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Today a police officer in Montreal shot and killed an innocent man during an active shooter call, and church security people are already lining up to criticize her. I am going live to say what most of them do not want to hear: a lot of you would have done the exact same thing. I will break down what happened, why that officer fired on the wrong man, and how the same selection and training failures are sitting on church security teams right now. We will end in the Word on the one thing that keeps you from killing the wrong person.

What we will cover

* What happened in Montreal this morning, and what the official statements are careful not to say

* Why that officer shot the wrong man, from thirty years of reading footage like this

* The hard reason this keeps happening: wrong people in the role, never trained

* Why owning a gun is not the same as being ready to use it

* The church security people criticizing this officer who would get the same result

* What you are really doing when you fill a slot instead of building a protector

* “I would rather be shot than shoot the wrong person,” and why discernment is built, not issued

* Hebrews 5:14, and how trained discernment is the difference between saving a life and taking the wrong one

Copyright © 2026 Keith Graves. All rights reserved.

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This week’s Christian Warrior Training Roll Call Briefing is a lighter week overall, but there are still several items church safety teams need to understand before Sunday. We cover the continued HIGH, Orange threat level, a foiled drone and gunman plot tied to public events in Washington, D.C., fresh ISIS messaging around FIFA World Cup activity, suspicious activity reports from churches, and practical training on barred or unwanted persons on church property.

✅ Threat level remains HIGH, Orange, with continued concern through major summer events

✅ Foiled drone and gunman plot targeting public gatherings in Washington, D.C.

✅ ISIS messaging calling for attacks connected to FIFA and World Cup related activity

✅ Weaponized drone concerns moving from foreign battlefields toward domestic soft targets

✅ Las Vegas churches shared suspicious activity reports involving the same scouting subject

✅ Louisiana church reported a visitor photographing and filming church property

✅ Massachusetts youth leader received antisemitic hate mail addressed to him by name

✅ Nashville church security guard assaulted by a previously barred subject

✅ Illinois church discovered a hidden phone used to spy on a woman changing

✅ Virginia church anniversary tent collapse shows why safety teams must prepare for weather and medical emergencies

✅ Training focus: managing barred, unwanted, and trespassed subjects at church

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This week’s Roll Call Briefing is out, and it’s a heavy one. Here’s what your team needs to know going into Sunday:

🔸 We’re holding at Condition ORANGE, and I’m extending it through the end of July. I explain why, including a federal bulletin that went to law enforcement but not to you.

🔸 A brand new ISIS media unit fixated on cathedrals, the Pope, and homegrown American attackers

🔸 ISIS formally renews its ultimatum against Christians in Africa

🔸 An ISIS supporter charged in New Jersey after discussing attacks on places of worship

🔸 Why your church’s World Cup watch party is a soft target

🔸 The 764 network: an extremist threat hunting the kids in your youth group

🔸 Five incidents this week, including two parish festivals hit on the same night and two threats stopped because somebody reported what they saw

🔸 Training focus: rammings don’t end when the vehicle stops

The full briefing PDF is free for every church. Download it, print it, and run your team through it Sunday morning.

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Every few months someone sends me a statistic about church shootings. Sometimes it is accurate. Often it is not. The numbers get recycled, sources get dropped, and security teams end up training against a threat picture that does not reflect reality.

This database exists to fix that. Christian Warrior Training has compiled 30 verified active shooter and deadly force incidents at houses of worship in the United States from 1999 to 2026. Every entry is sourced. Every weapon caliber, service phase, casualty count, and motive category has been checked against primary reporting. Where data was not publicly confirmed, it is listed as unconfirmed rather than estimated.

About This Database

The primary scope of this database is Christian churches and Christian ministry facilities. It also includes LDS meetinghouses, Unitarian Universalist congregations, and Jewish synagogues. This is not a theological statement. It is a tactical one.

The LDS Church and the UU Church are included because their members gather in similar ways, at similar times, for similar purposes to Christian congregations, and because attacks on their facilities follow the same patterns of pre-incident indicators, service phase vulnerabilities, and security responses documented throughout the rest of this database. Every tactical lesson from the Grand Blanc LDS attack applies directly to your Sunday morning service. The Knoxville UU attack teaches the same parking lot dispersal lessons as Burnette Chapel Nashville.

Synagogues are included for the same reason, and because the Michigan worship-site cluster of 2025-2026 cannot be understood without Temple Israel.

One additional observation worth making before we get into the data. Christian congregations account for 77% of the incidents in this database. That reflects both the volume of attacks and the sheer number of Christian churches in America. There are approximately 355,000 Christian congregations in the United States compared to roughly 3,700 synagogues. On a per-congregation basis, synagogues face a significantly higher rate of targeted attack. Both communities are under real threat with different threat profiles.

What rarely gets discussed is the steady drumbeat of violence against Christian congregations that receives almost no national coverage. Pittsburgh gets weeks of headlines. Sutherland Springs fades in days. Burnette Chapel barely registers nationally at all. Your congregation is not less of a target because fewer people are talking about it.

Finding 1: The Dominant Weapon Is the Handgun

Handguns account for 57% of all incidents in this database, 17 of 30. The 9mm is the single most common caliber, followed by .45 ACP, .40 S&W, and .22-caliber pistols.

Rifles account for 30% of incidents, 9 of 30, and produced the two highest casualty events in the database. Sutherland Springs in 2017, 26 killed and 22 wounded, was a Ruger AR-556 in 5.56mm with 15 thirty-round magazines. Tree of Life Pittsburgh in 2018, 11 killed and 6 wounded, the deadliest synagogue attack in American history, was an AR-15 style rifle combined with three handguns. When a rifle comes through your door, the body count potential is in a different category from a handgun.

Shotguns appeared in 3 incidents. Both the Knoxville 2008 and White Settlement 2019 shotguns were 12-gauge, sawed-off, and concealed under clothing. The White Settlement attack is instructive and critical at the same time. Jack Wilson made an exceptional shot, six seconds, from over 45 feet, to stop Keith Kinnunen. That shot is worth studying. What is also worth studying is how Kinnunen got to the point of making that shot necessary. He entered the building in a wig and a long overcoat concealing a sawed-off shotgun. He was observed by the security team inside, who began tracking him. They did not stop him at the door. He reached the pew, stood up, and killed two deacons before Wilson responded. One man’s marksmanship does not redeem a perimeter that failed. The lesson from West Freeway is not to have a Jack Wilson on your team. It is to build a perimeter that stops Kinnunen before he reaches the pew.

The rifle percentage is increasing. In 1999-2009, rifles were 2 of 13 incidents, about 15%. In 2020-2026, rifles are 4 of 10, 40%. The handgun remains the dominant platform, but any security team that is not training for a rifle threat is training for yesterday’s problem.

Finding 2: Transition Moments Are When Your Guard Is Down

47% of incidents in this database struck during a transition moment. When you apply the full definition of what a transition is, that number tells the real story.

A transition moment is any period of ritual shift, movement, or reduced collective attention within or around the service. It includes the obvious ones: post-service parking lot dispersal, the pre-service foyer, between services, post-service fellowship meals. It also includes moments most security teams do not think about as transitions because they happen inside the sanctuary while the service is technically underway.

Communion distribution is a transition. When deacons move to the front, every eye follows the elements. The congregation is not watching the doors. Keith Kinnunen knew this. He rose from his pew at West Freeway the moment that window opened.

The closing prayer of a Bible study is a transition. Dylann Roof sat with the Wednesday evening group at Emanuel AME for a full hour. He waited until they stood, closed their eyes, and bowed their heads. He chose that moment deliberately.

A children’s musical is a transition in attention. Jim Adkisson entered Tennessee Valley UU during a performance of Annie Jr. with over 200 people in the sanctuary. Every eye was on the children on the stage. His first shot was mistaken for a sound effect. That is not a coincidence. That is a man who understood where the congregation’s attention would be.

The pre-service foyer is a transition. Scott Roeder killed Dr. George Tiller at Reformation Lutheran in Wichita while Tiller was serving as a greeter before service began. The post-service luncheon at Geneva Presbyterian in Laguna Woods was a transition. The hallway at Lakewood Church between services was a transition. The parking lot of an LDS meetinghouse during a funeral in Salt Lake City was a transition.

Thirteen of the 30 incidents in this database occurred at one of these windows. Your security posture should not track the order of service. It should be consistent from the moment the parking lot opens until the last car leaves, with specific attention on every moment your congregation is moving, gathering, or engaged in a ritual that directs their attention away from the doors.

Finding 3: Anti-Religious Hate Is the Leading Motive Category

Anti-religious hate is the largest single motive category at 33%, 10 of 30 incidents. This category is broader and more varied than the racial hate framing that dominates the national conversation, and it is worth understanding precisely because the threat profile is different from every other category in this database.

Anti-religious hate attacks are directed at congregations because of who they are as a gathered community of faith. The specific form of that hatred varies. Larry Ashbrook at Wedgwood Baptist in 1999 hated Christians. Matthew Murray at New Life Church in 2007 hated Christianity, having grown up in a deeply religious household and turned that experience into contempt. Jim Adkisson at Knoxville UU in 2008 hated liberals and targeted that congregation for its beliefs. Dylann Roof at Charleston in 2015 was a racial hate crime targeting a historically Black congregation. Emanuel Samson at Burnette Chapel in 2017 targeted that congregation in racial revenge for Charleston. David Wenwei Chou at Laguna Woods in 2022 targeted a Taiwanese congregation. Thomas Sanford at Grand Blanc LDS in 2025 hated Latter-day Saints specifically. Robert Bowers at Pittsburgh in 2018 hated Jews. John Earnest at Poway in 2019 hated Jews. Ayman Ghazali at Temple Israel in 2026 targeted Jews.

These are not the same motive. But they share a structure: the attacker selected the target because of its identity as a gathered community before God. That is what makes this category distinct from domestic violence, where the church is simply the location of someone the attacker knows, or mental health crisis, where the congregation itself may be secondary to the attacker’s internal state.

For your security team, anti-religious hate attacks tend to be operationally deliberate. Roof sat with the group for an hour doing surveillance. Murray attacked two locations the same day. Sanford brought a vehicle, a rifle, and a gasoline accelerant. Ghazali loaded a truck with commercial fireworks and gasoline, sat in the parking lot for over two hours, and called his ex-wife before driving through the entrance. These are not impulsive acts. They are planned. The pre-incident window is longer, the observable indicators are different from a mental health crisis, and the operational preparation tends to be more sophisticated.

A Word on Mental Health and Spiritual Warfare

Mental health is the second-largest motive category at 27%, 8 of 30 incidents. The behavioral indicators that researchers and law enforcement label as mental health warning signs are real and observable. Withdrawal from normal life, escalating agitation, expressions of hopelessness or grievance, dramatic behavioral changes in the days or weeks before an attack.

But if the Bible is true, and it is, then the clinical framework does not have the full picture. Scripture documents demonic activity that produces observable behavioral disturbance in people. Mark 5, Luke 8, Matthew 8. Paul writes about spiritual warfare as a present operating reality, not a historical artifact. What the clinical world calls a mental health crisis may in some cases have a spiritual root that no diagnostic manual can identify.

Both frameworks are observing the same behavior. A man who is in a documented mental health crisis, withdrawing from relationships, expressing grandiose or paranoid beliefs, deteriorating in the weeks before an attack, needs to be reported and intervened with regardless of whether you understand what is driving that behavior as a neurological condition or as spiritual oppression. The reporting pathway is the same. The urgency is the same. The outcome of failing to act is the same.

Finding 4: Domestic Violence Runs Through One in Six Attacks

The Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center published a case study in April 2025 using Sutherland Springs as its primary subject. Their conclusion: the attack was the endpoint of years of documented domestic violence, not a sudden break or an ideological act. The attacker had a history of violence against his wives, against children, against animals. He should not have legally owned a single firearm. He owned several because a military records failure allowed him to pass background checks he should have failed. The Secret Service reported that 41% of all mass attackers have at least one documented incident of domestic violence in their backgrounds.

Five of the 30 incidents in this database follow the domestic violence pattern directly. Greater Oak Baptist Hopkinsville 2001, an estranged husband targeted his wife during the altar call. Ministry of Jesus Christ Baton Rouge 2006, an estranged husband shot four in-laws at the church and then killed his wife at a separate location. First Baptist Sutherland Springs 2017, the church was targeted because his wife’s family attended. Richmond Road Baptist Lexington 2025, a man with prior domestic violence charges drove 16 miles to the church after shooting a state trooper.

Your congregation almost certainly has people in it right now who are in or leaving dangerous relationships. Building a culture where that is visible, and where there is a clear pathway to report a threat and get help, is not only pastoral work. It is security work.

Finding 5: Most Attacks Happen Inside the Building

83% of incidents in this database, 25 of 30, occurred primarily inside the building. Three occurred primarily outside, including the Salt Lake City LDS funeral parking lot shooting. Two began outside and moved inside.

The parking lot matters enormously. White Settlement, New Life Colorado Springs, Burnette Chapel Nashville, CrossPointe Wayne, and Salt Lake City all demonstrate what the exterior threat looks like. But when the attack begins, the data says it will most likely begin inside your sanctuary. Your team needs to be positioned, trained, and armed to respond there.

Finding 6: Armed Security Determines the Outcome

This is documented across multiple incidents in this database, not inferred.

New Life Church, Colorado Springs, 2007. Armed volunteer Jeanne Assam stopped Matthew Murray in the foyer before he reached the sanctuary. Two killed in the parking lot. Zero inside the building.

Burnette Chapel, Nashville, 2017. Unarmed usher Robert Engle was pistol-whipped but retrieved his own firearm and held Emanuel Samson at gunpoint. One killed in the parking lot. The attack was contained.

West Freeway Church of Christ, White Settlement, 2019. Jack Wilson, a former reserve deputy and firearms instructor, stopped Keith Kinnunen six seconds after he opened fire. Two killed. Zero additional casualties. Wilson had been training that security team for 18 months before the attack.

CrossPointe Community Church, Wayne, Michigan, 2025. A church deacon struck the attacker with his truck in the parking lot. Armed security killed him outside. Zero congregation fatalities. Approximately 150 people inside.

Chabad of Poway, California, 2019. John Earnest’s rifle jammed after his first magazine. Congregants rushed him and he fled. One killed, three wounded. The congregation’s physical response to the malfunction saved lives.

Congregation Beth Israel, Colleyville, Texas, 2022. Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker threw a chair at the hostage-taker and led three congregants to safety through the door. He had completed four security training courses from the FBI, ADL, Colleyville PD, and Secure Community Network before that day. Training saved him. Not a firearm. Training.

Now look at the incidents where no equivalent response was available. Charleston 2015: 9 killed. Sutherland Springs 2017: 26 killed, 22 wounded. Tree of Life Pittsburgh 2018: 11 killed, 6 wounded. Grand Blanc LDS 2025: 4 killed, building destroyed.

The difference is not luck. The difference is preparation.

State Distribution

Texas leads the database with 5 incidents across the study period. Michigan follows with 4, including three worship-site attacks in a nine-month window that has no parallel in the American record. Georgia has 3. The full Michigan Threat Intelligence Bulletin covering the 2025-2026 cluster, the suspect profiles, and tactical recommendations for congregations in the region is available free at ChristianWarriorTraining.com.

Southern states remain concentrated in this database, consistent with national research on worship-site violence. But the data now spans 18 states from Pennsylvania to California, from Utah to Minnesota. No region is exempt.

What Your Security Team Should Take From This

The probability that any given congregation faces an active shooter event in any given year is low. But probability is not the right framework. When the event happens, it happens to real people in a real sanctuary. The question is not whether it is likely. The question is whether you are ready.

Ready looks like a trained, armed security team that covers the interior and the parking lot, maintains full posture through every transition window, and has positioned someone in the lot during every arrival and departure period. A perimeter that catches the man in the wig and the overcoat before he reaches the door. A congregation that knows how to report a threat. A pastor who understands that the man in spiritual distress he has been counseling may need a security contact as well as a pastoral one. A culture where domestic violence is visible and where someone in a dangerous relationship has a pathway to safety before that relationship produces a security event for the whole church.

Ready looks like Rabbi Cytron-Walker, who went through four security trainings and knew exactly what to do when a man with a gun sat down in his synagogue. Ready looks like Jack Wilson, who started training 18 months before he needed it.

Nehemiah organized his people so that half worked and half stood guard. Both were ministry. Both were necessary. Neither group stopped.

That is still the model.

Sources: U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (2025 Sutherland Springs Case Study), Violence Prevention Project, Faith Based Security Network, Lifeway Research, FBI field office public statements, CNN, ABC News, NBC News, Detroit News, CBS News, Salt Lake Tribune, Gephardt Daily, Wikipedia incident articles. Data confidence: High for all high-profile incidents. Moderate for mid-tier incidents where caliber data remains publicly unconfirmed.

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A Kill List Targeted Churches. Here’s How We Stopped It.

On July 10th, 2025, a 277 page email landed in hundreds of inboxes across the Treasure Valley of Idaho and across the country.

It named police officers.

It named judges.

It named church members.

It listed home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, children, and workplaces. Then, in plain English, it told people to “go hunt and kill.”

My church was not named in the original document, but we became involved soon after. Friends of mine were named. People I do life with on Sundays were named. Churches in our area were named. The threat was real, and the response had to be immediate.

What happened over the next 48 hours is the reason no one in this story was murdered.

That did not happen because we got lucky. It happened because churches in our area had already built the relationships, the intelligence network, and the law enforcement connections needed to respond before the threat reached our doors.

What Happened

The couple behind the email was Jonathan and Jolene Harms of Boise, Idaho. They had previously been members of Table Rock Church in Boise and had been excommunicated. They were angry about it, and they believed they had a divine commission to bring judgment against the people who had removed them.

On July 10th, they put that belief into a 277 page manifesto and emailed it to hundreds of people. The document named more than 20 victims by name, home address, phone number, and email address. It named their children. It named their workplaces. It named churches.

The document specifically condemned several churches, including Table Rock Church in Boise, Bethlehem Baptist in Minneapolis, Faith Community Church in Boise, The Well Reformed Church, and Main Street Church in Boise.

My church was not on that original list. That changed later when intelligence developed that Harms associates were being directed toward additional churches, including ours.

By the time that happened, the system was already moving.

The Police Response

The Harms had already been on law enforcement’s radar before the July 10th email. Jonathan Harms had been placed on a brief mental hold in May, and two church leaders had already obtained civil protection orders against the couple.

The July 10th email violated those orders directly.

Boise Police Department moved quickly. On July 12th, two days after the email went out, Boise PD served arrest and search warrants at the Harms residence on East Highland Valley Drive. Officers knew the couple had weapons, so they staged the crisis negotiation team and the special operations group.

Jonathan Harms came out of the house and complied. He was taken into custody without incident. Inside the home, officers recovered a substantial amount of firearms and ammunition.

Jolene Harms was arrested separately by Garden City Police Department on a related telecommunication harassment charge after sending a message threatening a Boise police officer’s children.

That should have ended the threat.

It did not.

Jolene was released on bond, and over the following weeks both Harmses kept going. They sent certified letters to victims in violation of protection orders. They continued posting the manifesto online. They added new threats. The escalation continued.

In September, both were arrested again on expanded charges. Their bonds were set at $15 million each. As a retired police officer, I can tell you that a $15 million bond for a threat case is something I have never seen before.

They later represented themselves at trial. After two weeks of proceedings, the jury deliberated for about five and a half hours. Jonathan Harms was convicted on 62 counts. Jolene Harms was convicted on 60 counts. The charges included first degree stalking and witness intimidation.

Each now faces more than 200 years in prison.

That is the public record side of the case.

Now let me explain what happened on the church side.

The Church Intelligence Group

Within minutes of the July 10th email landing in inboxes, the document was in the hands of the Treasure Valley Church Security Intelligence Group.

For the last several years, a number of churches in the Boise area have been meeting regularly to coordinate on security. We call it our intelligence group.

The men who serve as intelligence officers at each church know each other. We have each other’s phone numbers. We have each other’s email addresses. We have a standing agreement.

If a threat lands at your church, you push it out to the group.

If a threat lands in the group, every church gets it.

That is why the response moved so quickly. When the manifesto hit one church inbox, the intelligence officers did not have to figure out who to call. They already knew. Within minutes, every intelligence officer in the network had a copy.

We worked the document together.

We pulled out names.

We pulled out addresses.

We cross referenced the named victims with church membership rolls.

We identified threat indicators inside the manifesto.

Then we built an intelligence bulletin and pushed it to area church security teams immediately.

The church security response happened independently of the police investigation, but it was informed by the same urgency: protect the people who had been named, assess whether our churches were exposed, and harden our defenses before anyone showed up. We were not interfering with law enforcement. We were not duplicating their job. We were doing the work churches need to do to protect their own people, assess the threat, identify who may be affected, and harden their defenses.

The reason we were able to move that fast is simple.

The relationships already existed.

There was no learning curve in the middle of the crisis. The system was already running before the threat arrived.

The Trespass Order

The Harms going to jail did not end the threat.

Jolene was out on bond. The manifesto was still circulating online. Their associates, whom they referred to as disciples, were still active.

Then word came to my church through a reliable source that those associates were being directed to our services.

We were not in the original manifesto. We had not done anything to the Harmses. But we were part of the intelligence group, and now we were on the list of places where bad things could happen.

We did not wait.

Our church secured a trespass order against Jolene Harms. The sheriff’s department delivered it, and she was barred from all church property.

A few days later, Jolene called the church to ask why. She got a direct answer.

We knew what was happening, and she was not welcome at our church.

The phone call ended.

No associates ever showed up.

Whatever they had planned never came through our doors because we acted before they arrived.

A trespass order does two things.

The first is obvious. It legally bars a known threat from coming onto your property. If that person comes back, they can be arrested. Your team does not need to debate it at the door. You do not need to improvise. The law has already been put in motion.

The second thing is less obvious, but it is just as important. A trespass order tells the threat actor and anyone working with them that your church is awake, organized, and willing to use the legal tools available to protect your congregation.

Bad actors looking at a church as a soft target are looking for confusion. They are looking for hesitation. They are looking for a congregation that will not act.

A trespass order sends a different message.

Not here.

Lessons for Your Church

There are five practical lessons every church security team should take from this case.

1. Build a Regional Church Security Intelligence Group Before You Need One

Do not wait until a manifesto lands in your inbox to figure out which churches near you have security teams.

Find the churches in your area. Reach out to the men responsible for security. Start a meeting. Once a month is enough to begin.

Talk about what you are seeing. Talk about people moving between churches who concern you. Talk about protocols. Talk about weak points. Build trust over time.

When a real threat arrives, the call needs to go out immediately. That only happens if the relationships already exist.

2. Your Church Needs an Intelligence Officer

The intelligence officer position at your church is not optional.

This is not a volunteer who checks the news on Sunday morning. This needs to be a man assigned to the role, with the time and tools to do the job.

His responsibilities should include monitoring open source threats, watching social media accounts of known persons of concern, maintaining a working relationship with local law enforcement, and pushing alerts to your team and to peer churches in your area.

There is another piece to this.

When another church’s intelligence officer calls you, answer the phone.

Over the years, I have personally called churches that were named in threats to warn them, and those calls have gone unanswered. That is a failure on the receiving end.

If you are the man at your church who would receive that kind of call, decide now that you will answer it.

3. Build Direct Relationships With Law Enforcement

The reason we were able to get fast, candid communication from officers about the Harms case is that those relationships had been built long before July 10th.

Take a patrol officer to coffee.

Invite officers to your security team meetings.

Walk them through your church layout.

Give them your contact information and ask for theirs.

Your first real conversation with local law enforcement should not happen during a crisis.

4. Ask Law Enforcement to Create a Church and Synagogue Liaison Position

Every police department and sheriff’s office in this country should have an officer assigned as a liaison to churches and synagogues in their jurisdiction.

This does not need to be complicated. It can be an additional duty.

There is likely a Christian officer in nearly every department who would gladly take this responsibility. The agency loses nothing. Churches gain a direct conduit into the department.

If you are a chief of police or sheriff reading this, designate that officer. Have him meet with church security leaders quarterly. The return on investment is a network of trained eyes across your city.

5. Use the Civil Legal Tools Available to You

Churches need to be proactive when credible threats develop.

A trespass order is one of the cleanest tools available. Most jurisdictions allow a property owner, including a church, to issue a trespass notice through law enforcement. Once that order is in place, a violation becomes a criminal offense.

Know how this process works in your county before you need it.

Know who handles it.

Have your church’s authority to issue trespass notices documented in writing.

When the time comes, you should be able to act the same day.

What the Bible Says

There is also a theological question here, and churches need to answer it from Scripture rather than emotion.

Some Christians will hear about a trespass order and wonder whether a church should ever bar someone from the property. They may ask whether it is right to use civil authority against an individual.

The answer is yes.

Ecclesiastes 4:9 through 12 says:

“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow... And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him, a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”

That is exactly what a church security intelligence group is meant to do.

A single watchman at a single church can be overwhelmed. A network of watchmen across multiple churches, working in coordination with law enforcement, becomes a threefold cord.

The Harms could threaten one church. They could not outrun a network of churches and a police department that already knew how to work together.

First Corinthians 12:24 through 26 says:

“But God has so composed the body... that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together.”

When one church in our region came under threat, the rest of the churches did not say, “That is their problem.”

We worked the document.

We pushed the alert.

We prayed.

We protected one another.

That is how the body of Christ should function.

The harder passage, and the one that speaks directly to the trespass order issue, is Nehemiah 13:7 through 9. Nehemiah discovered that Tobiah had been given a chamber in the courts of the house of God. Scripture says Nehemiah became angry, threw Tobiah’s household furniture out of the chamber, ordered the rooms cleansed, and restored them to their proper use.

Nehemiah did not negotiate with Tobiah. He did not leave the threat in place because removing him felt uncomfortable. He used the authority God had placed in his hands to remove an enemy presence from the place where God’s people gathered.

That is the biblical principle behind a trespass order.

When a church identifies a credible threat and uses lawful civil tools to keep that threat off church property, it is not being unloving. It is not being unchristian. It is protecting the congregation God has placed under its care.

The Bible does not require God’s people to leave the door open to those who mean them harm.

The System Worked Because It Was Already Built

This case did not end in tragedy because a system was already in place when the threat arrived.

The Treasure Valley Church Security Intelligence Group existed before July 10th.

The relationships with Boise Police Department existed before July 10th.

The intelligence officers at the affected churches knew their job before July 10th.

Boise PD had been watching the Harms long enough to know what they were dealing with.

When the threat continued after the arrests, individual churches took proactive defensive action and used the civil legal tools available to them.

None of that happened by accident.

It was paid for in months of meetings, phone calls, coffee with officers, and the discipline of intelligence officers building their networks one contact at a time.

A lot of that work does not look like security work when you are doing it. It looks like fellowship. It looks like coordination. It looks like another meeting on the calendar.

But on July 10th, that work was the difference between a kill list distributed into a vacuum and a kill list distributed into a system that closed in around the people responsible inside 48 hours.

What Your Church Should Do This Week

If your church does not have an intelligence officer, fill that position this week.

If your region does not have a church security intelligence group, start one.

If your relationship with local law enforcement is limited to traffic stops, fix that this month.

If you have credible intelligence on a named threat coming toward your church, do not wait. Use the sheriff. Use the trespass order. Use the civil tools God has placed in your hands for exactly this kind of situation.

The Harms will likely spend the rest of their lives in prison.

The people they targeted are still walking around.

That is the goal of church security.

Keep our people walking around.

Pray for the Harms. Pray that they repent, turn to Christ, and submit themselves to the Word of God. Then get back to work protecting the congregation God has placed in front of you.

If this article was useful, send it to your pastor, your security team leader, and the man at the next church over you have been meaning to call.

Then leave a comment and tell me what your church has done to build relationships with other congregations and local law enforcement.

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Who Needs to Read This With You

Last week’s incident review of the San Diego mosque attack was for your security team. This is the companion piece, and it is for your pastor, your youth ministry leader, your children’s ministry director, and the parent who is wondering what their fourteen-year-old has been doing on his phone for the last six months.

The two attackers left behind a document of roughly forty pages laying out exactly what they believed, who they followed, where they learned it, and what they thought they were accomplishing. That document is the most useful thing on the table right now, because it is the same playbook radicalizing other young men inside the same online networks at this very moment. If you can recognize the ideology, the symbols, and the language, you can spot it earlier in the children around you and intervene before this walks into someone else’s parking lot.

I am going to lay this out plainly, including the actual words these networks use. Some of those words are slurs and some are coded language a normal adult would never recognize. You need to see them, because your youth leader is going to hear them coming out of a teenager in your congregation, and right now most adults in the church world do not know what they are listening to.

What They Actually Believed

These attackers were not random and they were not aimless. They had a stated belief system and they wrote it down across roughly forty pages. The label that fits what is on the page is white supremacist accelerationism, with a heavy incel layer running underneath it.

White supremacist accelerationism holds that the existing political and social order is too far gone to reform, that white people are being deliberately replaced through immigration, and that the only path forward is to provoke societal collapse and a race war through acts of violence. The older attacker writes in the document that he is “an Accelerationist” who believes “accelerating towards the destruction of our current political system and towards an all-out race war for the purpose of a societal collapse is the only real way forward.” The younger writes that “the only solution to the current state of the world is to accelerate towards the complete and utter collapse of society” and that he wants to “burn this earth down and rebuild it into a new and better society.” Both name the same canon of books they want followers to read: Brenton Tarrant’s manifesto, James Mason’s Siege, William Pierce’s The Turner Diaries, and Hitler’s Mein Kampf. That is the modern white supremacist terrorist reading list, and it is openly traded in their networks.

The incel layer is the misogynist subculture they fused with the racial ideology. The older attacker identifies with online incel networks dating back to 2022, venerates Elliot Rodger and what he calls “the Incel saints,” and writes a long section directly attacking women. The younger attacker writes a similar section. This fusion of white supremacist accelerationism with the incel subculture is the same pattern that drove the Buffalo grocery store attack and the Allen, Texas mall attack.

The recruitment is happening on platforms your kids are already using, and the document is open about that.

The Saint Culture

This is the single most important concept for a youth pastor or parent to understand, because it is the cultural marker that tells you a young person has crossed from edgy internet humor into actual radicalization.

These networks elevate past mass killers to “sainthood.” They literally use the word. They build shrines to them, write hymns about them, post their photos as memes, and rank them by body count. The older attacker’s document includes a list of roughly thirty so-called saints. The younger attacker’s section lists about twenty more. Both authors place the Christchurch mosque shooter at the top, calling themselves “Sons of Tarrant.”

If a child in your youth group ever says the word “saint” alongside the name of a mass killer, that is the warning sign. If you see the name “Brenton Tarrant,” “Patrick Crusius,” “Payton Gendron,” “John Earnest,” “Dylann Roof,” “Elliot Rodger,” “Robert Bowers,” “Anders Breivik,” “Stephan Balliet,” or “Brandon Russell” appearing on a teenager’s phone, social media, or notebooks in a reverential way, you are looking at active radicalization. These are not edgy jokes. Inside these networks they are religious figures.

The “Sons of Tarrant” framing the San Diego attackers used is itself an attempt to launch a new recruitment brand. Their goal, stated openly in the document, was to convince other young men to follow them. The document is a recruitment instrument as much as it is an explanation, and that is why it is being mirrored across these networks now.

Where They Live Online

The radicalization ecosystem for the San Diego attack and most attacks like it sits inside two platforms: Discord and Telegram. Both have voice chat, video chat, encrypted servers, and the ability to live-stream to small private groups in real time.

The image below is a screenshot from the San Diego live-stream itself.

***VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED****

[IMAGE 1]: Screenshot from the live-stream on Discord. The interface shown is Discord’s mobile voice and video channel screen. One participant has the camera on, showing what appears to be the interior of the attack vehicle. A second participant is listening with their camera off, identified by an anonymous handle and a hooded-figure avatar. The green border around the active speaker tile is Discord’s standard speaking indicator.

This is what radicalization looks like in 2026. It is not a hooded man in a basement reading books. It is a teenager on his phone in his bedroom, on a Discord voice channel with eight or ten other young men who go by anonymous handles, listening to music and trading propaganda edits while one of them eventually decides to act and the rest watch it happen live.

Discord is the daily-driver platform. Voice channels, video, screen share, small-group chat. The networks operate as private servers that are nearly impossible for an outsider to access, recruit through smaller public servers, and graduate promising members into the inner servers. The San Diego attackers were streaming the attack itself to a Discord channel of fellow believers when they were stopped.

Telegram is the propaganda and reading library. Encrypted broadcast channels with thousands of subscribers, archives of every manifesto, edited videos of past attacks set to music, PDFs of every banned book, and step-by-step ideological training. Counter-terrorism researchers refer to the network of these channels as “Terrorgram.” The older attacker writes that he found his radical reading material on Telegram.

There are several other platforms in the ecosystem your youth leader should at least know by name: 4chan and its successor boards (Sharty, Soyjak.party, 8kun, EndChan), where memes and propaganda are workshopped before being pushed to Telegram and Discord; Roblox and Steam group chats, where teenagers are first approached; and various less-known video-game-adjacent chat networks where children as young as twelve are pulled in by older operators. The 764 network specifically operates across many of these platforms.

If a young person you know is suddenly spending six to ten hours a day on Discord, has multiple accounts under anonymous handles, refuses to let any adult see their server list, and has a Telegram app they did not have a year ago, that is the ecosystem. Not all of those kids are radicalizing. The ones who are, are in it.

The Symbols You Will See

These are the visual markers a youth leader, parent, or security team member needs to recognize on a phone case, a hoodie, a notebook, a school binder, or a Discord profile picture. They are not subtle once you know them, but they look like meaningless internet art if you do not.

[IMAGE 2]: The Sons of Tarrant cover from the San Diego manifesto, showing the Black Sun (Sonnenrad) symbol with dog tags featuring the Kolovrat at center.

The Black Sun, also called the Sonnenrad. Twelve lightning-bolt-shaped rays arranged in a circle around a center. Originally an SS occult symbol installed in the floor at Wewelsburg Castle by Heinrich Himmler. It is now the single most-used white supremacist symbol on earth and was central to the Christchurch attacker’s iconography. The San Diego attackers used it as the centerpiece of both their group logo and their second manifesto cover. If you see this symbol anywhere, it is not a coincidence and it is not aesthetic. It means what it means.

The Kolovrat. An eight-armed Slavic sun wheel that looks like four or eight swastikas linked in a circle. Used inside the dog-tag center of the Sons of Tarrant logo. Sometimes claimed as a “pre-Christian heritage” symbol but in modern use it is a coded white supremacist mark.

The swastika, often hidden. Direct swastikas are common in these networks, but they also get embedded into other imagery to dodge platform moderation. In the San Diego manifesto, swastikas are placed inside the eye sockets of a skull mask on one of the cover images. Look for it in skull eyes, in geometric patterns, inside other symbols.

The skull mask and Atomwaffen aesthetic. Balaclavas, skull-printed face coverings, all-black tactical kit, propaganda imagery built around faceless armed figures. This look comes from the Atomwaffen Division and its successor groups. It is the visual language of accelerationist terrorism. If a teenager is suddenly drawn to this aesthetic in his profile pictures, his clothing, or his art, that is a flag.

[IMAGE 3]: The “MisanthropistCEL” manifesto cover, showing the so-called fashwave or neon-fascist aesthetic. Cyberpunk grid background, glowing skull in a tactical helmet with swastikas embedded in the eye sockets, banner reading “Accelerate your hate.”

Fashwave, also called neon-fascism. Vaporwave 1980s aesthetics, hot pink and electric yellow gradients, computer grid backgrounds, anime-style mascots, all combined with Nazi symbols and slogans. Phrases like “Accelerate your hate” are signature. This is what the propaganda actually looks like in 2026. It is designed to look cool to a fourteen-year-old, and it works.

[IMAGE 4]: The “Death to the World” cover, showing the Black Sun with a radioactive trefoil at the center, signaling nuclear accelerationism.

The radioactive trefoil paired with white supremacist symbols. This signals what the networks call “nuclear accelerationism,” the wish for nuclear war as a tool of societal collapse. The combination of the Black Sun and the radiation symbol is a specific marker of this faction.

SS lightning bolts and runes. The double-lightning ⚡⚡ of the SS, the Othala rune, the Sig rune, the Tiwaz rune, the Algiz rune. These appear in usernames, profile pictures, and tattoos. Single thunderbolt and arrow combinations are also used as coded versions.

The Celtic cross and the sun cross. An equal-armed cross inside a circle. Historic Christian symbol that has been appropriated as a white nationalist mark and is now a primary identifier in these networks.

The numbers. 14 stands for the so-called “fourteen words,” a white supremacist slogan. 88 is HH for Heil Hitler. 1488 combines them. 109 refers to a debunked claim about how many countries have expelled Jews. 13/50 or 13/52 is a racist crime statistic trope. If a young person uses any of these numbers in usernames, gamertags, or shorthand, that is not a coincidence.

The Language You Will Hear

This is the section to read most carefully. Symbols can be hidden. Language is harder to hide, because teenagers talk. Every term below appears in the San Diego manifesto. Every one of them is in active use in these networks today. If you hear any of these words coming out of a young person in your congregation, you have your warning.

Saint. Used as a title for past mass killers, as covered above.

Sons of Tarrant, SOT. The new self-applied brand from the San Diego attackers, named after the Christchurch killer. May not stick. The category will.

Accelerationist, accelerate. Used as both ideology label and command. “Accelerate your hate.” “Total Dropout Revolution.”

Day of the Rope. A genocidal scenario from The Turner Diaries in which “race traitors” are mass-hanged. When a teenager uses this phrase, he is referring to a specific fantasy of mass killing.

Helter Skelter. Charles Manson’s framing for the race war. Now used by these networks to mean the same thing.

ZOG. Stands for Zionist Occupied Government, an antisemitic conspiracy term for the United States and Western governments generally.

Groyper. A specific subset of the far-right online movement, named for a frog meme. Not all groypers are violent. The pipeline from groyper humor to accelerationist violence is documented.

Chud. Originally an insult thrown at right-wingers, now reclaimed inside these networks as a badge of honor. The older attacker uses it this way explicitly in the manifesto.

Goyim, goy, shabbos goy. Antisemitic conspiracy language treating non-Jews as a despised category and using “shabbos goy” to mean a non-Jew who serves Jewish interests in their worldview.

NPC, normie, sheep, goyslave. Terms for anyone outside the network. Dehumanizing by design.

Race traitor, race mixer, cuckservative. Slurs aimed at white people who do not share the ideology.

Foid, femoid. Incel terms for women, designed to dehumanize.

Hypergamy, looksmatch, Chad, volcel, incel. The incel vocabulary. If a young man in your group starts using these terms, the incel layer is active.

Hyperborea. An esoteric Nazi reference to a mythical white-origin homeland. Code for the ethnostate end goal.

Screw your optics, I’m going in. The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter’s last words on social media before the attack. Now a venerated quote in the networks, repeated in the San Diego manifesto.

The slurs themselves. I am listing these because your youth leader needs to recognize them when they come out of a teenager’s mouth: kike (anti-Jewish), nigger (anti-Black), spic (anti-Hispanic), chink (anti-Asian), f****t and fag (anti-gay), tranny (anti-transgender), shitskin (anti-non-white), muzzie and goatfucker (anti-Muslim). Every one of these appears repeatedly in the San Diego manifesto. Every one is in active use in these networks. A young person picking up the language is the audible warning siren.

The music and reading list. Genres named in the manifesto: Nightcore (legitimate genre, weaponized by these networks for propaganda edits), Hardtekk (same), and what they call “Incelcore” (a fringe subgenre that is itself a radicalization vector). Bands named in the manifesto: Blackmagick SS, Edelweiss, Curta’n Wall, and the broader NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal) scene. Books named: The Great Replacement by the Christchurch attacker, Siege by James Mason, The Turner Diaries by William Pierce, Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Industrial Society and Its Future by Ted Kaczynski. If you find any of these in a young person’s possession, that is not curiosity reading. That is the syllabus.

Warning Signs in a Young Person

Pulling this together into a practical checklist your youth leader can use.

Look for the symbols above appearing on his phone case, his clothes, his binders, his social media profile pictures, his gamertag, or his bedroom walls.

Listen for the language above coming out of his mouth, in person or in his text messages if a parent has access. One slur dropped at school is one conversation to have. The full vocabulary appearing across weeks is the warning.

Watch for changes in online behavior. Six to ten hours a day on Discord. Telegram appearing on his phone. Multiple anonymous accounts. Refusal to let any adult see his screen or his server list. Switching to anonymous handles that include numbers like 14, 88, 109, or 1488.

Watch for music shifts into the genres named above, and for any name on his playlist that appears in the manifesto’s musical references.

Watch for reading material from the named books, especially if he is trying to hide them.

Watch for the “saint” language about any past mass killer.

Watch for sudden interest in the skull mask aesthetic, the all-black tactical look, or anime characters being used in profile pictures that have been edited with Nazi symbols.

Watch for the misogynist incel vocabulary in conjunction with any of the above. The fusion is what produces attackers.

Watch for fixation on collapse, on race war, on the Christchurch attack specifically, or on the Buffalo, Pittsburgh, El Paso, Charleston, or Poway shootings.

None of these individually is proof of anything. Two or three together is a conversation. Several together is a serious problem that requires the parents, the pastor, and likely outside resources.

Biblical Perspective

The church has always had a charge over the minds and hearts of its young. Scripture does not leave it ambiguous.

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 (ESV): “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

This is the foundation, and it is the thing every parent and youth leader in the church needs to take seriously right now. The instruction is not to outsource the formation of a child’s worldview to a Sunday morning hour and hope it holds. The instruction is constant. When you sit, when you walk, when you lie down, when you rise. The reason this commandment is given in such intense terms is because the alternative is not nothing. The alternative is that someone else fills that space. In 2026 the someone else is a Discord server, an algorithm, a Telegram channel, and a thirty-year-old in another state with a handle and an agenda. If the home and the church are not actively forming the young person’s mind and heart, that vacancy gets filled by the people on the other side of this article.

Proverbs 4:23 (ESV): “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”

This is the charge to the young person himself, and it is also the charge to the adults responsible for him. The heart is not a neutral space. What goes in shapes what comes out. A young man who pours six hours a day of accelerationist propaganda into his heart will eventually pour something out, and that something will not be small. The vigilance Proverbs commands is active work, not passive hope. A youth ministry that takes this verse seriously is a youth ministry that knows what its kids are watching, listening to, and reading, and is prepared to step in when something poisonous shows up.

The men who attacked the mosque in San Diego were the product of a vacancy that something else filled. The work this article is asking your church to do is the work of refusing to leave that vacancy in your own young people.

What to Do When You See It

If a young person in your congregation is showing the signs above, do not panic and do not confront him with an accusation in front of his peers. That will end the conversation and push him deeper into the network. The network rewards being misunderstood by adults.

Do bring his parents in privately. They likely do not know what they are looking at. Use this article to walk them through what you are seeing.

Do bring your pastor in. This is a spiritual problem before it is anything else.

Do ask the young person open questions. What are you reading. What are you listening to. Who do you talk to online. Who are these people. Do not show alarm at the first answer. Listen.

Do offer a real, present, named relationship with a man in the church who can take the time to actually know him. Most of these young men are not radicalizing because they hate. They are radicalizing because they are lonely, mocked, drifting, and finally find a network online that tells them they are special, that their grievances matter, and that they can be heroes. The church can offer something truer to that hunger than Discord can, but only if the church actually shows up.

Do escalate to law enforcement if you see any of the following: explicit threats against a specific person or place, weapons in combination with the ideology, expressions of intent to act, planning behavior, a manifesto being drafted, or a reference to a specific date. The local FBI field office handles domestic terrorism tips at 1-800-CALL-FBI and at tips.fbi.gov. They take these calls seriously and have a clear process for them.

Do not assume someone else will see it. The mother of the older San Diego attacker called police roughly two hours before the attack, and the warning still did not reach the parking lot in time. If the warning is in your hands and you do not act on it, no one else is going to.

Final Assessment

The men who attacked the mosque in San Diego were not anomalies. They were the visible tip of an online network that is recruiting teenage boys in every state in this country right now, including in the children sitting in your pews on Sunday morning. The ideology has a name, the symbols are identifiable, the language is documentable, and the platforms it lives on are not secret.

The church’s youngest people are inside the targeted age range. The church’s security teams will eventually face the graduates of these networks at their own doors. The work of identifying the early signs and intervening before a teenager becomes the next so-called saint is the work of pastors, youth leaders, parents, and security teams together. It is not separate work from church security. It is the upstream half of it.

Share this with the youth ministry leader in your church this week. Read it with your pastor. Sit down with your own teenager. The conversation is uncomfortable. The alternative is worse.

Leave a comment

If you have seen any of these signs in a young person you know, or if you have a question about identifying something specific, leave it in the comments. Share this article with your youth leader, your pastor, and your team leader. The next teenager headed down this road may be one your church can still reach.

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Why We’re Covering a Mosque Shooting

We are covering this because Christian congregations need to take this seriously for their own sake. Two attackers targeted a mosque here. The threat to the church runs the other direction just as hard. Jihadist organizations have spent years calling on followers to attack Christians at worship, and they have done it here in the United States. If you run a security team and you watched this thinking it cannot reach your church, you are thinking the same way every undefended target thinks right up until it becomes one.

Three men were murdered outside a mosque on Monday morning. Some of you already know what the comments will say when I cover this, so I will say my piece first.

I see three men who did not get a chance to come to Christ. They were made in the image of God, and two teenagers full of hate ended their lives in a parking lot.

The Bible is direct about what that means.

Genesis 1:27 (ESV): “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Genesis 9:6 (ESV): “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”

Every man killed Monday carried that image. We do not get to treat the loss as smaller because the name on the building was different than ours.

Study this. Then go look at your own parking lot.

The History of This Site

The Islamic Center of San Diego has a history that goes well past Monday, and this audience needs it on the record. Two of the September 11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, lived in this Clairemont area in early 2000 while they were inside the country preparing for the attack that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. The 9/11 Joint Inquiry found, based on FBI reporting, that San Diego imam Anwar al-Awlaki, who later became one of al-Qaeda’s most effective recruiters and was killed in a 2011 American strike, became their spiritual advisor and held closed-door meetings with them during that period. The record places al-Awlaki’s own mosque most precisely at the nearby Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami, and the connection to the Islamic Center of San Diego runs through the hijackers living in this community and the assistance the 9/11 Commission documented them receiving inside San Diego’s Muslim community while they were here.

The mosque’s current imam and director, Taha Hassane, drew national criticism for his response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. In a sermon on October 20, 2023, reported by the Washington Free Beacon and other outlets, Hassane said that when people are occupied the resistance is justified, and that the one defending himself is not the terrorist. The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Abraham Cooper condemned his sermons and posts on the attack. His wife, Lallia Allali, resigned from a University of San Diego position and a San Diego Union-Tribune advisory board after posting an antisemitic image online following October 7. Those are the documented facts about the institution and its leadership. Read them and weigh them as you see fit.

What Happened

On Monday, May 18, 2026, at about 11:43 a.m., the San Diego Police Department received reports of an active shooter at the Islamic Center of San Diego, the largest mosque in San Diego County, in the Clairemont neighborhood. The property also houses the Al Rashid School, which teaches children from age five. Officers reached the scene in about four minutes and found three men shot dead in front of the mosque. One was the mosque’s security guard. The other two were staff members of the school.

The warning had come in roughly two hours earlier. At about 9:42 a.m., the mother of the 17-year-old attacker called police to report her son missing. She said he was suicidal, was last seen in camouflage, and that her vehicle and several of her firearms were gone. She believed he was with another teenager. Officers were already working that information, using license plate readers and checking locations she identified, when the call came in from the mosque. They moved straight to it.

As officers ran an active shooter response through the mosque and the adjoining school, gunfire was reported a few blocks away. A landscaper working in the area was shot at and survived, with a round reportedly deflected by his helmet. Less than a quarter mile from him, police found a vehicle stopped in the middle of the street with the two attackers dead inside from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds. The 17-year-old and the 18-year-old had taken weapons from a parent’s home. Anti-Islamic writing was found in the vehicle, hate speech was written on one of the firearms, and a suicide note contained writings about racial pride. The police chief said there was no specific threat to the Islamic Center in the note, that the language was general hate speech, and that the case is being investigated as a hate crime. No officers fired a shot. Every child on the property was evacuated safely, and no children were among the dead.

All three victims were killed outside. Not one person inside the mosque was shot, and the school full of children came out alive. The fight happened at the perimeter, it was met at the perimeter, and it never got past the man standing at the entrance.

Lessons for Church Security Teams

The Fight Is in the Parking Lot

Everything in this attack happened outside the building, and that is not an accident of this case. It is the pattern. The attackers came across the lot and to the entrance, and that is where the killing took place and where it stopped. Treat the parking lot as the incident itself, not the lead-up to it. If your security plan only starts working once someone is through the front doors, your plan starts too late. The men who died Monday died in the open, and the people who lived were the ones behind a defended threshold. Your team’s attention, your camera coverage, and your first decision point all belong in the lot, not the lobby.

Visible and Uniformed, Not Plainclothes

The man who slowed this attack was posted and visible at the place the threat had to come through. There is a strong pull in the church security world toward concealed, plainclothes teams, and I have never understood it as a deterrent, because deterrence requires being seen. The person planning to walk onto your property runs his own assessment from the lot before he commits. If he looks across that lot and sees nothing, he reads a green light. If he sees a posted, uniformed presence watching him, he has to account for it, and a large share of these attackers break off or fall apart once the math changes on them. You do not deter anyone from the third row in street clothes. You deter from the curb, in the open, while he is still deciding. If it does go to gunfire, the uniform still works for you. A uniformed figure holding his ground carries an authority that a man in a polo drawing a pistol does not, and that weight is real in a chaotic event. It also keeps your own people from being shot by responding officers, who are far less likely to mistake a clearly identified security member for the attacker.

Armed Is Not the Standard. Winning the Two-Second Problem Is.

The guard was armed, and that is the entire reason I keep preaching the Bill Drill. It is the single best drill you can run to prepare for exactly what that man faced. Square up on the target, set a timer, draw, and put six rounds in the A-zone of an IPSC target in under two seconds. That standard is not arbitrary. Average human reaction time is already around a second and a half. The attacker has the initiative and you are reacting to him, so by the time your brain registers the threat and your hand moves, most of your two seconds is already spent. If you cannot draw and deliver six accurate rounds inside that window, you are shot before you ever solve the problem. Carrying a gun into the sanctuary does not make you ready for this. Being able to win that two-second problem on demand makes you ready. Run it cold, on a timer, until two seconds is real and not a hope.

Plan for Two, Because the Second One Is the Accelerant

Two attackers acting together is rare, and the research record barely holds examples. In the modern record of mass school shootings, only two were carried out by two gunmen, and the rest were lone actors. Outside schools, the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks and the 2015 San Bernardino attack are about the only paired mass attacks that come up. The pattern inside that short list is the part worth teaching. When two people do this together, it is never two strangers who met that morning. It is a bonded pair: two best friends, a married couple, an older man and the teenager he pulled in. This case fits the same mold, two teenagers who dressed alike and built it together. The second person is not a bystander to the planning. The second person is the reason it moved from talk to action. Most of these individuals never do it alone. Build your response for more than one attacker, more than one point of entry, and more than one direction of fire, because the lone gunman you train for is not the only thing that walks across the lot.

The Warning Existed and Never Reached the Target

A credible warning was in the system roughly two hours before the first shot. A mother told police her suicidal son was gone with her car and several guns and was likely with another teenager. Police believed her, and they were already hunting the vehicle when the shooting started. It still arrived. That gap, between a known and believed threat and the specific place that threat was driving toward, is the hardest problem in this entire incident. Your team cannot assume that because someone in authority knows, the warning will reach your parking lot in time. Build your own detection and your own decision-making as if no one is going to call ahead, because on Monday, no one did.

SB 1454 and the Right to Defend Your Own Congregation

There is a legal layer here that California security teams need to understand. SB 1454 took effect January 1, 2025, and it removed the long-standing exemption that let churches and other nonprofits run their own security outside state regulation. Under it, paid unarmed security personnel must register through the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, the church becomes the registered employer, and armed personnel must operate under a Private Patrol Operator license with a state firearms permit and a concealed carry license. The bureau has declined to state plainly that volunteer church security is exempt. Set the policy fight aside for a moment and look at the security cost. The pressure this law creates is pushing some churches to strip the word Security off the shirts and go plainclothes to stay clear of the bureau. That buys a legal cushion and a tactical defeat at the same time. The man in the parking lot Monday was deterred by what he could see, not by what the building was licensed to do. A church should solve a licensing problem through the licensing process, not by erasing the one thing in the lot that makes an attacker reconsider. When the state makes it harder for a congregation to protect itself at the door, the congregation does not become safer. It becomes the target that comes out alive only by accident.

Biblical Perspective

Set aside who was standing where on Monday and look at the ground itself. These attacks are decided outside, at the approach and the door, in the few feet of pavement a security member is given to cover. That is the ground Scripture speaks to, and the passage for it is not the one most people reach for.

2 Samuel 23:11-12 (ESV): “And next to him was Shammah, the son of Agee the Hararite. The Philistines gathered together at Lehi, where there was a plot of ground full of lentils, and the men fled from the Philistines. But he took his stand in the midst of the plot and defended it and struck down the Philistines, and the LORD worked a great victory.”

Shammah is barely a footnote in the account of David’s mighty men. What he is remembered for is simple. Everyone else ran from a fight over a field that did not look worth dying for. He took his stand in the middle of it and held. The ground you are given to hold is rarely dramatic. It is a door, a walkway, a stretch of asphalt between the cars and the entrance. It will not look like much until the morning it is everything. When that morning comes you will not choose the ground and you will not get a warning you can count on. You will get the post you were given and the decision to stand on it. The text does not say Shammah held because he was the strongest man in the field. It says he took his stand and the Lord worked the victory through it.

1 Corinthians 16:13 (ESV): “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.”

That is Paul’s closing charge to believers, and it is the charge to the man who stands at the door of his own church. Be watchful is the parking lot. Stand firm in the faith is the conviction underneath the resolve, something settled long before the threat appears. Act like men is the decision made in the handful of seconds you will have and not a second more. Be strong is what you put the work in to build before it is ever asked of you. This is written to you, for your church and your people. When you walk your lot, walk it as a man who has already decided he will not be the one who runs.

Final Assessment

Three men were murdered at a mosque with a documented and troubling history, by two teenagers who built a hateful plan together and died by their own hands before anyone but the man at the door could stop them. Those two facts sit in the same incident and neither one cancels the other. The history of that institution is real and it is on the record. So is the fact that the men killed were a guard and two school staff, and that the people the attackers most wanted to reach, the children, walked out alive.

For church security teams the instruction is narrow and hard. The fight is in the parking lot. Visible presence deters and concealment does not. An armed guard is only as good as his ability to win a two-second problem under stress. Plan for more than one attacker. And do not assume a warning will reach you in time, because in this case it did not, even with police already hunting the car.

This review is about three deaths and not the children inside because the fight stayed outside and never got past the entrance. That is the doctrine in one line: armed, posted, and visible at the perimeter, with people trained to win the first seconds. Build your team to that standard so that when it is their door, the line holds.

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WEEKLY ROLL CALL BRIEFING · WRCB-26-19 Week Ending May 15, 2026 · Threat Level: YELLOW (Elevated)

This week the Roll Call holds the line at YELLOW. AQAP released a new English-language Inspire video calling Muslims in the West to remain in place and conduct lone-wolf attacks. A federal court sentenced a Michigan man to 20 years for ISIS support and possession of a TATP bomb the FBI pulled off the street in 2017. Three church-targeted criminal incidents broke open in three different states, including direct threats sent to a church youth group in South Carolina. The training focus this week is vehicle and pedestrian protection, driven by the Millbrook crash that took a driver’s life when his pickup ran through the front of a church on Friday morning.

We also announce the launch of the Christian Warrior SAR Bulletin, a new weekly product covering Suspicious Activity Reports submitted through the CWT portal. First edition publishes this Sunday.

LINKS

Submit a Suspicious Activity Report → alert.christianwarriortraining.com Saturday Church Crime Newsletter → christianwarriortraining.com Christian Warrior Training → christianwarriortraining.com

FOR SAFETY MINISTRY TEAMS

The Weekly Roll Call Briefing is a written intelligence product for church safety team leaders, published each week for use at Sunday team meetings. Take the briefing into your meeting, work through the discussion prompts together, and dismiss to posts.

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