras, access control, radios, panic buttons, third-party services, etc.)
  • Other Security Controls—Fraud controls, content controls, etc. 
  • Investigations—Making sure when a security issue is reported that it is investigated and handled in a comprehensive, court-defendable manner by certified/licensed trained security investigators.
  • Guard Services—Where and when appropriate, having a needs process and operational management capability for staff, volunteers, law enforcement OD work, and/or third-party guard services.
  • Medical Response Management—Yes, from the paper cut at the copy machine to major medical on the third row of the church bus or in the middle of the 10th row of the sanctuary on Sunday morning. What is our plan? Before, during, and after?
  • Safety Management—Think spilled water, water leak in the bathroom, ice covered sidewalks, old frayed carpet that Stiletto’s can get snagged on.
  • Other—Yep, other security things will come up.

Each of these has a number of specific functions under them to improve the maturity of your security, safety, and medical response program—a strategic plan (aka baby steps).

I know this can feel overwhelming, but that is why you need a security leader and a team that can take this burden off of you (and your family) and handle this on a day-to-day basis. If you are a small church, this may take the path of a lot of outsourcing, but I want you, your leadership, and the elder board to “sleep better” knowing you all understand the need for all of these domains in your ongoing managing of the church (the business and the ministry). I’m not asking you and your leadership to know and operate any of these areas or knee-jerk to implement a sub-standard version of them. The Lord wants us to do even these things with excellence.

Jim, where can we start? Whether you have what you believe is the minimum, you believe you have a well-established program, or you know you have very little and it keeps you up at night, let me give you some Easy Button next steps:

Many churches like the comfort feeling of just an Ask Me Anything session and that, along with my Church Security 101/201 classes, may be where you start. But I always guide a church, big or small, to take my free self-assessment. https://askmcconnell.com > Resources > Checklists > Church Security Self-Assessment

This is a simple free self-assessment that you, your elders, a sample of staff, and the leader(s) of your security, safety, and medical response program should complete separately. Why separately? Because this self-assessment is self-reflective of what the individual wants or needs to believe about the security, safety, and medical response capabilities of their church. Once you collect all the self-assessments, bring them together to the elders’ meeting or leadership to discuss gaps and get a commitment for the need for improvements. This is not the time for solutions to the gap—it’s a time for getting buy-in.

Now develop, through a team of staff, volunteers, and experts, a two-year strategy for improvement—critical, high, medium, and low—and how the program(s) will be designed, funded, and implemented. Implementation of the improvements can take anywhere from a few days to many months due to resources, skill sets, culture, or just people. Trust the process. It is not important at this point what you call this team, this is an implementation team. When you move to operationalize a security, safety, and medical capability, the team name doesn’t protect you much from a legal, insurance, or liability sense if you name it differently than what they do. After 30 years, I’ve seen many churches get frozen on the team name issue. 

Get the plan, start, and require the team(s) to get regular, minimum four times a year, updates on the strategic implementation, day-to-day incidents and wins, and metrics on the programs.

The Word talks about protection throughout the Bible. Society expects us to offer a safe place to worship and minister—it’s all about God’s people. Pray the Lord will grant you wisdom, knowledge, resources, and helpers. Hopefully, this perspective, plan, and tool, provides some great resources to start and/or mature. 

Jim, what if I find I’m still confused or my elder board or leadership isn’t where we need to be? Can you help? Yes, I’m just a phone call/email/video  away.