Given the world we live in more and more churches are starting to think about having a plan in place do deal with security issues.

I am by no means an expert on church security but I will share experiences I've had with two different churches.

I have attended two churches that had security teams. One was extremely unprofessional and I had absolutely nothing to do with it. The other, which I am involved with, is very professional.

The first consisted of a few guys that simply carried guns in church.

I don’t think there was any scheduling I don’t know that anyone was posted anywhere and I’m not sure any of them even knew the others were even there on a given Sunday. If there was ever a special event the church pastor would ask the head usher to pick a team to cover it. On at least one occasion all of the team weren’t even permit holders and at least one of them carried (illegally) anyway.

Given the lack of organization I’m going to assume that the church’s insurance policy did not have a rider on it for a security team. Which would mean that if any of their security guys is ever involved in a shooting at church I'm going to bet the guard will be on the hook for it.

On the other hand the church security team I am involved now in is very professional. The Pastor that leads the team responded to the New Life Church shooting 2007 Colorado YWAM and New Life shootings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia as a police officer and because of that experience tends to take this ministry very seriously.

We are required under the church's insurance rider to receive a certain amount of instruction and training from an NRA certified instructor every year (Hey who turns down free training?) as well as a bi annual range qualification and we are only allowed to carry the firearm we qualified with (which kinda makes sense if you think about it )

We all wear a distinctive uniform and tend to be very discrete about the fact that we are armed, to the point that the official answer we are to give if asked is ‘Some of the security team members may be armed.” This is in contrast to a guy on the other security team (same one that was carrying illegally) who not only let the whole church know he was armed also outed several other members of the team as being armed because he thought it was “cool”.

We also try to schedule 6 or so people for each service with each of the six knowing who is on the schedule and being in radio contact at all times as well as in radio contact with the ushers (again in contrast to the other church in which I don’t think anyone or at most two people carried a radio).

If anyone is considering starting a church security team I would suggest that you contact New Life Church in Colorado Springs which has a program designed to help churches set up a security ministry using lessons they’ve learned along the way.

FWIW New Life is the only church in America that I am aware of who had a security plan in place before they were attacked and who’s plan has been proven under fire.