In this episode Mike discusses how to recruit the team for your safety ministry, what types of people your ministry is likely to attract, and how to discern who is a good fit to be a responder, and who is better as just eyes and ears.

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A recent study of 149 officer involved shootings yielded some shocking results. In this episode I discuss this study, its results, how the results justify the need for church safety ministries and training.

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Also, please share the link with anyone involved in church safety ministry!

In this episode, Mike outlines the first steps to take in starting a Safety Ministry from scratch, or moving from a safety team to a ministry.

Key Points:

1. Pray about it!

2. Make your key decisions how what kind of ministry you want.

3. Pick someone to lead your ministry.

4. Hire someone to do a risk and vulnerability assessment.

5. Develop your SOPs and SOGs/ERGs based on your risk and vulnerability assessment and the decisions you made on what kind of ministry you want.

Key Links:

Safety Ministry Standard Operating Procedures

SOP Template (paid subscription required)

SOG/ERG Writing

SOG/ERG Template (paid subscription required)

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“How do I get people to participate more?” This is a question I get from safety ministry leaders A LOT. This is also a very tough subject for leaders who are prior military or first responder to grasp. In those worlds we can very easy command somebody to go to training, or do their job; failure to do so results in some sort of discipline. This doesn’t necessarily work in volunteer organizations like safety ministries. So, what is the 80/20 rule and how do we manage it as safety ministry leaders; and how can individual safety team members affect this rule?

What Is The 80/20 Rule?

I’m not an expert in business by any means. Those that have more experience probably refer to the Pareto Principle when I mention 80/20 rule. That principle states that 20% of input drives 80% of outcome. In emergency response we tend to apply a different meaning to it.

80%

In emergency response organizations 80% of the people in the organization fall into the median competency level. This means that 80% of the people on a team, or an organization as a whole perform barely on par with what you’d expect of them. In the safety ministry those are the people that meet the minimum training requirements, serve when it’s convenient for them, and not much more. They may exhibit a desire to do more but either of two hinderances prevent it:

* Their family life is so busy that they just can’t pull off additional safety ministry participation, or:

* They simply lack the discipline to drive additional safety ministry participation, and though they express desire to do more, they tend to put other items/events in a higher priority category than safety team training/service.

I have absolutely NOTHING against folks that fall into this category. They likely make up the bulk of your team, and at least they hit the minimums. Furthermore, at least they are involved in something!!! As I’ve mentioned in previous posts one of the major ministry aspects of the safety ministry is that it draws in people that don’t fit in with any of the stereotypical church ministries. Your 80 percenters are involved in church community, and that is what counts. Otherwise, they may not be at your church, or involved at all.

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20% (Bottom 10%)

The 20% part of the rule is actually broken into two groups of 10%. 10% of your safety ministry is likely made up of folks who either barely meet the training requirements and rarely serve, or who don’t meet the requirements (due to not showing up to training) but sign up to serve a little more often that is ideal for their lack of training.

I’ll be honest, as a guy who has operated on higher level teams my whole adult life I have a VERY hard time understanding this group; and frankly, this group poses a distinct leadership challenge for me. In 8 years of working with my church’s safety ministry the people who fall into this category typically do so for the following reasons:

* They have a strong desire to serve, but want to do so on their own terms;

* They want to learn the skills the safety ministry trains for, but don’t necessarily want to be in a position to apply them;

* Their heart is in protecting and serving, but they are self aware of their lack of experience and skill and their pride prevents them from exposing/admitting their incapability in order to improve;

* Serving in the safety ministry sounds great, they do all the initial training, and then realize it’s not what they thought it was;

* They were hoping to be a crusading GI Joe, or John Wick for Jesus and realized that emergency response service is 90% boredom, 9% low-medium level response, and only a VERY SLIGHT possibility of real action.

While it’s unfortunate that these mindsets exist, safety ministry leaders need to understand that they DO exist and how to manage them. Generally, safety ministry leaders that I work with just want to cast these people aside and boot them from the team.

NEVER EVER EVER just kick somebody out of a ministry (unless their conduct is completely unbecoming and they’re unwilling/unable to change it)!!!

I say this because doing so will scar a person’s faith and lead to either a dislike or a distrust of the Church. I use capital “C” Church because that distrust will be in the body of Christ in general; not just your particular church. As with your 80% people, take it as a victory that those in this bottom 10% category are involved in SOMETHING! Perhaps their lack of involvement is due to them just needed a little encouragement, or additional fellowship; which is possibly why they joined the team in the first place.

Rather than writing these folks off, at least attempt to bring them along. Remind them of the training and participation requirements or recommendations for being on the team. At my church we have a bit of a carrot that we dangle to be able to enforce training and participation minimums. Our church pays for Right to Bear insurance policies for all of our safety team members who meet the minimum requirements. Once a team member drops below those requirements I have a talk reminding them about where they are falling short, and try to figure out why and how to remedy it. I then warn them that if they continue to remain below those requirements I have to drop their coverage.

This provides an incentive for people to at least meet the minimum training requirements that I set, which then helps me to know that 100% of my team meets a certain baseline of competency. It also puts the ball in their court on whether or not they want to remain as a team member. This can be taken a step further by adding a requirement to have personal defense insurance; but thus far I haven’t had to go farther than removing their coverage.

20% (Top 10%)

These folks are your top performers. They are the ones who have a strong desire to not just be good, but to be great responders and protectors of their congregations. They are the ones who show up to almost every training event, and to serve even when their families aren’t in attendance. There is very little management needed with these folks because they make up the backbone and drive the character or your team.

Your top 10% people are the key to your ministry moving forward and being the best it can possibly be or sliding backwards and fading out of existence; and here is why.

There is a tendency to fall into the “squeaky wheel gets the grease” mentality as safety ministry leaders. The focus of our attention falls onto the bottom 10% because they need it, and away from the top 10% because they are self-driven. The problem with falling into this trap is that if you ignore your top 10% for too long they will get burned out very quickly. Once that happens it can be a quick roll downhill for your team because the people that were carrying it are drifting off due to being burdened by the mental stress of being in the “yellow” too much.

To remedy this and to drive your team FORWARD safety ministry leaders need to. take the opposite approach. INVEST IN YOUR TOP 10%!!! These folks are hungry to learn and get better; so feed them. Bring in outside trainers. Pay for some of their training ammunition. Get the church to pay for them to go to training classes. Buy them appreciation gifts.

This not only demonstrates the church’s appreciate for their above-and-beyond service but also serves as motivation for the 80% folks to step up more. The result is a top 10% that gets stronger, an 80% that follows suit, and a bottom 10% that wants to get into the game. In Discipline Over Motivation I discuss the pitfalls of motivation; however, motivation is typically the start in the road to discipline. As a safety ministry leader you cannot force your team members to exercise discipline, but you can absolutely motivate them in the hopes that they build discipline on their own. That’s what investing in your top 10% does.

Conclusion

If you are a safety ministry leader strongly consider the dynamics of your team, and how you can invest in your top performers to drive everyone else to move forward. If you are a safety team member, and your finding yourself in the top 10% keep doing what you are doing because your work is important! If you’re in the 80% and can’t give anymore thank you for giving all that you can. Your time and effort are appreciated by your church more than you know. If you’re in the 80% who chooses other events over serving/training, or you realize you’re in the bottom 10% figure out whether the safety ministry is truly where you want to be. Be a contributor; not just a consumer, particularly if your church invests financially in your safety ministry.

All in all we want the same thing; to protect our families, friends, and congregations. The best way we can do that is by being well organized, well trained, and having enough people at their security posts to effectively respond to any situation.

PROTECT HIS PEOPLE. GIVE HIM THE GLORY.

Mike

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This episode/article is likely going to throw a lot of people off. As protectors we all like to think that if/when the time came and someone was threatening the lives of our families or congregations that we’d be able to dispatch the threat without giving it a second thought. Though I’ve discussed this topic before in a previous article I believe it’s worth revisiting because there’s a tendency amongst the civilian population, including church safety team members to struggle with the actual act of pulling the trigger when it really matters.

Against All Instincts

Killing another human being is NOT a natural act. God did not design us to kill each other, and yet our sinful world is full of it. There are evil people out there who are capable of murdering without a second thought. They are the reason why we have armed safety ministries.

For the rest of us, it goes against our nature to pull the trigger with the possibility of taking a life. Unless you have specifically trained and established the mentality, and PRACTICED pulling the trigger on another person there is no telling what you will do if you encounter a situation where that decision needs to be made.

I know right about now I have a lot of folks reading this that are shaking their heads, puffing up there chests and saying that’s not them. “I have no trouble killing a bad person if they’re a threat to my church or family!” If you have ever been in a real gunfight and done it then I’ll believe you. If you’ve ever done actual force on force training with simunitions or UTM and you fired without hesitation then I’ll believe you. However, in all the force on force training I have done the majority of people hesitate or don’t shoot at all when confronted with a person threatening to take their life.

Why???

Real life gunfights are nothing like TV, movies, or video games. There are real lives involved, your actual life is at stake with no respawns, and the bullets go through stuff and run out eventually unlike what the entertainment industry would like us to believe. This reality creates an EXTREMELY high stress situation that is almost impossible to completely simulate. I’ve seen this more times than I can count; there is NO WAY to tell how someone will act in that high stress of a situation until they’ve actually been in one.

Believe it or not military and police have it relatively easy with regards to pulling the trigger because they have two things working for them:

* There is an expectation that they will pull the trigger when it’s needed;

* There is a certain amount of qualified immunity in their professions with regards to using deadly force.

As a police officer, if you encounter someone threatening deadly force your are expected to meet a deadly force problem with a deadly force solution. The same goes for the military. In fact, in the military there is a certain expectation that if encountering a known enemy you will use deadly force before they have a chance to.

In the church safety world we have A LOT holding us back from using deadly force. First, situations in the civilian world can be very gray. As safety team members we are reactive versus proactive when dealing with threats. Someone has to pose a deadly threat for us to react and address it. That reactive posture buys them time to increase or reduce their threat level at any time and we must act accordingly. Second, if we encounter a deadly force incident there is the looming disaster of legal issues that we will be forced to battle afterwards. It is almost never a cut and dry justified shoot. Jack Wilson, the church member who shot the attacker at the West Freeway Church of Christ shooting in White Settlement still had to deal with legal proceedings for 9 months after the attack happened; and that one was all on video and was as clear cut as it gets! Finally, there is the natural disinclination to kill another human being.

That is a lot working against a person defending their congregation and a lot of ingrained bias towards not pulling the trigger. With all of that working against us we must be diligent about training our mindsets and our decision-making abilities.

How??

Following the crawl, walk, run method of training is imperative to build a mentality that will unhesitatingly pull the trigger when needed. We start by learning two key pieces:

* How to shoot, and shoot well (which I don’t think many of you have an issue training that, I hope);

* Building an understanding of use of force laws; specifically use of deadly force.

These to factors need to be so ingrained in a safety team member’s psyche that it’s second nature to be able to shoot without thinking and decide on whether a situation warrants deadly force without wavering.

Next, we add dynamics to the shooting such as moving and engaging a target, and basic threat discernment on paper targets. We ramp that up to moving through a structure or a “field” and encountering paper threats. Incorporated with all of that is radio communication so we build the ability to think and communicate clearly while all of this is going on (it’s tougher than it looks).

Finally, we go full kinetic using role players and simunitions or UTM cartridges in force on force scenarios. This forces safety team members to make the split second decision to shoot and take the shots all under the duress of someone shooting back. This also forces safety team members to manage the entirety of the situation rather than just the engagement.

Training Progression Matters

I’m going to keep this really simple. If you skip straight to force on force training without building the other fundamentals you are wasting time and money! Yes, your team is going to get something out of force on force training, and it will be a lot of fun. However, the purpose of force on force training is not to have fun. It’s to get better at meeting deadly force with faster, more accurate, more violent force. Skipping the fundamentals and the not-as-fun stuff will result in bad training habits and MANY missed lessons that would have otherwise been learned through the force on force encounter.

For instance, I had spent a lot of time working on my shooting and target discernment fundamentals. My draw and sight acquisition times were very fast and my accuracy was solid. I had practiced tactics such as recognizing and using cover and concealment, angles, and movement. However, when I went to a force on force training day a got shot in a chest in my second scenario. Why? I drew faster, shot faster, and hit him center mass; yet, I still got hit. I got hit because I had failed to train moving off the “X” while in a kinetic engagement. I understood the principle, and had thought it over many times, but I had not trained it to the point that it was instinctual.

Moving off the “X” was a fundamental that I had skipped. I had all the other fundamentals down pat. If I had not worked on the other basics I would have been hit and not known why. There would have been too many variables that I would have needed to work through. That’s why we must build the solid foundation first.

Conclusion

This article/podcast is longer than most because it is a severe blind spot that does not get trained enough. We must train ourselves to be able to pull the trigger when necessary without hesitation. Hesitation kills good people. It’s that simple. Actually getting to the point where you can pull it though, is not that simple.

If you are a safety team member examine yourself. Look deep and decide in your heart if you are capable of taking another life. Will you take any life that poses a threat to your family or congregation? What if it was a youth? What if it was a youth that you know? These are all mental decisions that MUST be made ahead of time because in-the-moment is too late.

If you are a team leader look at your team and your training. Are they mentally and physically prepared to handle a deadly force situation? Have they been trained properly in a manner that leads to long term skill retention, or have you taken shortcuts in the name of keeping things fun and interesting? Answer these questions with brutal honesty because your congregation, you friends, and your family are depending on you and your team.

PROTECT HIS PEOPLE. GIVE HIM THE GLORY.

Another extremely undervalued skill that is trainable is the ability to remain calm while under stress. Believe it or not this is a skill that rarely comes natural to most people and can/must be trained. The ability to remain calm transcends all other skills because if you cannot remain calm in a stressful situation your ability to exercise any of your other skills gets severely diminished.

What It Looks Like

A few years back, my family and I were camping with a group of families from church. While the adults sat around the campfire making lunch the kids were all running around and playing. Two of the boys (ages 12 and 10) decided it would be fun for one to carry the other on his shoulders an chase the smaller kids around like a giant monster. Obviously, running around with one kid on another’s shoulders didn’t pan out like they thought and the top kid tumbled off landing on his head.

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The moms all shrieked in terror. I had seen the whole thing and started to calmly walk to the fallen kid who was now screaming in pain. On top of that his mom was panicking and borderline hyperventilating. In a low, calm voice I assessed the kid by asking a series of questions and physically checking out his head. I determined that there was nothing severe to worry about, but that we should monitor for pending signs of concussion. After hearing this assessment the kid and mom calmed down considerably.

After the event I overheard one of the other wives ask my wife, “how in the world does Mike stay so calm during something like that?” To which my wife replied, “he’s doe it hundreds of times, and it’s not the worst he’s seen. He’s just used to it.”

Why Remaining Calm Is So Important

In that situation my remaining calm did two major things:

* It demonstrated to the patient that the situation must not be as bad as he thought resulting in him calming down a bit. The same for the mom.

* It allowed me to think clearly to get a solid assessment of the situation and how to best handle it.

If a situation occurs at your church it is imperative that your team members maintain an aire of calmness and coolness that the congregation can visibly see, and that is translatable over the radio. When the congregation sees us being calm in a potentially high stress situation they will be comforted knowing that we are capably handling the situation and that it apparently falls within our training. Furthermore, remaining calm prevents some of the disruptive physiological effects that can occur during high stress; namely loss of forebrain thought and fine motor control, both of which are vital in handling most medical or security related situations.

Your team’s calm demeanor has the ability to calm the crowd down which also makes your job easier. Think of how a real-life fire evacuation would go if you hopped up on stage and screamed, “Fire!!! Everybody run!!! God help us all!” It would be pandemonium and people would get hurt in the stampede for the door. Now imagine that same situation but you get on stage and in a low, calm manner communicate, “Everyone, there is a situation that the Safety Ministry is dealing with that requires us to evacuate the building. We are currently evacuating your children to a safe location and need you to calmly walk to your nearest exit and meet in the rally location. If you need assistance please raise your hand and a safety team member will come help you.” That calm, clear demeanor and communication can make the difference between a mad rush for the doors and an organized, safe evacuation.

How to Train Being Calm

God truly designed the body and mind in an amazing way. We have the capability of adapting in a manner that allows us to handle previously encountered stressors much better when we encounter a similar stressor again. For example, if I am weightlifting and I squat 225lbs for reps until I almost fail out. My body is going to react to that stress by recovering from it, and then building up the necessary muscle and glycolytic resistance that the next time I squat 225lbs for reps not only will I be able to handle the previous rep count easier, but I will be able to exceed it! The mind adapts similarly in that if we encounter a stressful situation our mind remembers the triggers of that stress and builds a resistance to those triggers.

In his book On Combat Lt. Col. Dave Grossman discusses this ability to respond to stress and adapt to it in great depth. He outlines how to minimize the negative physiological and psychological responses to stressful events by training at high stress levels. He calls it stress innoculation. Lt. Col. Grossman likens it to receiving a vaccine for an illness. You get injected with a small amount of the actual illness so your body can build immunities to the real thing if you encounter it.

We can do the same thing to build our ability to remain calm under pressure by adding stressors to our training. Simulated scenario training with role players is a great way to add some realism and stress to your training. If training de-escalation techniques actually get confronted by actors who are agitated. If training medical skills use moulage kits or simulated blood; or have patients that are less than cooperative and bystanders who are panicked. One of the most effective simulated stressors I’ve undergone was while in the military (the fire service did this as well) we trained clearing buildings and boats with loud speakers playing loud, obnoxious sounds like chainsaws, German death metal music, women and children screaming, and babies crying.

Conclusion

Far too often we like to train within our comfort zone. Unfortunately medical emergencies, agitated people, and even deadly threats get a vote on how stressful an event is going to be, and it typically is not going to be comfortable. That’s why we must build the skill of remaining calm under pressure. Our congregations look to our safety ministries to be the calm in the storm if something happens. If God has called you to be a protector He’s done so wanting you to be a COMPLETE protector. Not just a good shooter, or medical practitioner; but someone who can manage a highly stressful event in a manner that exudes calmness and quiet professionalism.

When you train, add some stress to it. Get yourself uncomfortable and learn to be comfortable in that realm. Purposefully put yourself in uncomfortable situations. If you hate the cold; go do some training in the cold. If you’re an introvert; go strike up random conversations with people you don’t know. There are so many ways to develop the skill of remaining calm. It’s up to you to implement them into your life.

PROTECT HIS PEOPLE. GIVE HIM THE GLORY.

I want to discuss the absolute most underrated skillset in church safety ministries. Without this skill even the most routine situations can fall apart. It is the most common sense skill, and yet, is the first skill that goes out the window when the stress levels rise. It receives very little if any attention, yet is THE most vital skill in mitigating an emergency situation. I’m talking about emergency communications.

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Necessity

The ability to communicate clearly as a safety team member is vital. Whether it’s talking with a church guest, or relaying emergency information you need to be able to get your message across in a way that is clearly understood. As a safety ministry, having a means of communicating amongst team members is a key piece of your security posture. How that looks varies greatly based on the size of your church and the locations of your security positions.

If you have a very small church simple face to face communications may suffice as you may be able to set up your security positions in a manner where there is a clear line of sight between safety team members. However, if you cannot maintain the ability to coordinate the entirety of your team via face to face then radios or radio phone apps are a must.

In order to best protect you church and serve your congregation you must be able to relay situational information to the entirety of the team in a manner that is clear, concise, and complete. Long winded descriptions, filler words like “uh” and “umm”, and incomplete information can take a routine response and turn it on its head in a hurry. Your team must also understand basic radio protocol, or else key information can be easily missed.

Why Emergency Radio Comms Need To Be Trained

In the natural world communication follows a cycle. The sender of a message formulates the message and relays it to the receiver. The receiver acknowledges that they have received and understand the message by providing feedback, and then the sender verifies that the message was received and understood.

In interpersonal communications this typically looks like this:

Person A: “Hey Person B, can you please go check and make sure the back door is locked?”

Person B: “Sure, I can do that.”

Person A: “Thank you!”

This communication loop can be done via electronic message where the emailed communication goes from Person A and is addressed to Person B and the email chain goes between those two until the loop is closed. Anyone else that needs the information can be copied. It also happens face to face with non-verbal communication queues interspersed to add effect or clarify the communication and who it is between. The same goes for talking on the phone. The key that makes these forms of communications easy is because it is readily evident who the communications are to and from, and the loop is completed.

Radio communications are very different. The radio is an open line where everyone is on the same channel and there is no non-verbal queues that can add clarity. Furthermore, radios can only communicate from A to B directly. If C tries to butt in or interrupt in completely blocks out what is being communicated between A and B if done simultaneously. On top of that, if A or B get long winded and tie up the radio line, and C has vital information they need to pass they can’t because the line is tied up. Can you start to get a picture of how this can cause an emergency situation to unravel?

On top of those communication hurdles caused by the intricacies radio communications add the element of stress and sprinkle in the unreliability of technology. An SF instructor that I worked with in the military used to alway say, “The two things in life that will always fail you when you need them the most are technology and government.” Talking in a clear, concise, and complete manner is extremely difficult in emergency situations. There’s typically a lot happening, your adrenaline is up which means your ability to think clearly is fogged (if untrained), and you need to somehow paint a picture of an intricate situation in as few words as possible.

The Importance of Training

Like many skillsets, if you do not learn and train them in non-emergency settings, and then practice them in simulated emergency settings you absolutely will not know how to apply them in a real emergency. In the fire service we like to say that the situation goes as the first 5 minutes go. This means that if the emergency can be clearly communicated and the right assets be put in the right place with the right assignments from the get-go then the scene will run smoothly. If you start with a charlie-foxtrot it’s going to end up a charlie-foxtrot.

You must have training sessions with your teams geared specifically for radio communications. Teach your team members proper radio etiquette, terminology, and closed loop communication processes. Whether you bring someone in to conduct it, or you have an experienced person on your team teach it make sure that it is a skill set that you regularly address; especially as you bring on newer members of your ministry.

Conclusion

Practice and discipline are what it takes to get good at communicating on the radio. Incorporate radio comms in your drills, in your day to day operations, and do hot-washes of every situation you have and discuss how your radio traffic contributed to a successful handling of the situation or made it more difficult.

On my team radio comms are incorporated in almost every training we do. We also reinforce proper closed loop communication every time we come on duty through our radio checks. The goal is to make talking on a radio as habitual as talking on a phone or face to face. That way, if it hits the fan your team isn’t scrambling to figure out how and what to communicate over the radio. Shake those bugs out ahead of time so your comms are clean and clear when you need them.

PROTECT HIS PEOPLE. GIVE HIM THE GLORY.

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I want to thank all of my subscribers for bearing with me as I navigate starting a podcast. What I’ve noticed is that there is a solid mixture of folks that listen to/watch the podcast and some who only read the articles. In the interest of furthering this ministry I’m going to do both. If you didn’t listen to the first episode of the Zero 5 Podcast I am not very tech savvy, so all of this is a learning experience for me. Thanks again for your patience and faithful following of Zero 5.

In this episode/article I want to address current events and how churches are reacting. If you’ve been following the news there have been 4 terrorist related attacks in the U.S. in the last couple of weeks (Austin, NYC, Michigan, and Old Dominion Univ.). Two of these attacks were directed specifically at people because of their religious affiliation. The reaction to this and intelligence that is getting spread after the start of the war in Iran among churches varies widely, but there are some reactions that are concerning.

Fear Based Reaction

There seems to be a lot of heightened reaction being born out of fear. The common quote that I see on social media is, “It’s not if, it’s when.” I’ll be honest, I absolutely can’t stand that quote! While the person using it may be attempting to encourage preparation, to the non-sheepdog it only elicits fear. Sheepdogs understand preparation and quotes like that push us to be more prepared; we are proactive with regards to threats and violence. Quotes like that nudge us out of any sort of complacency. Non-sheepdogs (sheep) hear things like this and the immediate reaction is to act out of fear.

Throughout the Bible God’s people are told “do not be afraid”, “do not fear”, or “fear not”. That phrase is used 365 times in the Bible. It is a command from God because fear is an outright display of lack of faith in Him. A perfect example of this is when Moses sent men to spy out the land of Canaan. The men came back with a report that that land was incredible but it’s inhabitants were formidable. Despite having witnessed first hand, many times, the God’s power and favor the Israelites still reacted in fear!

A fear-based reaction is our attempt to take control of a situation ourselves. If we are going to our church leaders and saying things like, “if we don’t get barricades someone is going to ram into our church just like Michigan and people are going to die,” or “we need to tell our people not to loiter after service because they create a target rich environment for a terror attack” we are fomenting fear and trying to control it by our own means.

Preparation Through Love

If we are reacting out of fear it is because we lack trust in God to control the threat level and want to exert our own influence over it. Utilizing fear to coerce our church leaders to make decisions on security postures and upgrades faster than they would normally feel comfortable doing is roping into that distrust rather than relying on the wisdom God has imbued them with to become church leaders in the first place.

Instead, we should become and remain prepared. We prepare because we trust that God is in control. We prepare because we trust that God will equip us to handle any situation we face through His power and not out own. We prepare because we love our congregation so much that we will step in the gap, potentially at the cost of our lives, to protect them. However, preparation is not an overnight transformation!

Preparation happens well in advance of an elevated threat level. It happens in the boring times; the peaceful times. True warriors prepare for war during times of peace, not immediately before the battle. If you have been waiting until NOW to start training and preparing your team you are behind the ball, and are likely reacting out of fear. Can you still make adjustments to your security plans and update your training? Absolutely! Will all the training in the world be enough to stop whatever threat may come your way? ONLY GOD KNOWS THAT! And that is why we prepare out of love for our congregation and with trust that God is with us.

Conclusion

We are smack in the middle of one of the most dangerous times for Christians in the U.S. history. We have people within our own country that hate us, fueled by groups and other countries that hate us; one of which we have just begun a war with. However, Ecclesiastes tells us that there is nothing new under the sun. This is nothing new for our God; it’s new for us, but not for Him. We MUST trust in Him, and we must prepare because we love our families and we love our congregations. Not matter what, we must not operate out of fear!

PROTECT HIS PEOPLE. GIVE HIM THE GLORY.

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In this episode Mike discusses how to deal with 1st Amendment auditors in a way that glorifies God, gets them to leave, or at least sheds a good light on your church.