Forming a church security team is an important part of your church emergency response plan. Having even a small team of trained people is as important as the plan itself.
I used to work as a bank teller, handling cash day in and day out. We had regular training on robbery awareness and planning. The bank knew that in the heat of an emergency situation you can do very irrational things if you haven’t decided ahead of time how you’ll respond.
Forming a church security team is your church’s way of deciding ahead of time how to respond. Read on for more on helping each team member decide ahead of time how they should respond.
Pray
As usual, the first best step is to pray. Pray that God would provide the right people. Pray that you’d be spared from the day of needing an emergency response. And pray for strength & courage to be prepared anyway.
Read Up
It was encouraging and saddening at the same time to find many helpful posts about forming a church security team on the web:
- Forming a Church Safety Team [Active Response Training]
- Church Safety Team Turnkey Proposal Kit (paid) [Sheepdog Church Security]
- 7 Critical Essentials for Church Security [Fellowship One]
- How to Start a Security Team at Your Church [The Church Network]
- Develop a Volunteer Safety and Security Team [Brotherhood Mutual]
Go Find Your People
Brotherhood Mutual’s article (above) is so to-the-point that you should go read about their 5 steps to building your church security team:
- Identify
- Recruit
- Train
- Deploy
- Manage
I don’t want any church to be reactionary or motivated by fear, but the number of incidents at our churches is unwise to ignore. Having even a few people who have thought through what to do in advance could save lives. Go build your church security team!