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Churches are meant to be a place of peace, reflection, and safety. However, recent events have clarified that they are not immune to security threats. Whether vandalism, theft, or even an active shooter, churches must protect their congregation, staff, and assets. This is where Invictus Security can help.
We provide comprehensive security assessments for churches, identifying vulnerabilities and developing risk mitigation strategies. We analyze all aspects of your church’s security program, including physical security measures, access control systems, and emergency response protocols. This helps us provide tailor-made solutions that best fit your needs.
In addition to security assessments, Invictus Security also provides training for church staff and volunteers on security and safety. Our experienced security professionals train your team to identify and respond to security threats, conduct security patrols, and communicate effectively during emergencies.
Having a security procedure and emergency plan is also critical. Invictus Security will help your church develop effective policies and procedures for all security threats. This includes developing emergency response plans for natural disasters, fires, medical emergencies, and active shooter situations.
With Invictus Security, your church can be better prepared and equipped to handle security threats. Our services help ensure the safety and security of your congregation, staff, and property.
Our team of security consultants provides valuable assistance to churches by offering training sessions to prepare their staff and volunteers to identify and mitigate potential threats. We focus on observation techniques and creating layers of defense to enhance the security of their houses of worship.
We also provide force-on-force training and scenario-based training for dealing with live, real-life threats. Our firearms instructors will train and evaluate staff and volunteers in marksmanship and tactics, ensuring they are prepared to handle potential threats. This includes vetting those who should and should not be armed in a house of worship and ensuring that only qualified and well- trained people carry firearms to mitigate liability.
Invictus also provides online training courses for security training, making it easy for staff and volunteers to complete more advanced security classes.
Investing in church security is a wise decision that can benefit your congregation and the community significantly. Contact Invictus Security today to learn more about our church security solutions and how we can help you safeguard your place of worship.s
Speak with our experts about your security needs
Church security is increasing at houses of worship worldwide due to threats such as active shooter attacks and acts of terrorism. So to mitigate these threats, there should be a church safety plan in place and security training for staff and volunteers to help reduce the risk of an attack.
Furthermore, implementing protection measures for churches such as a security team, armed security, and security procedures are all vital components that should be considered by church leaders. It does not require the same security measures as Fort Knox, but having adequate physical protection is essential to make better protect houses of worship. Church Safety and Security need security experts that can help stakeholders formulate the best security plan.
It appears whenever you put on the news these days, there’s a tragic story about a shooting happening in the U.S., and unfortunately, even worship facilities are not immune. Implementing a church security plan is essential for keeping their churchgoers safe in case of an active shooter. The FBI Hate Crimes Stats report revealed there were 7,175 hate criminal activity events in 2017, with practically 21 percent of those encouraged by a religious predisposition.
Houses of worship can be targeted because of the religious beliefs they practice or just because of the market make up their congregation. Developing a security plan starts with the stakeholders working together to formalize a strategy when it pertains to security at churches. Hiring a security consultant who can assist in the design process of the security plan would be an excellent investment to accomplish the organization’s security goals.
With today’s threats against Houses of Worship, Churches must be prepared to ensure their congregant’s safety. Safety and protection is an essential part of church security. Does your House of Worship have a security plan to mitigate threats? An emergency plan to execute a response if a hazard occurs? Do you have trained staff and volunteers to implement the security plan? These are questions you must ask yourself as a church leader. Our goal is to help you answer these questions to ensure a safe and secure place to worship.
The first step of creating a security plan is to determine the purpose of the plan and the threats that may affect your House of Worship. This starts with a strategic planning session with stakeholders to discuss the types of threats and what countermeasures can help mitigate the risks. Additionally, knowing what vulnerabilities are currently present at the Church to assist in the security planning process.
Security policies are the Church’s security rules to ensure safety and security are followed by the staff and members to alleviate potential risks. Without policies and procedures, staff cannot be adequately trained to ensure the security of the Church. Security procedures are step by step directions for staff to follow should a threat or emergency occur.
It would help if you designed a security plan that includes local law enforcement. Making liaison with first responders will help support the implementation of the security plan should an emergency occur. Having everyone on the same sheet of music will help better execute the security procedures and emergency plan. This is vital for staff working security armed in plain clothes to help identify friendlies that are part of the security team to law enforcement. Planning and training, together with law enforcement, will support the execution of the security plan.
Involving the Church leaders in the plan and any training is vital to the security plan’s success. If the leaders don’t know the plan or how to execute the plan during an emergency, it will lead to failures in the security plan. The stakeholders are a critical part of the security planning process and must involve everyone in a top-down approach. Church leaders must have Buy-in of the security program and follow all the security protocols by leading by example if they wish to have their staff and members follow the Church’s security rules.
Having staff that patrols the church sectors will help ensure everyone is following security rules. This starts on the outer perimeter (Entry Points, Parking Lot), the middle perimeter of the building (Building exterior doors and walkways), and the inner perimeter (interior doors and the aisles). Creating tripwires and having visual surveillance of the entire premises will make concentric rings of security and mitigate potential threats from occurring. The goal is to create a hard target, so threats seek targets elsewhere.
Training is the key to ensure the security plan is followed correctly and executed. Church security teams can train through tabletop exercises and test the site’s security plan through various attacks that could occur. Training will bring out any vulnerabilities in the plan and will help better prepare everyone should an emergency arise. This will allow stakeholders to go back to the drawing board to fix any issues during training to be revised and updated in the plan.
As discussed above, it requires increasing church security by having a proper security plan, procedures, physical security, training, and implementation. The entire goal is to keep the plan simple and easy to follow for everyone that is required to execute the plan. The plan should not be written at a college student level but simple enough that any person can follow should a security or emergency incident occur.
You may not have the ability to avoid a mass shooting from ever occurring. Still, you can enhance the security at the House of Worship and have a plan in place to respond effectively to an emergency. Having a plan is essential if you wish to safeguard your assets and mitigate risks. The best choice to protect your churchgoers and decrease your church liability is to hire law enforcement or private security as protection throughout the services. The presence of law enforcement or uniformed security can be a deterrent to anybody thinking of causing harm. Houses of worship should have a Church active shooter plan included in its emergency action procedures.
This Church active shooter plan will prepare staff and volunteers with a guideline to follow and train to if this type of threat occurs. The probability of a mass shooting attack is low, but being prepared is a critical element for churches. This should include a church active shooter plan.
To understand the vulnerabilities of a church’s security, it first requires a church safety assessment. It determines weaknesses and probable threats that could create a loss event. A church security assessment will allow the security consultant to understand better the threats, vulnerabilities, and the impact of any loss events. The security measures for churches can be decided after the physical security assessment.
This process is part of the security survey to discover weaknesses in security and to implement the recommended countermeasures for Houses of Worship. It is the first and essential step to conduct a security assessment to help plan your House of Worship’s security program. When the initial security assessment is finished, an annual follow-up security survey is required to monitor any modifications that may have occurred. Complacency is among the biggest challenges in Houses of Worship. We tend to believe people are good, so no one anticipates anything terrible happening at a Church. That’s not true. Not all individuals are good people, and victims of violent attacks will usually say that they never believed an attack would happen to them.
Having Security Procedures is also an essential part of the security plan. Security procedures are step by step instructions to help better protect the Church. Security procedures allow the security plan to be implemented and applied to security training for the church. Many Churches are open during various hours for worship, allowing entrance to anyone throughout these open hours. Since Houses of Worship welcome a lot of people, this can create access control challenges; therefore, churches should prepare, develop, and execute stringent security procedures.
An essential part of church safety and security is having all staff and volunteers go through security training. This training can help better prepare staff and volunteers with security basics such as access control, observation skills, and dealing with emergencies. Another essential aspect of this training is ensuring armed security is adequately trained to use a firearm and tested on their marksmanship capabilities. Just because members of the security team have a concealed weapons license does not mean they are proficient marksman. Shooting is a perishable skill and requires constant training, mainly if an active shooter threat should occur in a setting with many people present inside the Church.
Every Church should seek to have selected members trained and prepared to assist with its security needs, which will require church safety and security training. Whether it’s reacting to a medical emergency, helping with a missing child, or handling a threat, having individuals on-site who are trained to respond is necessary. For this reason, many churches have chosen to establish church safety and security training. The objective is not to reduce the importance of first responders but to increase the Church’s ability to mitigate and respond to potential threats until first responders arrive. When running a church security ministry, you should bear in mind that having dedicated security members is essential to create a safe environment. When building your security team, the objective is to find competent, self-controlled individuals with sound judgment. Many churches have members within their parish who are actively serving or have previous law enforcement or military experience. These might be the preferred qualifications you need to consider for implementing church safety and security training.
Regrettably, churches are appealing soft targets for attackers because of their open design, accessible to all individuals, and many have weak physical security. Churches have been forced to create security strategies and ramp up training in the wake of recent attacks to Holy places. Since a white supremacist killed members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, Churches have started active shooter drills and security training for all staff and volunteers to include hospitality teams and ushers. Everyone is now expected to be a part of the security plan and have buy-in to the security program.
Attacks on U.S. churches by threat is becoming a significant concern. Approximately 617 worshipers have been killed in violent events throughout the United States since 1999. The number of attacks at houses of worship has increased almost every year, according to information from the Faith-Based Security Network (FBSN). The most dangerous Church shooting in modern-day history was the ambush on tiny First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas that killed 26 members of the Church. Church ministries now need staff and volunteers to serve in security. These security functions may include security handbooks, emergency plans, and training. Training will help with threat detection, crime prevention, and emergency response. So this should answer the question, “Why do churches have security?”
Beginning a safety and security program at your House of Worship does not have to be complicated or expensive to secure a church. It is essential to do what you can to enhance security and to secure a church. Many churches do not know where to start or think that a substantial budget is necessary to establish a security team. There are lots of things churches can do today that are low cost and or free. Is your management motivated to make security changes? It’s possible to create lasting, meaningful changes. You can secure a church by assigning functions for an emergency, identify who will call 911, who will speak to authorities, and who will talk to the media. Assign backups for each task.
Some may ask, What does a church security team do? Well, the goal of the security team should be designed to help safeguard assets. Moreover, this can be accomplished by identifying professionals within the membership, such as doctors, medics, existing or former police officers, and members with military or security backgrounds. Invest in walkie-talkies. Walkie-talkies eliminate spotty cell service and scrambling to find a list of internal phone numbers. Ushers, daycare employees, and workplace staff geared up with radios can relay communications rapidly throughout the building or campus.
FEMA offers numerous free resources to assist you in making a church security plan. There are many resources online free to any House of Worship seeking to improve their security. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) offers numerous resources to assist faith-based organizations in making a church security plan for all types of threats that are human-made or natural.
There are many ways church safety be improved that include designating a single entryway into the Church. Once your service starts, appoint an usher or group member to lock doors. Any unlocked doors ought to be actively monitored. All other entryways should be inaccessible from the beyond your Parrish. Ensure that the exit doors remain unlocked from the within. Also, church security can be improved by assigning a volunteer to keep track of any open doors and having volunteers providing surveillance in the parking lots. This security can be improved by equipping volunteers with radios.
Assign security at the front of the churchgoers who can observe the crowd and conduct surveillance throughout the service. Draw attention to the doors, so in an emergency, it’s easy to find all exits for evacuation. Schedule a leadership or staff conference to spur conversation with stakeholders.
Obtain crime reports of the area. This can be done by requestion crime reports for the police department of crimes that have occurred near the site. Invite police, the fire marshal, to your campus to recognize trouble spots. They’ll help you better understand the potential dangers and provide solutions to create a more secure church environment.
There are many Free church security training resources available through the Department of Homeland Security. Some Free church security training programs include” See Something, Say Something” and” Run, Hide, Fight. There is also a Free App through Security Essentials to conduct an internal security survey. If you are interested in some Free church security links and church safety training, please fill out the form below to get a PDF download from ASIS on “How to Secure Houses of Worship.”
Additionally, DHS’s National Security and Programs Directorate offer a wide range of security and durability tools, training, and resources. Through its Hometown Security initiative, these resources are provided for faith-based organizations. The resources were developed to assist the private sector with their security preparation, and a number of these practices can also be utilized more broadly in regional locations gone to by great deals of people, such as faith-based companies.
Specialized help is provided to make a church safety plan through discussions, workshops, training, webinars, tabletop exercises, and training.
DHS Center for Faith & Chance Initiatives and FEMA developed Church safety training manuals for faith-based companies.
These manuals and information are available at the following link www.fema.gov/faith-resources.
FEMA provides these training videos with basic concepts for developing an Emergency Plan for an active shooter scenario and creating a hard target for a House of Worship. These informative church safety training videos guide viewers through emergency planning and essential considerations, using the various viewpoints of an active shooter, survivors, first responders, and other experts who share unique insights for protecting Houses of Worship.
Invictus, a Certified Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business, was founded by former United States Reconnaissance Marines who have carried military precision, focus, and discipline into the private sector.
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