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What Happened

On September 7, 2025, at 6:20 PM, inside the Pasadena Police Department parking structure, an officer standing at the rear of his patrol car drew his firearm and pointed it at a fellow officer who was driving up. He holstered the weapon and laughed. The officer in the car responded in kind. He drew his own handgun, pointed it back, and had a negligent discharge. The round went through his own windshield and into the standing officer’s left shoulder.

The video was just released to the public this week, roughly nine months after the shooting. Police Chief Gene Harris called it exactly what it was, unsafe, out-of-policy horseplay with loaded firearms. The wounded officer recovered, discipline has been handed down, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office is still reviewing the case.

Crimes were committed here. The officer who drew first and pointed his handgun at a fellow officer violated California Penal Code 417, brandishing a firearm. The officer who fired is looking at Penal Code 245, assault with a deadly weapon. Both are serious crimes that carry real jail time.

I want to be clear about something before we go further. I have trained many officers from Pasadena PD over the years. It is a professional department, and these two men do not represent it. But this incident is embarrassing for every cop and retired cop watching it, because we are supposed to be professionals. So why am I covering it on a church security channel? Because a few months ago, somebody did almost the exact same thing to me at a church security training, and because I am seeing this same behavior on church security teams right now.

A Negligent Discharge Is Never an Accident

These were trained, sworn, full-time professionals, and they broke the most basic rules every one of us learned on day one. Treat every gun as if it is loaded. Never point a muzzle at anything you are not willing to destroy. Keep your finger off the trigger until you are on target and have made the decision to shoot.

I have investigated negligent discharges, and I can tell you it is never an accident. It is the predictable result of broken discipline. And I am no saint here. I have had a negligent discharge myself, and it happened because I violated basic rules. I am ashamed it happened, but I am not ashamed to tell you about it, because plenty of people will claim they have never had one when they have. The reason mine ended without tragedy is that my gun was pointed in a safe direction, the way you are supposed to keep it. The rules are layered for exactly that reason. When one layer of discipline fails, the others keep a mistake from becoming a funeral.

The Bullet Does Not Know You Are a Volunteer

Some people will watch this video and say these are dumb cops, typical law enforcement. That is not true, but here is what concerns me more. I am seeing the same behavior on church security teams right now. You may be a volunteer, but the bullet does not know that. The four rules of firearm safety do not have a volunteer exemption.

Think through what a negligent discharge in a church lobby actually costs. It ends your ministry. It injures or kills somebody in your congregation. It exposes your church to a lawsuit that could shut down everything the church does. And it hands every critic of armed church security exactly the headline they want. One moment of horseplay can undo years of work building a credible, trusted safety team.

It Happened to Me

A few months ago I was teaching a church security training with about fifty people in the room. During a break, somebody called out my name. I looked over, and he was standing in a group of people holding a laser trainer. He pointed it directly at me and pulled the trigger. I could see the laser, and I knew he was aiming at my head.

When we run training like this, we make sure nobody in the room is armed. No firearms, no pocket knives, no weapons of any kind. So there was no live weapon in his hand. But my first instinct, the instant it happened, was to go for my firearm. I did not flinch and I did not reach, but the trigger in my mind fired all the same. Defend yourself. I saw everybody around him cringe, and they were right to.

What he did not know is what it did to the rest of my day. Almost immediately I started flashing back to real incidents where people had pointed guns at me, and to other critical incidents from my career. For the rest of that training day I was fighting those memories from coming forward, working to stay present so I could keep teaching. He thought it was a joke. He had no idea what he set off in the man he pointed it at.

If you are reading this, brother, I forgive you and I love you. We all do dumb things, and I just told you about one of mine. But understand that on a security team, there are people who have lived through the real thing, and horseplay with anything shaped like a gun is not a joke to them. It never will be.

The Standard for Your Team

You are professionals first, and I think sometimes we forget that. If you carry a firearm in defense of God’s people, you hold yourself to the professional standard, full stop.

That standard extends to training tools. Blue guns, laser trainers like the Mantis Laser Academy and Titan, airsoft, all of them get treated like loaded firearms at all times. No quick draws to show off. No pointing anything at a teammate outside of structured, instructor-controlled drills. No exceptions for the guy who is just joking. There will be times in training when you run force-on-force scenarios and point trainers at each other. That is expected. But it happens with an instructor present, safety people in place, and controls built in so nobody gets hurt. That is the difference between training and horseplay.

Team leaders, this belongs in your written policy and in your next briefing. You have to decide what your culture is going to be, and I believe for safety it should be zero tolerance. But whatever you decide, decide it before it happens. When it does happen, you need to already know whether that person is ejected from the team, counseled, or retrained. Figure it out now, not in the parking lot after somebody pulls a stunt.

Biblical Perspective

There is a verse in Proverbs that reads like it was written about this exact video.

Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, “I am only joking!” (Proverbs 26:18-19, ESV)

Three thousand years ago, Scripture already had a name for the man who endangers his neighbor and then hides behind a joke. A madman. Not a prankster, not a funny guy. A madman throwing firebrands, arrows, and death.

That officer in Pasadena did not mean to shoot his brother officer. I truly believe that. But God’s Word does not grade on intent here. It tells us that the man who treats danger like a game is just as deadly as the man who means harm, because the firebrand burns the same and the arrow cuts the same no matter what the man who threw it was thinking.

If you carry a firearm to protect the people of God, “I was only joking” can never come out of your mouth. The bullet will not accept that excuse, and neither does Scripture.

Final Assessment

Two trained police officers pointed loaded firearms at each other as a joke, and one of them put a round through his own windshield and into his partner’s shoulder. Discipline followed, the DA is reviewing criminal charges, and a professional department now wears a black eye it did not earn as a whole.

Church security teams should take this personally, because the same behavior is happening in our world right now. The rules of firearm safety are absolute, they apply to training tools as much as live weapons, and they apply to volunteers as much as sworn officers. The habits you tolerate in the hallway are the habits that show up under stress.

Pray for both Pasadena officers, the one who was shot and the one who will carry the weight of having shot his brother over a joke. Then look at your own team and make sure this can never be your story.

Join the Conversation

Have you seen horseplay on a security team, or do you have a standard in place that works? Leave a comment below and share this article with your pastor or team leader. This is one of those conversations every team needs to have before something happens, not after.

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Copyright © 2026 Keith Graves. All rights reserved.

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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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TERRORISM/INTELLIGENCE

ISIS Media Threatens Pope Leo XIV and World Cup Venues

On June 1, the pro-ISIS Al-Imam Media Center released a poster threatening attacks on the FIFA World Cup and on Pope Leo XIV, captioned “Soon on June 11,” the day the tournament opens. The image showed the Pope bloodied and holding a World Cup ball in front of three Spanish stadiums he was reported to be planning to visit, in Madrid, Barcelona, and Las Palmas. ISIS messaging has repeatedly called for vehicle, edged-weapon, and firearms attacks on crowds at sporting events, fan zones, and watch parties. For your team, the takeaway is the raised threat to large Christian gatherings and public events through the summer, not a named U.S. congregation.

ISIS Calls for Attacks on Christians in the West

On May 30, the official ISIS media outlet Halummu released an English-language poster, produced by the pro-ISIS Hadm al-Aswar Foundation and titled “And Kill Them Wherever You Find Them.” It calls on followers to attack Christian and Jewish targets in Western countries on their own initiative, wherever they are, and it draws on a February speech by ISIS spokesman Abu Hudhayfah al-Ansari. The poster names the methods plainly, knives, firearms, and vehicles, which are the low-skill, no-warning attacks a single motivated person can carry out against an open church campus with no cell and no plot to detect in advance. It holds up the man who shot a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney on December 14, 2025 as an example to copy, and points to the money Western cities spent on barriers and security for holiday events as proof the pressure is working. It also tells attackers to prepare in secret, which means the warning you get is surveillance and probing at your entrances and parking lot, not an announcement. MEMRI translated and reported the poster on May 31, and the full translation is available through its Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor. For your team, the takeaway is direct: ISIS is naming Christians as targets and telling lone followers to strike soft targets anywhere, with the same methods your active-threat plan already addresses.

IRGC Campaign Against U.S. Synagogues Continues

A federal grand jury in New York indicted Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, a senior Kata’ib Hezbollah member tied to the IRGC, for his role in roughly twenty attacks and attempted attacks across Europe and the United States through the front group HAYI. The case includes a disrupted plot against a Manhattan synagogue, with synagogues and Jewish institutions in Los Angeles and Scottsdale also identified as targets for arson and improvised explosive devices. He pled not guilty in Manhattan federal court on June 1, and the arrest of one operative does not retire the network or the intent behind it. With the United States and Iran still trading strikes, this campaign is likely to keep running on U.S. soil through criminal proxies, and counterterrorism analysts assess the IRGC’s targeting of Zionist interests can extend to organizations that fund or lobby for Israel, a definition that can include Christian Zionist congregations and ministries.

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Manchester: Eighth Arrest in Synagogue Attack

UK counterterrorism police arrested a 49-year-old man on May 26 on suspicion of failing to disclose information about terrorist activity tied to the October 2, 2025 attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Manchester. It was the eighth arrest connected to that attack. The case is a reminder that an attack on a congregation pulls in an extended support network, and that the investigation can run many months past the event.

Europe: Multiple Plots to Strike Jewish Communities

Three separate European cases this week point to sustained planning against Jewish communities. German authorities arrested a HAMAS member who had moved five pistols and ammunition meant to arm associates to assassinate Jewish or Israeli targets in Germany and Europe, and separately arrested a Syrian national for aiding the 2025 stabbing attack at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial. Norwegian police arrested two HAMAS-linked men in Bergen accused of arranging a weapons shipment for a future attack on a Jewish community, and Cypriot authorities held four Palestinian suspects over plans to target Israeli nationals. The common thread is organized, weapons-based planning against identifiable religious communities.

ISIS-Inspired Lone Actors in the U.S. and Europe

A federal grand jury in Missouri indicted a man on explosives charges tied to the ISIS-inspired January 1, 2025 vehicle attack in New Orleans. In Italy, police arrested a 20-year-old who praised ISIS attacks on Christians and the West, referenced the May 15 vehicle ramming in Modena, held bomb-making instructions, and was assessed to be close to acting. In Switzerland, an ISIS supporter stabbed three people at a train station in Winterthur. The shared profile is the lone actor using vehicles, knives, and homemade explosives against accessible targets, which is the same profile a church security team plans against.

Online Radicalization on Newer Platforms

Researchers identified roughly 120 accounts pushing pro-ISIS propaganda on UpScrolled, a newer social platform that markets itself as free of moderation. The content is easy to find through the platform’s search and hashtags and links out to other sites. Platforms built this way lower the barrier for the self-radicalization that produces lone-actor attacks on soft targets.

Iranian AI-Enabled Cyber Threat

The IRGC-linked group tracked as APT42 is using commercial AI tools to write phishing messages in fluent Hebrew and Arabic, build fake online personas that engage U.S. and Israeli targets over weeks, and speed up malware development, with Iran-aligned actors also preparing disruptive cyber operations against the World Cup and U.S. infrastructure. For a church, the exposure is the social engineering aimed at your staff and volunteers. Train your people to slow down on unexpected links, payment requests, and login prompts, and confirm anything financial through a second channel.

Dates to Watch in June

Several June dates historically draw attention from violent actors: the World Cup opening and the Washington, D.C. fan zone beginning June 11, the anniversary of the 2016 Pulse nightclub attack on June 12, the Islamic New Year on June 16 and 17, and the anniversary of the ISIS caliphate declaration on June 29. None is a specific threat to your congregation. They are worth weighing when you set posture and staffing for the month.

No State Charges in Cities Church Service Disruption — St. Paul, Minnesota

The St. Paul City Attorney’s Office announced this week that protesters who interrupted a worship service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday, January 18, will not face state charges. City Attorney Irene Kao said prosecutors reviewed video footage, investigative reports, and other materials and determined the evidence was insufficient to meet the standard for charges under state statutes. Dozens of people were arrested after a livestreamed video showed a group interrupting the service by chanting, after learning that one of the church’s pastors also held a leadership position with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The U.S. Justice Department separately brought federal civil rights charges against 39 people, including former CNN journalist Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort. The church’s lead pastor criticized the decision not to file state charges.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: The state attorney said that there was insufficient evidence. They are giving tacit approval to target Christian churches. MN churches should pay attention to this and understand that after reviewing this incident, some police agencies and the state attorney are unwilling to protect you or enforce the law. This is not hyperbole. Their own words are showing us what they are willing to do or not do. The St.Paul PD showed up to the protest 30 minutes after it ended and the state says there isn’t enough evidence even though a blind man can see the crime occuring.

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VIOLENT CRIME

Murder in Church Parking Lot — Clovis, New Mexico

A man was shot and killed Friday afternoon, May 29, in a Christian church parking lot in Clovis, New Mexico. Clovis police arrested a 41-year-old man the following day, Saturday, May 30, and charged him with murder in connection with the killing. Investigators identified the victim in a later update but have not detailed a motive. The shooting took place on the church campus itself rather than inside the building.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: almost all of your crime is going to start in the parking lot. This is where your first layer of security should be. This is where you should expect the trouble. If you are doing a good job, you’ll keep it from getting inside of the church. 70% of all violent crime happens in the parking lot. We also encourage you to have 4k video surveillance that is recorded. You can use this as a force multiplier and to help police in their investigations.

Synagogue Shot At and Jewish Community Center Attacked — Albuquerque, New Mexico

On June 2, Rex Crofton, 25, targeted Congregation Albert synagogue and a nearby Jewish Community Center in two separate incidents in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Police were called to the synagogue on Louisiana Boulevard NE around 4:30 p.m. after a 911 caller reported that a man had fired several rounds at the building, and officers found the front glass doors shattered. Crofton was charged with two counts of felony criminal damage to property, desecration of a place of worship, a hate-crime enhancement, and disorderly conduct, and was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center on June 3. The FBI assisted, and the complaint states the case will be forwarded to federal authorities because it targeted Jewish religious institutions. Damage was estimated in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Source

Man Shot Outside Church During Brother’s Funeral — Harlem, New York

A 36-year-old man was shot Saturday morning, May 30, around 9:30 a.m. while standing on West 140th Street across from New Mount Zion Baptist Church in Harlem, where he was attending his brother’s funeral. The victim was hospitalized in stable condition. Police reported an anti-violence event was taking place down the street at the time of the shooting. No arrest had been announced as of reporting.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: Here we are with another shooting at a funeral. If the person being eulogized has a criminal history or criminals are going to come attend the service, expect there to be problems. Anyone that wants to do arm to that criminal or his friends know exactly where they're going to be at a specific date and time.

Armed Kidnapping Attempt Outside Church Stopped by Witnesses — Port St. Lucie, Florida

Jose Tsu Zamora, 64, of North Miami, was arrested after he allegedly tried to kidnap his 74-year-old ex-girlfriend at gunpoint outside First United Methodist Church on Southwest Prima Vista Boulevard in Port St. Lucie, Florida, on Sunday, May 31, around 10:49 a.m. Surveillance video captured the attempt, and witnesses stepped in to stop the attack. Zamora was jailed on charges including attempted kidnapping while armed with a firearm and battery on a person 65 years of age or older.

Source

83-Year-Old Churchgoer Slashed on Her Way to Church — Brooklyn, New York

Betty Ellerbe, 83, was slashed in the neck on Sunday morning, May 31, in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn as she was heading to church and hailing a taxi outside her apartment building. Prosecutors say the suspect, identified as Shawnee Moore, attacked her after she greeted him. Ellerbe was hospitalized, and the suspect was taken into custody and charged. Police described the attacker as a man she did not know.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: NYC has seen an explosion of incidents aimed at Christians and Jews. Please keep your head on a swivel if you are in NYC.

SEX CRIMES

Church Volunteer Hit With New Child Sex Charges — Polk County, Texas

A volunteer who served at several churches in Polk County, Texas, was arrested May 29 after multiple adults and juveniles reported ongoing sexual abuse beginning May 27. On Wednesday, June 3, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office announced new charges including criminal solicitation of a minor and continuous sexual abuse of a child, and said an additional warrant was issued. The suspect’s volunteer roles across local congregations placed him in proximity to the reported victims. The case originated in Onalaska.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: groomers seek out churches because of our forgiving nature and are welcoming attitude. We make it easy prey for them. Make sure you have a policy in place protecting children in your congregation with the two adult role and background checks at a minimum.

Former Youth Pastor Arrested for Child Molestation — Thurston County, Washington

A former youth pastor at Highlands Community Church was arrested in late May in Thurston County, Washington, on suspicion of second-degree child molestation and first-degree voyeurism. The suspect, identified as Derek Nelson, was scheduled for arraignment but had it delayed to June 17. The voyeurism count indicates allegations of recording in addition to the molestation charge. The youth pastor role placed him in direct contact with minors at the church.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: remember that your pastor is more likely to molest a child than for you to have an active shooter at your church. What are you doing to protect the church from groomers vs. what you are doing to protect against an active shooter? I’m not saying to not be ready for an active shooter. I am saying that you need to up your game in making groomers uncomfortable and to not target your children.

Pastor Charged With Sexual Battery of a Minor — Deshler, Ohio

A pastor in Deshler, Ohio, was arrested and charged with sexual battery of a minor, along with a misdemeanor grooming count. The charges were filed in Napoleon, in Henry County. The arrest was reported this week. The grooming charge points to alleged conduct intended to build access to the victim.

Source

ARSON/FIRES

Nugent Church Destroyed by Fire — Jones County, Texas

Nugent Church in Jones County, Texas was a total loss after a fire late Wednesday night, June 3. Crews responded to the church on the 6400 block of its road, and the building could not be saved. Authorities had not stated a cause as of reporting, and no injuries were noted.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: this is your weekly reminder that you need a burglar alarm and a fire alarm and a 4K video system.

INTERNATIONAL

Christians Killed and Churches Burned in Renewed Attacks — East Arsi, Ethiopia

A new cycle of armed attacks in the East Arsi zone of Ethiopia left at least nine Christians dead and a century-old church burned, according to local reporting in early June. Additional reporting cited an attack on Kara Kuftena Medhanealem Church and stated that church property was set on fire, with residents seeking refuge in forests. A member of the Holy Synod said at least 13 Orthodox Christians were among those affected. The zone has faced a repeated pattern of mass casualties and displacement targeting Orthodox Christians.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: Many churches, including mine, run missions in Ethiopia. Please include this incident in their intelligence briefing before they leave.

Christians Injured in Attack on Prayer Gathering — Chhattisgarh, India

Several worshippers were injured in an attack on a Christian prayer gathering in Chhattisgarh, India, reported on Sunday, May 31. Those injured included a man identified as Mandavi and his pregnant wife, whose injuries drew particular concern. The assault targeted believers gathered for worship. The incident adds to a pattern of attacks on Christian gatherings in the region.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts

31 House Church Members Sentenced in Coordinated Crackdown — China

Chinese authorities sentenced 31 people, including an elderly Christian, in what was described as the largest coordinated prosecution of house church members, reported this week. The prosecutions targeted members of unregistered congregations. The sentences followed a coordinated government action against the house church network.

Source

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This week’s Roll Call is a download only. I am on vacation, and the internet where I am cannot handle uploading a video, so there is no video to go with this one. The PDF below has everything your team needs for the week of June 7 through 12. Print it, brief off it, and run your Sunday like normal. We are back to video next week.

A quick heads-up before you open it: we raised the Church Security Threat Level to HIGH (Orange) this week, effective now through July 1. That is not panic. Several real threats line up in the same window, and your summer programming puts a lot of children on an open campus at the same time. Here is what is inside:

WRCB-26-23 at a glance

• ✅ Threat level. Raised to HIGH (Orange) through July 1, and why it moved.

• ✅ Briefing Intent. Psalm 127:1 and the posture for the month.

• ✅ Alert Posture. What full coverage looks like this week, plus the children’s wing add-on.

• ✅ Intelligence (5 items). ISIS threats against the Pope and World Cup venues, ISIS calling for attacks on Christians in the West, the Iran-backed HAYI campaign against synagogues, ISIS-inspired lone actors in the U.S. and Europe, and the Iranian AI-enabled cyber threat aimed at your staff and volunteers.

• ✅ Violence Against Churches (4 incidents). A parking-lot murder in Clovis, a funeral shooting in Harlem, an armed kidnapping attempt stopped by witnesses in Port St. Lucie, and an 83-year-old slashed on her way to church in Brooklyn.

• ✅ Training Focus. Locking down VBS and summer programming access, built as a team discussion for your own campus.

• ✅ Personnel, daily checklist, and standing close. Same as always, ready to fill in and brief.

Download it, walk your team through it, and pay attention to the parking lot and the children’s wing this month. Drop a comment with how your team is handling VBS access this summer, and share this with your pastor and your team leader so everyone is working from the same posture.

Cwt Rollcall 061226 (1)

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BLUF

CWT is raising the Church Security Threat Level from ELEVATED (Yellow) to HIGH (Orange), effective immediately through July 1, 2026, driven by active intent against Christians from ISIS, ongoing IRGC and HAYI operations against Jewish institutions, and peak summer church programming. There is no named, time-and-place threat to a particular congregation, which is what holds this at High rather than Critical. Church security teams should hold an elevated posture through the World Cup window and the June dates of concern and tighten access control and child-safety procedures for Vacation Bible School and summer programming.

Key Judgments

• Highly Likely: The IRGC-directed HAYI network remains operational overseas and retains intent against Jewish and allied targets despite the May arrest of a senior operative in the United States.

• Highly Likely: Inspired or copycat actors will attempt or conduct attacks on soft targets and large public gatherings in North America during the window, and ISIS messaging now explicitly calls for attacks on Christian targets in the West, which places Christian gatherings inside that target set.

• Likely: The June 11 to July 19 World Cup window, paired with ISIS threats against the Pope and stadium venues, raises the threat to large public and Christian gatherings.

• Likely: Summer church programming increases congregational exposure through predictable schedules, open campuses, and large numbers of children on site.

• Unlikely: A specific, IRGC-directed plot against a named U.S. church materializes within the window based on current reporting.

Why the Threat Level Is Moving to Orange

The level is changing because several threats lineup inside the same calendar window, not because of any single report naming a church. An Iran-backed network using the front group HAYI has carried out roughly twenty attacks and attempted attacks across Europe and the United States and was tied in May to a disrupted plot against a Manhattan synagogue, with Jewish institutions in Los Angeles and Scottsdale also identified as targets. The principal was arrested, but the network and its intent overseas are intact, and with the United States and Iran still trading strikes, that campaign has reason to keep operating here through criminal proxies.

ISIS is pushing the same direction from the other end. On May 30, the official ISIS outlet Halummu released an English poster titled “And Kill Them Wherever You Find Them,” calling on followers to attack Christian and Jewish targets in the West on their own initiative, with knives, firearms, and vehicles, and holding up the December 2025 Bondi Beach attacker as a model to copy (MEMRI, May 31). Pro-ISIS media has also circulated a direct threat against the Pope and World Cup venues tied to the June 11 opening. June is peak summer programming for the American church, and a global mass-gathering event alongside full church campuses in the same weeks is the combination that moves the level.

This posture is built on demonstrated intent, not guesswork. The threat to Christians as a target class is specific and active: ISIS is calling for it by name, and the IRGC, through the HAYI network, is running operations against Jewish institutions, with counterterrorism analysts assessing that the same targeting can extend to Christian supporters of Israel. What is not present is a named threat to a particular U.S. congregation with a time and place, which is the line between High and Critical. The posture is scoped to return to Yellow once the window closes.

Threat Vectors

• IRGC and HAYI: an Iran-directed network with a documented model of paying criminal proxies to strike Jewish and allied targets, infrastructure intact overseas after the May U.S. arrest.

• ISIS and al-Qaida lone actors: jihadist media calling for vehicle, edged-weapon, and firearms attacks, including a May 30 ISIS poster inciting attacks on Christians and Jews in the West and a direct threat against the Pope and World Cup stadiums.

• Large public gatherings: the World Cup and its fan zones drawing crowds and the attention of inspired attackers from June 11 into mid-July.

• Online radicalization: newer, low-moderation social platforms accelerating self-radicalization toward soft-target attacks.

• Seasonal church exposure: Vacation Bible School and day camps placing large numbers of children on open campuses on fixed, published schedules.

Vacation Bible School and Summer Programming

Vacation Bible School is the exposure on your own property, and it is the reason the elevation runs through July 1 rather than stopping with the calendar dates. VBS and day camps bring children to the building in volume, on a schedule you post publicly, often through side and rear doors that get propped open for load-in and pickup. Plan children’s programming as the most protected space on your campus this month: one monitored way in, eyes on the parking lot and the approach, and a hard count of every child from drop-off to pickup.

Recommended Actions

• Work the parking lot and approach routes first, with visible security and trained greeters posted before and after every service and program, because intent reads on the approach before it reaches the door.

• Lock down VBS and camp access to a single monitored entry, with badged check-in and check-out for every child and no exterior doors propped open.

• Walk your active-threat response plan with your team specifically through the VBS rooms and children’s wing, including lockdown, how you move children, and who calls 911.

• Confirm radios and communications work and that any volunteer can push a lockdown alert during children’s programming.

• Coordinate with local law enforcement and with the synagogues and Jewish institutions in your area, and report suspicious surveillance, filming, or door-probing without delay.

• Tighten cyber hygiene against AI-written phishing aimed at staff and volunteers: slow down on unexpected links and payment requests, and verify any financial request through a second channel.

Threat Indicators

These are the developments that would push the level from HIGH (Orange) to CRITICAL (Red), and the conditions for bringing it back down.

• A specific, credible threat naming churches, a Christian event, or a U.S. region.

• An attack on a U.S. congregation or synagogue, or a domestic arrest tied to the HAYI network.

• A completed or attempted attack at a World Cup venue, fan zone, or related mass gathering in North America.

• De-escalation: the level returns to ELEVATED (Yellow) after July 1 if the World Cup window and the June dates of concern pass without a church-specific indicator.

Threat Assessment

CWT assesses the overall threat to U.S. congregations as HIGH (Orange) for the period running now through July 1, 2026. The primary concern is an inspired or copycat lone actor striking a soft target or large gathering with a vehicle, edged weapon, or firearm during the window, which we judge Likely and rising as the tournament opens, the June anniversary dates pass, and ISIS messaging continues to name Christian and Jewish targets in the West. The secondary concern is directed IRGC and HAYI activity; that network is Highly Likely to remain capable and intent against Jewish and allied targets, though a directed strike on a named U.S. church specifically remains Unlikely on current reporting. The elevation reflects demonstrated intent against Christians and active operations against related targets, layered over peak summer programming, rather than a single named plot against one church, and the correct posture is active measures now, focused on children’s programming and the parking lot, with a planned return to ELEVATED (Yellow) once the window closes. Teams that publicly support Israel should take the threat to synagogues seriously for their own posture and coordinate locally.

Biblical Lens

For thus the Lord said to me: “Go, set a watchman; let him announce what he sees.” (Isaiah 21:6, ESV)

The watchman’s job is to look and to report plainly what is there. That is what this brief is, and it is what your team does every week on the property. Set the watch, report what you actually see rather than what fear invents, and give your people a clear picture so they can stand ready.

Take a minute to leave a comment with how your team is adjusting for VBS this month, and share this brief with your pastor and your security team leader so everyone is working from the same posture.

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What Happened

On Sunday, May 31, a 74-year-old woman parked at First United Methodist Church in Port St. Lucie, Florida, and walked toward the building for service. Jose Tsu Zamora, 64, of North Miami, was waiting for her. The two had been in a long relationship. They lived together in Hollywood and later in Fort Pierce, and it had turned violent. She put him out of her home in March and obtained a domestic violence injunction against him. He was already wanted on a warrant for violating that order before he showed up that morning.

Zamora approached her and said he wanted to talk in his car. She refused and kept walking. He grabbed her, put a gun to her body, and began dragging her toward his vehicle, a dark two-door hatchback. Police say he told her, “If I can’t have you, no one can.” This was not a robbery and it was not random. He came to take her, and his own words tell you what he intended if he could not.

She refused to be moved. She dropped to the ground and made herself dead weight, which slowed him and kept her in the open. People in the lot saw what was happening and moved toward her. Two of them told police they were armed and ordered Zamora to release her. He displayed his gun, then let her go and fled. She was not seriously injured.

Officers arrested him that evening in Hialeah with help from the U.S. Marshals. Zamora is a convicted felon and is prohibited from possessing a firearm. His record includes prior attempted kidnapping and witness retaliation arrests in Miami-Dade. His family later turned over a pellet gun that investigators are still working to confirm as the weapon. He faces five felony charges and is held on a $745,000 bond.

The people who stopped this were bystanders, not a posted security team. The woman is alive because she fought and because strangers acted.

The Parking Lot Is Where He Chose to Attack

Zamora did not target the church. He targeted her, and the church was the place he could count on finding her at a fixed time every week. Same building, same Sunday service, same arrival window. Predictability is what a determined attacker looks for, and a regular churchgoer hands it to him without thinking about it.

Most security teams build their coverage around the sanctuary and the entrances. The parking lot gets a friendly wave. This attack happened in the lot, before the victim reached the door, and that is the more common pattern than teams want to admit. The lot is where your people are most exposed and least watched. They are at their cars, distracted, often alone, and not yet inside the area your team is focused on. An attacker who has studied his target knows he does not need to get inside the building. He needs a few unobserved seconds in open ground. Coverage during the arrival and departure windows is where you close that gap.

Know Who Has a Restraining Order

This is the part I want every team leader to act on this week. You need to know who in your congregation has a restraining order against someone. That is not gossip and it is not prying. It is information your team needs to do its job. A member going through a violent separation is a risk to the whole congregation when her abuser comes looking for her, not only to herself.

Build a quiet channel for that information to reach the team. When a member tells a pastor or a leader that she has an injunction against an ex, the people working security need to know, and they need it in a usable form. A name. A photograph if one exists. A vehicle and a tag. A physical description. You cannot watch for a threat no one has told you about.

Then you use it. When you know a member is under threat, you do not let her cross that lot alone. Walk her from her car to the building, and walk her back to her car when service ends. An escort requires no confrontation and no drama. It puts a trained person at her side during the exact window this attacker used. Had a team member been walking with this woman, Zamora would have faced a very different problem than a 74-year-old alone in a parking lot. Most of what a good team does is quiet and unglamorous, and that is what stops an ambush like this one.

Train the Hostage Shot

Armed men stopped this. The harder question is what happens when it does not end with the attacker fleeing, when it comes down to gunfire with a hostage in front of you.

I will tell you plainly what I would do here. I was not there, and I am working from what police have reported. But a man dragging a woman to a car with a gun against her body is about to move her to a second location, and a victim taken to a second location is almost always killed. Her life was in danger in that moment, not at some later point. If I have the shot, I take it. That is not a standoff where time works in your favor. It is a killing in progress, and the shot stops it.

That is why we train the hostage shot. A man holding a woman at gunpoint and using her body as he drags her is a hostage situation whether anyone calls it that or not. Most people have never put a round on a target with a hostage in the frame. They do not know whether they can make that shot, so when they are looking at the real thing they freeze. You learn what you are capable of on the range and in reality-based training at the church, not in the parking lot. I begin my cold shot at the range on a hostage target. First round of the day, no warm-up, because in a real encounter there is no warm-up. You train it routinely or you do not own it.

If you are the range master or the lead trainer for your team, this is your responsibility. Put your people through hostage-shot scenarios. Work it cold on the range and run force-on-force at the church so they have faced a version of it before the day it walks up on them. I know I can make that shot because I train for it. Your people need to reach that same certainty before they are standing in that lot.

Biblical Perspective

Job is defending his life before God, recalling the days when he walked in integrity, and he describes the man he had been:

“Because I delivered the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to help him. The blessing of him who was about to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban. I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy, and I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know. I broke the fangs of the unrighteous and made him drop his prey from his teeth.”
— Job 29:12–17, ESV

The line that fits this incident is the last one. Job broke the fangs of the unrighteous and made him drop his prey from his teeth. That is not a description of charity. It is a man stepping in against a predator and forcing him to release the one he had seized. Job counted that among the marks of a righteous life, alongside caring for the poor and the widow. The two men in that parking lot did the same thing. A predator had a 74-year-old woman in his teeth, and they made him drop her.

The command behind it is older and plainer:

“You shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor: I am the Lord.”
— Leviticus 19:16, ESV

Older translations render the close of that verse as a charge not to stand idly by the blood of your neighbor. To do nothing while a neighbor is harmed is named as sin. We tell ourselves that staying out of trouble is the careful and humble choice. Scripture does not allow that. When you have the means to break a predator’s grip and you choose your own comfort instead, you have stood by the blood of your neighbor. Job did not wait to be asked. He searched out the cause of a man he did not even know. That is the disposition a church security team carries onto the lot every Sunday, men and women alike. Not eagerness for a fight, but a settled refusal to watch the weak be carried off.

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Final Assessment

A convicted felon under a restraining order drove to the one place he knew she would be, put a gun to a 74-year-old woman, and tried to force her into his car in front of witnesses. She lived because she fought to stay where she was and because armed bystanders refused to stand aside. What stopped this was the victim’s own resistance and the courage of strangers, not a security plan. That held this day. It will not always hold.

The work is straightforward. Know who in your congregation is under a restraining order and watch for that specific man. Escort members under threat from their cars and back to them, because the lot is where they are most exposed. Train for the gunfight you hope never comes, including the hostage shot, so that when a man has a gun on a victim and is dragging her to a car, you have already settled what you will do and you are capable of doing it. The person who has never trained it will freeze.

This woman walked into church on a Sunday and walked into an ambush. The job of a church security team is to be the reason that ends the way this one did, and to make it the plan instead of the exception.

If this changed how you look at your own parking lot, leave a comment and tell me what your team does to cover arrivals and departures. Share it with your pastor and your team leader. The next one will not announce itself.

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Copyright © 2026 Keith Graves. All rights reserved.

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Patterns This Week

Every report this week is surveillance. Nobody confronted anybody. People watched, people filmed, people drove slow circles. Two of the three subjects evaded the moment security started to move on them. Innocent people do not run from greeters. If your team is not already logging vehicle drive-throughs and unfamiliar visitors who film during the music and walk out before the sermon, start this week.

Arizona

Prescott Area — Mid-Service Phone Recording, Pre-Sermon Departure

Sunday, May 3, around 11:30. A volunteer at a small Baptist church in the Prescott area watched an unfamiliar woman record the service on her phone. She sang along during the music, kept the phone pointed at the front through the transition, then walked out before the pastor preached. He had never seen her before. He has not seen her since. White female, roughly 5’5” to 5’8”, 150 to 165 lbs, short dull-blond hair, glasses, jeans and a tan jacket.

🛡️ Takeaway: Jihadist groups have a well-documented history of using American women to run pre-attack surveillance for them. The reason is simple. A friendly-looking woman with a phone gets ignored by safety teams that are trained to watch for the lone male. That is what makes the profile useful to them, and that is why it should not be dismissed when it shows up in your sanctuary.

Anyone who films during the transitions and leaves before the sermon is there to watch, not worship. Train your greeters and your security team to treat a lone female with a phone the same way they treat a lone male with a phone. The bad guys count on the difference. Do not give it to them.

CWT case 20260525-0F62ECB2

Florida

Gulf Coast Florida — Repeat Drive-Through Filming, Vehicle Flees on Contact

Saturday, March 7, around 11:10. A two-man security patrol at a large evangelical campus in Gulf Coast Florida watched a vehicle move slowly across the property with the driver filming on a cell phone. The moment the patrol started toward the vehicle, the driver hit the gas and left the property before they could get a plate. The security team says this is happening more often, and they have prior incidents on file. Light grey Toyota four-door sedan. Driver: white male, 35 to 40, dark semi-long well-groomed hair, in shape. On-duty deputies working the property were notified.

🛡️ Takeaway: Lost drivers do not punch it when you walk toward them. That is counter-surveillance. If your property is open to drive-up traffic, you need a plate camera at the main entry and a written log of every slow drive-through with vehicle, direction, date, and time. Without the log the pattern stays a feeling. With it, the deputies have something they can work.

CWT case 20260525-EA962654

Texas

Northern DFW Metro — Rear-Lot Loiter by Out-of-Routine Vehicle

Sunday, May 17, around 10:30. A safety team member at a Bible-teaching congregation in the northern Dallas / Fort Worth metro watched a burgundy Honda Odyssey pull into the lot, drive to the back, sit for three to five minutes, and leave slowly heading south. Two Middle Eastern occupants. The van was too far away to confirm whether they were taking pictures. Local PD was notified at the sergeant level.

🛡️ Takeaway: Slow in, sit at the back, slow out. That is surveillance, not a wrong turn. When your team sees one, push the vehicle description, direction of travel, and time on scene to every neighboring safety team you can reach the same day. That is how the pattern across multiple churches finally surfaces.

CWT case 20260524-07F72B69

How to Submit

If you saw something at your church this week, report it at alert.christianwarriortraining.com. We review every report, log it, and where appropriate we anonymize it and run it here so other safety teams can put it to work.

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Terrorism/Intelligence

ISIS-Inspired Plot Against the Vatican Disrupted in Florence, Italy

On Tuesday, May 20, 2026, Italy’s state police arrested a teenager in Florence, Italy, on terrorism charges, saying he had declared himself ready to act and had received instructions from ISIS-linked contacts online on how to select a target for an attack. According to the police statement, the suspect planned to strike sites in Florence and the Vatican. He had been arrested on similar charges in October 2025, held in a residential facility, and released on probation in March 2026, but authorities said he resumed contact with ISIS members on social media shortly after his release, which led to the new arrest. He was remanded into custody and the investigation remained open. Out of an editorial practice of not naming attackers, and because the suspect is a minor, he is identified here only by the plot and the group he supported. The Jerusalem Post

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: This is the model on how they will hit your church. Study it. ISIS has learned how to weaponize lone actors online and they are runnig with it.

Islamic State Burns Historic Catholic Church in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique

On Thursday, April 30, 2026, Islamic State-linked insurgents attacked the village of Meza in the Ancuabe district of Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique, and destroyed the historic St. Louis de Montfort parish, which had stood since 1946. According to Aid to the Church in Need, the militants arrived around 4 p.m., set the church, the parish offices, and the missionaries’ residence ablaze, and vandalized a church-run kindergarten. The missionaries serving the parish had been warned in time and were not present, but the bishop of Pemba said civilians were captured and forced to listen to the attackers’ speeches. Islamic State-Mozambique claimed responsibility on May 1. Church officials report the group has destroyed more than 100 churches and chapels in the Diocese of Pemba since the insurgency began in 2017, including 18 burned in the Chiúre district in 2024.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: Mozambique is becoming a hotspot for ISIS activity. We have many Christian missionaries there. Please keep an eye on this area if you are supporting people there or are going there.

Cartel Drone Attacks Displace 1,000 Families in Guerrero, Mexico

Beginning Wednesday, May 6, 2026, the criminal group Los Ardillos attacked Nahua indigenous communities in the Montaña Baja region of Guerrero, Mexico, dropping improvised explosives from drones alongside high-caliber weapons. By the weekend of May 9 and 10, community and human rights groups reported that between 800 and 1,000 families had fled the communities of Tula, Xicotlán, Acahuetlán, and Alcozacán, with at least one person injured and several killed. Responders documented unexploded drone-dropped devices in the brush, and displaced families sheltered in nearby towns and in local churches as the explosive drone attacks continued against Alcozacán. Separately, at the Border Security Expo in Arizona this month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials warned that cartels have rapidly advanced their drone capabilities, fielding fiber-optic and GPS-guided systems and modifying store-bought drones to evade detection and carry heavier payloads. A CBP counter-drone official said the technology once seen overseas is now at the homeland.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: For years the weaponized drone was an overseas story, something we watched in Ukraine and the Middle East, and now it has moved into our hemisphere, with explosives dropped on civilians a few hundred miles south of our border and the same fiber-optic and GPS-guided systems already crossing into the United States. We have been warning that a drone is a credible threat to a church, and the exposure is highest during an outdoor service, a baptism, a festival, or any large gathering where people stand together in the open. These incidents are worth studying as a preview, because they show how the device is built, how little warning it gives, and how a determined attacker would use it against a crowd. Read them with your own campus in mind and start working the problem now: detection, your posture for open-air events, and who you would call. The recently signed SAFER SKIES Act lets trained state and local law enforcement counter drones over public gatherings, so build that relationship with your local department before the day you need it.

VIOLENT CRIME

Gunfire and a Recovered Incendiary Device at a Catholic Church in Las Cruces, New Mexico

About 4:30 a.m. on Monday, May 4, 2026, surveillance video from St. Genevieve’s Catholic Church at 100 S. Espina Street in Las Cruces, New Mexico, recorded a man stepping out of a dark sedan and firing a handgun at the church, leaving several bullet holes in the doors. The church was unoccupied and no one was injured. Investigators linked the vehicle to a May 11 attempted burglary at a Las Cruces gun store and identified Matthew Albian Alarcon, 40. A May 19 search of Alarcon’s home recovered an object containing components commonly used in an incendiary device, which a bomb squad collected. Alarcon was arrested May 14 and charged with desecration of a church, receiving a stolen firearm, tampering with evidence, possession of burglary tools, attempted non-residential burglary, and conspiracy; a second man, Juan Manuel Garcia, 36, was arrested May 17.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: Take incidents like this seriously. Ensure you get a restraining order, even though he is in custody. Monitor his case to see if he is released back into the community. Monitor his social media as well.

Wife Shot Dead in Winthrop, Massachusetts, Apartment Before Husband Left for Church

About 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, May 24, 2026, Sean Brewer, 58, called 911 from his apartment in Winthrop, Massachusetts, to report a shooting. Officers found his wife, Jacklyn Berry, 47, dead of a gunshot wound in the couple’s bedroom. Brewer told police he had been sweeping up at home before leaving for church when he found a jacket that was not his with a handgun in the pocket that he did not recognize. He said he confronted Berry about the gun in their bedroom and that the weapon “spontaneously” discharged. Investigators recovered a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson with one spent cartridge at the scene. Prosecutors said Brewer has a lengthy criminal record including convictions for violent crimes and a pending case for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, assault and battery on a police officer, and resisting arrest. He was charged with manslaughter and was held without bail.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: I included this story for one simple reason: Domestic violence is a leading indicator as an underlying issue in church mass shootings. What if he had decided to do this at church in just a few hours? Please, have a plan and watch those couples that may be having issues. Help them when they need it and stay involved in their lives.

Suspicious Package at a Missionary Baptist Church near Creedmoor, North Carolina

On Saturday, May 23, 2026, the Granville County Sheriff’s Office responded to a report of a suspicious package at Rock Spring Missionary Baptist Church at 3180 Bruce Garner Road, about five miles southeast of Creedmoor, North Carolina. Church staff told deputies that someone had left a package on the front porch, and that workers had carried the package inside the building before law enforcement arrived. A bomb squad and a hazmat team responded along with county fire agencies and deputies to assess the scene and secure the area. The placement of the package remained under investigation. No injuries were reported.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: Please don’t move or handle a suspicious package. I’ve had many instances where people found a bomb and still moved it to another location. Please don’t do that.

Man Removed From a Mosque in Lakeville, Minnesota

Shortly before noon on Friday, May 22, 2026, Lakeville police responded to a disturbance outside Lakeville Masjid, a mosque at 8670 210th Street West in Lakeville, Minnesota. A caller reported that a man was agitated and asking strange questions, and staff asked officers to remove him from the property. During the arrest, officers found a pocketknife, a box cutter, and suspected narcotics in his possession. Police said the man, a local resident known to officers from prior mental-health-related contacts, claimed to be a military officer and then a federal agent investigating child trafficking, and could not provide documentation. The department said no weapons were displayed during the incident and that it had no information the man targeted the mosque for religious reasons.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: Although this is CHRISTIAN Warrior Training, we still look at incidents in other religions since it also happens to us. We should look at these incidents and think about how we would react in a similar situation. We should create scenarios based on these incidents to help train our security and pastoral staff.

Mob Forces Entry and Injures Employee at Church of Scientology in New York City

About 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 2, 2026, a group of roughly 31 people forced its way through a locked side door at the Church of Scientology of New York, at 227 West 46th Street in Midtown Manhattan, during a seminar. The intruders ran through the building, caused about $10,000 in property damage, and kicked a 30-year-old male employee in the leg, leaving him with minor injuries. NYPD linked the incident to a series of similar break-ins at the Midtown location and at two Scientology buildings in Harlem and tied them to a viral TikTok trend known as “speedrunning.” Between Sunday, May 24, and Tuesday, May 26, police arrested three suspects identified as Jaelen Dinkins, 19, Mohammed Amolegbe, 21, and Tashaun Simms, 28. Dinkins and Amolegbe were charged with burglary, criminal mischief, and assault, all as hate crimes because the target was a religious institution. Simms was charged with obstructing governmental administration and tampering with physical evidence as a hate crime.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: I know Scientology is a farce and we hope they find Christ. But…. we need to be paying attention to this. Some churches that have denied entry points can be the next victim of a surge like this. Mormons, I’m thinking these are the people that would go to one of your temples to do a mass takeover.

SEX CRIMES

Former Youth Pastor Arrested for Child Molestation and Voyeurism in Renton, Washington

On Wednesday, May 27, 2026, Renton Police Department detectives arrested Derek Nelson, a former youth pastor at Highlands Community Church in Renton, Washington, on suspicion of second-degree child molestation and first-degree voyeurism. According to police, the alleged offenses occurred during church functions. Investigators are working to identify any additional victims and have asked anyone with information to contact the Renton Police Department.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: There might be other victims. Churches that had this man working for them should conduct an investigation to uncover any possible child victims at their church.

Fort Worth Pastor Indicted on Sexual Assault and Child Enticement Charges in Texas

A Fort Worth pastor was indicted on charges of sexual assault and child enticement, according to reporting the week of May 25, 2026. Alonzo Diego Fuller Jr. has been held in the Tarrant County jail since May 5 with no bond set. The indictment charges him with sexual assault involving a victim alleged to be younger than 18, and with enticing or luring a child younger than 18 into sexual activity. Before his arrest, the church’s elders released a statement saying the pastor welcomed an investigation and intended to clear his name. When he addressed his congregation about the initial arrest, he attributed the allegations to the devil.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: The church should try and obtain a copy of the arrest report to look at the validity of the pastor’s claim. If it is valid, he should be removed from the staff and the church should look for additional victims within the church.

Former LDS Bishop Charged With a Decade of Child Sexual Abuse in Livermore, California

The Alameda County District Attorney announced on Thursday, May 21, 2026, that Michael Delar Morris, 76, was arraigned on 18 felony counts of child sexual abuse involving four victims. Prosecutors say the offenses occurred between 1991 and 2001, while Morris served as a bishop of a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints congregation in Livermore, California, and supervised a church-affiliated boys’ youth group. He also served as a Boy Scout leader. The complaint alleges the abuse occurred at the church on Hillcrest Avenue, at Morris’s home, in his vehicle, and at victims’ homes, with special allegations for abuse of a position of trust, targeting vulnerable victims, and planning. Morris was arrested May 15 and later posted $920,000 bail.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: Your pastor is more likely to molest a child than for you to have an active shooter at your church. You should train to stop these threats from our pastoral staff. Learn to recognize the signs of grooming: an adult who singles out one child for special attention, gives gifts, and keeps finding reasons to be alone with a young person. Recognizing that pattern early is how you stop it.

ARSON AND SUSPICIOUS FIRES

Arson and Break-In at a Catholic School in Springfield, Missouri

A man charged in a May 22, 2026 fire at Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Springfield, Missouri, told investigators he set the fire because he objected to a church being connected to the school, according to charging documents reported the week of May 25. Springfield police responded around 5 a.m. on Friday, May 22, after an officer heard the fire alarm, and found signs of forced entry and smoke; sprinklers had extinguished the fires. Isaac Cass, 23, of Neosho, was charged with second-degree arson and second-degree burglary. Investigators say he broke a window to get inside, set fires at a banner near an entrance and in the teacher’s lounge, and damaged a picture of Jesus and three statues of Mary. Prosecutors asked that he be held without bond, describing his conduct as unpredictable.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: this is your weekly reminder that you need a 4k video system, a fire alarm and a burglar alarm. It is the single best way to secure your church.

Historic AME Church Defaced With Racist Slurs and Demonic Imagery in Ocala, Florida

On the night of Saturday, May 16, 2026, an accidental electrical fire heavily damaged the 134-year-old St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church at 1304 Northwest 7th Avenue in Ocala, Florida, and left the sanctuary structurally condemned. Between the fire and Tuesday, May 19, an intruder broke into the condemned building and covered the interior and exterior with racist white-supremacist slurs and drawings of death faces with demon horns. Phrases including “Peckerwood was here” and “Peckerwood Will Lick” were scrawled inside the sanctuary, on the marquee sign, and on multiple structures. “Peckerwood” is a white-supremacist term used in prison. The Ocala Police Department is investigating the break-in and vandalism as a hate crime, and the FBI is involved. No suspects have been identified as of publication.

Source

INTERNATIONAL

Gunmen Kill Three and Abduct 15 at a Church Night Vigil in Kwara State, Nigeria

On Saturday, May 23, 2026, at about 8:30 p.m., armed men invaded a church night vigil at Ori-Oke Ajaiye, on the outskirts of Ikiran village in the Ekiti Local Government Area of Kwara State, Nigeria. The attackers fired into the prayer ground, killed three worshippers, and abducted 15 others before escaping through nearby forest routes. The pastor of the congregation, Ijo Ajaye Ati Igbala, reported the attack to the Kwara State Police Command the next day. Police launched a tactical operation, including a drone team, to locate the abducted worshippers. Local officials later ordered an indefinite suspension of night vigils at rural worship centers in the area.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: Look at that last sentence: the government suspended church service. Continue to worship, just be smart about posting guards and protecting your people.

Hostage Crisis Follows the Killing of Three Pastors in Manipur, India

A hostage crisis in India’s Manipur state continued into the week of May 25, 2026, weeks after three Baptist pastors and their driver were ambushed and killed on May 13. The pastors, members of the Thadou Baptist Association India, were returning from a United Baptist Convention gathering in Churachandpur to Kangpokpi when roughly 10 armed men opened fire on their two vehicles, also wounding several others. The killings set off retaliatory abductions between Kuki-Zo and Naga groups, both predominantly Christian communities, with dozens of civilians taken hostage across several districts. About 30 hostages were released by mid-May, but roughly 20 people remained unaccounted for as federal authorities investigated. Both communities have been caught in wider ethnic violence in Manipur since 2023.

Source

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June 2026 — Church Security Threat Brief · Cwt

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BLUF

There is no specific or credible threat tied to any June 2026 date at this time. June does carry an unusually dense run of anniversaries linked to attacks on worshippers and crowds, and actors seeking maximum psychological impact have historically chosen symbolic dates. Security teams should raise posture across the June 12 through 21 window and on Father’s Day, June 21.

Key Judgments

• Highly Likely: No specific or credible threat exists against any listed June date at the time of this writing.

• Likely: Any actor seeking maximum psychological effect would favor a date already associated with a prior attack.

• Likely: The June 12 through 21 window concentrates the highest operational relevance for churches.

• Possible: A lone actor inspired by a previous attack on worshippers could time activity to the June 17 Charleston anniversary.

• Possible: High-attendance Father’s Day services present a larger soft-target profile independent of any ideology.

Why Symbolic Dates Draw Threat Actors

Most attacks on churches are not planned around the calendar. They are driven by grievance, opportunity, and access. A smaller number are planned, and planners think about timing. An attacker who wants his act remembered will often attach it to a date that already carries meaning, because the anniversary does part of the work for him. It guarantees coverage, it ties the new act to a prior one, and it signals to anyone watching for it. Open-source reporting and fusion center bulletins track these dates for that reason. The goal is not to predict an attack on a given day. The goal is to know which days carry added weight so your posture reflects it.

The Charleston Anniversary: June 17

On June 17, 2015, a gunman entered Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina during a Wednesday evening Bible study. He sat with the group for roughly an hour before opening fire, killing nine people. He chose a small midweek gathering, he was welcomed in, and he attacked during a moment when heads were bowed and eyes were closed. That last detail is why this anniversary belongs on every church security calendar. Charleston is the clearest American example of a congregation being targeted specifically because it was a congregation, and the tactics used there remain the tactics most likely to be repeated. Midweek studies and small groups carry the same exposure today that Emanuel AME carried in 2015. If your team has not reviewed the closed-eyes prayer vulnerability, the week of June 17 is the time to do it.

The June 12 Through 21 Window

The middle of June concentrates several dates that draw public attention and, in some cases, past violence. June 12 marks the 2016 Pulse nightclub attack in Orlando, where forty-nine people were killed by an attacker who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Pride events run throughout the month, with large gatherings and marches in many cities, and churches near parade routes or hosting related events should plan for traffic, crowds, and the possibility of counter-demonstration friction. June 19 is Juneteenth, a federal holiday that can bring both celebrations and protest activity into public space. The same date marks the 2017 vehicle ramming attack outside Finsbury Park Mosque in London, a reminder that worshippers leaving services have been targeted as a soft, predictable crowd. June 21 is Father’s Day, one of the highest-attendance Sundays of the year. A fuller sanctuary is a larger soft target, and it usually means newer volunteers and visitors your team does not recognize. Plan greeter and parking coverage accordingly.

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The Broader June Calendar

The following dates carry historical or situational significance from open-source reporting. None reflects a current threat. They are listed so you can build your own month-at-a-glance.

• June 3 — Anniversary of the 2017 London Bridge vehicle ramming and stabbing attack.

• June 6 — D-Day remembrance.

• June 7 — Corpus Christi Sunday, a high-attendance day for Catholic and some liturgical churches.

• June 12 — Anniversary of the 2016 Pulse nightclub attack, Orlando.

• June 14 — Flag Day and the U.S. Army’s 251st birthday. Also the anniversary of the 2017 Congressional baseball practice shooting.

• June 17 — Anniversary of the 2015 Charleston Emanuel AME church attack.

• June 19 — Juneteenth. Also the anniversary of the 2017 Finsbury Park Mosque vehicle attack, London.

• June 21 — Father’s Day and the summer solstice.

• June 25 to 26 — Yawm Ashura, an Islamic day of commemoration.

• June 27 — Anniversary of the 1994 Matsumoto sarin attack and connected to the broader Aum Shinrikyo chemical attacks in Japan.

• June 28 — Anniversary of the 2018 Capital Gazette newsroom attack, Annapolis, and the 2016 Istanbul airport attack.

Recommended Actions

• Brief your team on the June 12 through 21 window at your next pre-service meeting and assign specific posts for Father’s Day.

• Review the Charleston attack and the closed-eyes prayer vulnerability with anyone who covers midweek studies and small groups.

• Confirm your greeter, parking, and door coverage holds up on high-attendance Sundays when summer rosters often run thin.

• If your church sits near a Pride route, a Juneteenth event, or any public gathering, identify your access points and plan for crowd spillover and traffic.

• Reinforce the report-it habit and make sure every volunteer knows how to raise a concern and to whom.

Threat Indicators

• Repeat visitors photographing entrances, exits, camera positions, or your security team.

• Vehicles positioned to watch arrival and dismissal patterns across multiple services.

• Questions about attendance numbers, service times, or where people gather that do not fit a normal visitor.

• Online posts referencing a specific date, a prior attack, or your church by name.

• Anyone overdressed for the weather or repeatedly adjusting or concealing the same area of the body.

Threat Assessment

The overall threat level for churches in June 2026 is assessed as YELLOW, Elevated. This reflects the density of symbolic dates rather than any specific or credible threat, of which there are none at this time. The primary concern is a lone actor, inspired by a prior attack on worshippers, choosing a small midweek gathering or a full Father’s Day service and timing it to a date that guarantees attention. That is assessed as Possible, not Likely, but the consequences are high enough that posture should not wait for a warning. The secondary concern is friction around public events. Churches near Pride routes, Juneteenth gatherings, or other demonstrations face a Possible risk of crowd spillover, traffic disruption, and confrontation that has nothing to do with the church itself but still arrives at its doors. For the June 12 through 21 window, and for Father’s Day specifically, teams should treat local posture as ORANGE, High, and staff accordingly. The correct response to a month like this is not alarm. It is a calendar, a briefing, and full coverage on the days that carry weight.

Biblical Lens

Matthew 24:43-44 (ESV) “But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

The point of the passage is timing. The thief succeeds because the owner did not know when he was coming. Jesus uses the image to teach readiness, and the lesson carries straight into security work. The owner who knows the hour stays awake, and the house is not broken into. This brief exists to give you that knowledge for June. You now know which dates carry added weight, so being caught off guard is no longer an excuse. Stay awake on the days that count, and the house holds.

1 Chronicles 12:32 (ESV) “Of Issachar, men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do, 200 chiefs, and all their kinsmen under their command.”

The men of Issachar were valued for one thing. They understood the times, and they knew what to do about it. Reading the calendar is not anxiety. It is the work of a leader who sees what season the church is in and adjusts the plan. Knowing the date is only half the job. Knowing what to do is the other half, and that is what separates a security team from a list of names on a roster.

Closing

Pull these dates into your own calendar this week and walk your team through them before the first one arrives. If this brief is useful, leave a comment with how your team handles high-attendance Sundays, and share it with your pastor or security team leader so the whole team is working from the same calendar.

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This Week: No Video, Just the Roll Call

I am taking some vacation time with my family this week, so there is no video. The Weekly Roll Call Briefing still goes out on schedule, and this week’s issue is attached to this post.

Video will be back in about three weeks. Until then the Roll Call will keep arriving every week, same as always. Pull it down, brief your team before service, and dismiss to your posts.

This week’s briefing holds the condition at Yellow. Inside you will find intelligence on the ISIS-directed plot disrupted in Florence, the historic church burned by Islamic State in Mozambique, and the cartel drone attacks in Guerrero, along with three incidents at U.S. churches. The Christ First word is built on Matthew 16:18, and the training focus this week is drones over your church.

Download it, read it with your own campus in mind, and put it to work.

If you have a question about anything in this week’s briefing, drop it in the comments and I will get to it when I am back. Watch and pray. I will see you back on video soon.

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This is the 5th in a yearlong series of shooting drills for church security teams. The drills become more challenging as the year goes along. This month, we talk about night shooting. Like many of you, I had difficulty finding a place to shoot at night, so I show you how to use the Mantis system to use with your firearms and set up the same live fire drills in a simulated environment in your house or church. The course of fire can be downloaded below.

Here is a list of equipment with I am using along with links to find the same item. Some of these links are affiliate links.

• Mantis Black Beard training system

• TitanX Dry Fire System

• My duty pistol

  • Glock 19 Gen 5

    Trijicon SRO

    Streamlight TLR1HD

    Glock Performance Trigger

    Radian Ramjet

    Speer Gold Dot Ammo

• My Rifle setup

  • Daniel Defense MK 18

    Aimpoint PRO

    Streamlight ProTac light

    Blueforce Gear Sling

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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.

Christian Warrior Bible Study

A Bible study rooted in Scripture for men and women with a warrior’s calling, those who stand ready to protect others, serve faithfully, and live out Christian courage in the hard places of life.

By Keith Graves

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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Alaska

Anchorage Area — Anonymous Cross-Country Letter in Arabic On Tuesday, May 19, 2026, a non-denominational church in the Anchorage area received an unusual piece of mail: a handwritten copy of two full chapters of the Gospel of John, transcribed in Arabic and postmarked from Southern California. The envelope carried no return identification, and the letter itself contained no threat or message. The reporter, a safety team member, judged it strange enough to act on, filed an online tip with the FBI, and noted the church had no way to know whether other congregations had received similar mail.

🛡️ Takeaway: Anonymous mail that carries no overt threat can still be a probe or low-grade intimidation, so log it, photograph the contents and the envelope, keep the originals, and report it so investigators can connect a possible multi-church mailing pattern.

CWT case 20260519-15F9EEA1

California

San Diego Area — Visitor Maps Exits, Breaks Off When Shadowed On Sunday, May 17, 2026, a guest fluent in Arabic alerted the safety team at a non-denominational church in the San Diego area to a man walking the property while talking on his phone in Arabic and appearing to note every exit. The man stepped into the lobby, saw the posted safety team member, and immediately walked back out; the team located him in an adjoining parking lot, still on the phone, and shadowed him as he studied the church’s key entrances and exits. Within about 60 seconds of being followed, he broke off and walked away into the surrounding industrial park. The team issued a description to all safety, usher, and parking volunteers: a man of about 40, roughly 5’10”, of darker complexion with a medium-length black beard, in a grey ball cap and green puffer jacket, carrying a green backpack and walking a black electric scooter.

🛡️ Takeaway: A visitor who maps exits, reverses course the moment he sees security, and disengages within a minute of being shadowed may be conducting pre-operational surveillance, so get the description to the whole team fast and file a police report even when the person leaves on his own.

CWT case 20260519-70ECA01B

Illinois

McHenry County — Veiled Threat From an Aggressive Visitor Over the weekend of May 17, 2026, according to a county sheriff’s advisory relayed to a church safety team, a man entered a church in McHenry County, in Chicago’s far northwest suburbs, and stated that he associates with Black Hebrew Israelites ideology. His tone and demeanor were aggressive throughout the conversation, and he made vague statements to one of the church’s elders about “looking forward to the news that was going to be coming this weekend,” repeating the comment more than once. A sheriff’s detective circulated the advisory so nearby congregations would stay alert.

🛡️ Takeaway: Treat repeated, vague references to future “news,” paired with an aggressive demeanor and an ideological declaration, as veiled pre-attack signaling, so record the exact words and make sure that language reaches every team member before the next service.

CWT case 20260521-68823EBC

How to Submit

If you observed suspicious activity at your church this week, report it at alert.christianwarriortraining.com. Reports are reviewed by CWT, logged, and where appropriate, anonymized and published here so other safety teams can pattern-match in their own areas.

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TERRORISM/INTELLIGENCE

Explosive Device Detonates Outside Church Serving as Polling Place — Catasauqua, PA

On Tuesday, May 19, around 9:15 a.m., during the Pennsylvania primary election, an explosive device was thrown from a moving vehicle outside Salem United Church of Christ on the 600 block of Third Street and detonated about half a block away from the church entrance. No one was injured, and voters were redirected to a 4th Street entrance to continue casting ballots. State police arrested Matthew Pletz, 56, and Jack Pletz, 24, both of Catasauqua, who were riding in a green 1998 Chevrolet pickup truck at the time. Investigators recovered 17 additional homemade explosive devices and one plastic-encased destructive device from inside the truck. Both men face charges including unlawful possession and manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, risking catastrophe, and possession of an instrument of crime with intent.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: churches are often used as polling places. It is a great community service and allows the community to see what the church has to offer. However, it also brings the chance of political violence. Political violence is increasing in our country as we all well know. Whenever you host pulling station, I would brief your staff about maintaining situational awareness while voting is in progress and to lockdown the church if violence comes.

Iranian Proxy Commander Indicted in Plot to Attack U.S. Jewish Sites — United States

The U.S. Department of Justice indicted a high-ranking commander of an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia for orchestrating a plot to attack Jewish community sites within the United States, with the indictment publicly reported the week of May 11, 2026. The operation was reportedly coordinated by the IRGC-Quds Force through encrypted communication channels, representing what U.S. officials describe as a significant expansion of Iranian proxy reach onto American soil. The specific Jewish sites targeted, the stage of attack planning, and the named commander have not been fully disclosed in public reporting. The indictment fits within a broader pattern of recent Iran-linked U.S.-targeting activity, including suspected Iranian cyber intrusions against automated fuel gauge systems at American gas stations during the same period. Federal authorities have signaled continued monitoring of Iranian proxy networks during the ongoing U.S.-Iran conflict.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: I'm writing an intelligence bulletin right now about this incident and how we need to pay more attention to Mexican drug cartels. This suspect thought he was talking to a drug cartel operative. There is a long history of Jihadies working with Mexican drug cartels to facilitate their violence. We also see Mexican drug cartels using tactics that these terrorist use against their own people. This also shows that the violence against synagogues in Europe will come here. They are trying. Our federal agents are doing a good job at keeping them at Bay.

ISCAP Kills 87 Christians Across Ituri and Beni — Democratic Republic of Congo

Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) killed 87 Christians across the Ituri and Beni regions of eastern DRC during operations reported through May 16, 2026, as claimed in Issue 547 of the group’s weekly publication Al-Naba. The campaign included village raids, arson, IEDs, and reported executions, with 12 Christian homes razed in the Beni area and additional villages burned. ISCAP fighters also enforced jizyah, a tax historically imposed on non-Muslim populations under militant rule. A Rwandan Army vehicle supporting Congolese stabilization operations was disabled by an IED near Makomia. An IS supporter amplified the attacks in online propaganda, framing the systematic killing and displacement of Congolese Christians as “the future of Christians everywhere.”

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: we need to keep our brothers and sisters in Africa in our prayers. More Christians are martyred in Nigeria and the DRC than anywhere else in the world.

US-Nigerian Strike Kills IS Global Second-in-Command -Retaliation Against Christians Expected

On Sunday, May 17, 2026, a joint US-Nigerian precision air-land strike in Metele, Borno State, killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, the Islamic State’s globally designated second-in-command, along with several lieutenants. Al-Minuki served as both ISWAP’s operational commander and head of IS’s General Directorate of Provinces for the Lake Chad division, coordinating activities across Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. The operation ran from approximately 12:01 to 04:00 local time and represents the most significant IS leadership loss since the 2019 death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Security analysts have warned that ISWAP and affiliated cells may attempt retaliatory strikes against military formations, civilian communities, and soft targets in Borno, Yobe, and surrounding Lake Chad Basin states over the next two to four weeks. Christian villages and churches in northeast Nigeria have been recurring ISWAP targets, with documented village raids, home burnings, and executions of congregants in the months preceding the strike.

Source

Tunisian National Arrested in Plot Targeting Louvre and Paris Jewish Community — Paris, France

On Thursday, May 7, 2026, French authorities arrested a 27-year-old Tunisian national in Paris on suspicion of planning a terror attack against the Louvre Museum and the city’s Jewish community. Examination of his devices revealed Louvre reconnaissance materials, notes on ricin production, explosives scouting, IS recruitment contacts, and encrypted communications with overseas extremist networks. Investigators determined the suspect had also sought to travel to Syria or Mozambique to join the Islamic State directly. He was formally charged on May 11 and remanded into custody pending further investigation. France’s national counterterrorism prosecutor’s office has documented three completed attacks and seven disrupted plots in France during 2025, with jihadist threat activity trending upward since 2024.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: Chemical biological weapon attack is being researched deeply by people that want to kill us. I've been seeing this come up more and more in the last two months. Combine that with the Chinese bio labs that were found in the United States, it shows a real threat to our population. I will be doing a series on gas masks on my other platform, Christian Warrior Prepper.

Christian Warrior Prepper

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By Keith Graves

CNN Claims CIA Ground Branch Used Vehicle Bomb To Kill Sinaloa Cartel Operative Near Mexico City Airport

Francisco Beltrán “El Payín,” a mid-level Sinaloa Cartel operative, was killed on or around Tuesday, March 31, 2026, when his vehicle exploded near Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) in the State of Mexico. A CNN report published in mid-May alleged the operation was facilitated by the CIA’s Ground Branch as part of a broader covert campaign against cartel personnel on Mexican soil. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has publicly insisted on “cooperation without subordination” in joint security operations and has not confirmed any US lethal role in the killing. The CIA has not publicly acknowledged the report. Vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices have not historically been a common cartel-on-cartel tool inside Mexico, and analysts have flagged the method as a potential capability shift in transnational criminal violence.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: we are, indeed, killing cartel members at all levels. The cartels have said that they will bring the fight to the United States if they start killing cartel leaders. I want you to remember that and remember how often they work with Jihadies. We should be very concerned and we should be tracking what the cartels are doing. I will be writing an intelligence brief here shortly about that link and our need to start tracking them. They used to be that the cartels would never touch Christians or the church. However, as of late, they have been murdering Catholic priest in their country. I don't think they will leave us alone anymore.

Cartel Drone Bombings Displace 800 from Náhuatl Communities — Tula, Guerrero, Mexico

On Friday, May 15, 2026, fighters from Los Ardillos attacked multiple Náhuatl indigenous communities in Tula, Guerrero, using drone-fired explosives, killing three community police officers and displacing more than 800 residents including children and elderly. Homes were burned and livestock killed as entire villages emptied during the aerial bombardment. The assault is among the most extensive documented uses of weaponized drones by a Mexican cartel against civilian population centers. The same drone-and-explosive tactic has been used in conflict zones by Islamic State affiliates and other armed groups operating in the Middle East and Africa. Mexican government response has drawn criticism for downplaying the scale of cartel-driven civilian displacement across Guerrero, where indigenous communities and their churches sit inside contested cartel territory.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: I'm including this so that we can look at their TTP's (tactics techniques and protocols). We need to be watching what they are doing in case they decide to bring the fight to America (see my comments on the story above to completely understand where I am coming from).

VIOLENT CRIME

Suspected Domestic Violence Shooter Found Dead in Church Parking Lot — Shreveport / Bossier City, LA

On Thursday morning, May 21, Shreveport police responded to the 9900 block of Kingston Road just before 5 a.m. and found a woman shot in the back of the head; she was transported to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries. According to Shreveport Police, officers had been called to the same residence around 9 p.m. the night before on a domestic disturbance, but the victim was not present at the time and no physical confrontation had occurred. The suspected shooter fled in a white Nissan Altima after the morning shooting, and Bossier City police later located him sitting in the vehicle in a church parking lot across the Red River, dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Investigators are still working to determine why the victim returned to the home and what occurred during the overnight hours. The case is being investigated jointly by the Shreveport Police Department and Bossier City Police Department.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: Each week, someone fleeing something bad head to the local church. They could be running from the police, someone trying to kill them, or (like in this case) they committed a horrible crime and are seeking redemption or sanctuary. This means that whether there is a service ongoing or not, you must maintain situational awareness. You also need a 4k video system to monitor the property and create a record of any crime that happens at the church.

Mosque Attack Leaves Five Dead in San Diego — San Diego, CA

On Monday, May 18, two teenage gunmen, ages 17 and 18, opened fire inside the Islamic Center of San Diego, killing three men before dying of self-inflicted gunshot wounds. The three victims, identified by Muslim leaders at a Tuesday press conference, were shot while attempting to delay and distract the attackers. San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said the department is investigating the attack as a hate crime, and investigators recovered anti-Islam writings tied to the shooters. The New York Times reported that the mother of one of the suspects had warned police of missing guns from the home in the days before the attack. The attack marks only the fourth time someone has been killed at a mosque in the United States since 2000, according to data from the Violence Prevention Project.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: watch the debrief below for more information.

Man Assaults Staff, Bites Volunteer at Methodist Church Food Bank — Woodbridge, VA

On Wednesday, May 20, around 7:22 p.m., Prince William County police responded to Cokesbury Methodist Church at 14806 Blackburn Road in Woodbridge after a man walked into the church food bank and became aggressive with staff. James Alexander Polk, 37, of no fixed address, assaulted two male staff members and bit a third man while bystanders restrained him. The bitten staff member was transported to a hospital for treatment, and the other two victims reported minor injuries. Polk was arrested at the scene and charged with malicious wounding, two counts of simple assault, and disorderly conduct. He is being held without bond.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: When you deal with the homeless population, you are at greater risk of assaults and other crime. Besides maintaining situational awareness, I suggest taking our course on deescalation to help when problems arise.

Suspect Charged in St. Genevieve Catholic Church Shooting — Las Cruces, NM

Las Cruces police on Monday, May 18, charged Matthew Albian Alarcon, 40, in the May 4 shooting that damaged St. Genevieve Catholic Church on Espina Avenue. Surveillance video captured a black Chevrolet Malibu circling the church at 4:27 a.m. before a man exited and fired five rounds into the sanctuary entrance, penetrating the decorative glass panels of the front doors. Parishioners arriving for the recitation of the Holy Rosary discovered the bullet holes shortly after 6 a.m. that morning, and no one was injured. Police tracked the vehicle using license plate reader data and security camera footage, then recovered the firearm during a search tied to a separate criminal investigation. Alarcon was booked on charges including desecration of a church and is being held without bond.

Source

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SEX CRIMES

South Florida Baptist Pastor Arrested on Sexual Assault Charges — Miami, FL

Elie Dorcius, 62, a South Florida Baptist pastor, was arrested this week on charges of molestation and indecent exposure, CBS News Miami reported. Dorcius appeared before a judge on Wednesday, May 20, and was ordered held without bond. Investigators told reporters they believe there may be additional victims and are continuing to look into the case. CBS noted Dorcius leads a Baptist church in the Miami-Dade area where the alleged conduct came to light through a parishioner. The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office is leading the investigation.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: I hate saying this, but it's true. Your pastor is more likely to molest a child then for you to have an active shooter at your church. What are you doing to protect our children? Are you training to look for groomers? Are you checking on staff to make sure they're acting appropriately with children? What happens if you see your pastor with a child by himself and it looks like something might be happening? You need to start thinking about these things and how you will handle it and protect the children.

Former LDS Bishop Charged with 18 Felony Counts of Child Sex Abuse — Livermore, CA

On Thursday, May 21, Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson announced that Michael Delar Morris, 76, has been charged with and arraigned on 18 felony counts of non-forcible sexual assault and lewd acts with children involving four alleged victims. Prosecutors allege the abuse occurred between 1991 and 2001 while Morris served as a bishop at a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints congregation in Livermore and supervised a church-affiliated young men’s group. Investigators say Morris also served as a Boy Scout leader during that period, using both ministry positions to gain access to boys in the congregation. Morris has posted $920,000 bail. The District Attorney’s office said it remains committed to prosecuting historical sexual abuse cases wherever the law allows.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: This is the police department I worked at for 29 years. He committed those assaults while I was working there and I had friends in that LDS ward. I have no doubt I crossed paths with this guy at some point. People like him seek out positions of authority over children for the sole purpose of gaining unfettered access to victims. Know that groomers are trying to get a job at your church for the sole purpose of molesting your kids.

On a side note, I keep thinking of all the times I drove through that church parking lot on patrol and saw the scouts getting ready to go on trips. It makes me sad to know what had happened to some of them. I wish they had flagged me down and told me.

Retired Catholic Priest Charged with Sex Crimes — Westmoreland County, PA

Pennsylvania State Police on Friday, May 16, charged retired Catholic priest Robert Byrnes, 84, with aggravated indecent assault and related offenses out of Westmoreland County. Byrnes previously served as a chaplain for the Pennsylvania State Police. According to the criminal complaint, Byrnes urged the victim not to report the alleged abuse to police “for the sake of the reputation of the church,” and prosecutors say he also told other men not to report. The Diocese of Greensburg confirmed Byrnes has been removed from public ministry and has not been functioning in any church entity since the allegations surfaced. The case is being prosecuted by the Westmoreland County District Attorney’s Office.

Source

Fort Worth Megachurch Pastor Back in Custody — Fort Worth, TX

Alonzo Diego Fuller, 39, the founding pastor of Journey Fort Worth Church, has been back in custody since May 5 in connection with the same sexual assault case that led to his August 2025 arrest. Tarrant County records show Fuller is being held in connection with the original second-degree felony sexual assault charge brought by a former parishioner. Fuller was originally released on a $40,000 bond after his September 1, 2025 booking and has continued to lead the congregation despite the charge. The church still lists Fuller as its pastor and referred questions to defense attorney Bret Martin. Christian Post first reported the re-arrest on May 14.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: notice how there are more sexual assault stories than there is violent crime. I want you to remember that and think about how you are protecting our children.

Former Exodus International President Arrested in Child Solicitation Sting — Orange County, FL

On Tuesday morning, May 19, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office arrested Alan Chambers, 54, an ordained minister and the former president of the now-defunct Exodus International, during a traffic stop in Winter Park. According to the arrest affidavit, Chambers exchanged sexually explicit Snapchat and Telegram messages from February 10 through May 4 with an undercover detective who identified himself as a 14-year-old boy, sent nude photos of himself, and repeatedly sought to meet up. The affidavit also alleges Chambers paid for sexual favors from male prostitutes during the same period. Chambers is charged with solicitation of a minor, transmission of harmful material to minors, and unlawful use of a two-way communication device, and was booked into the Orange County Jail without bond. If convicted on all counts, he faces more than 30 years in prison. Chambers led Exodus International — a Christian ministry that promoted conversion therapy — until shutting it down and publicly apologizing in 2013, and now serves as an executive at a Winter Park menswear company.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: Nothing surprises me anymore. Just know there are a string of victims this guy left behind that we have yet to find.

ARSON AND SUSPICIOUS FIRES

Woman Charged in Episcopal Church Arson — Ladue, MO

Janiya Van was charged Tuesday, May 19, with knowingly burning or exploding, a Class E felony, in connection with a May 8 fire inside St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on North Warson Road. According to the probable cause statement, a person working in the church called police after smelling smoke from the rear chapel and finding multiple items still smoldering. The fire damaged a rug on the altar, the wood flooring, and several potted plants. Investigators recovered fingerprints from partially burned church pamphlets and reviewed interior surveillance footage to identify the suspect. Van was previously arrested at the same church on May 11 for trespassing.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: this is your weekly reminder that you need a burglar alarm, fire alarm, and a 4K video system. I WANT TO YELL AT FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK ROW, THIS IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT YOU CAN DO FOR THE SECURITY OF YOUR CHURCH!

Two-Alarm Fire Destroys Historic Mother African Union Church — Wilmington, DE

A two-alarm fire destroyed the Mother African Union Church on the 800 block of North Franklin Street early Sunday morning, May 17, around 3 a.m. More than 100 firefighters responded, but the structure was already fully engulfed on arrival, and crews fought the fire defensively from outside as flames shot 20 to 30 feet into the air. Two firefighters from the Elsmere Fire Company sustained minor injuries when a large tree limb fell on them while protecting nearby homes. The church, founded in 1813, is one of the oldest African American congregations in the United States and is tied to the Underground Railroad and the August Quarterly festival. Wilmington Fire Chief John Looney said investigators are working alongside the Delaware State Fire Marshal’s Office and the cause remains under investigation.

Source

VEHICLE COLLISIONS

Two-Car Crash Sends Vehicle Through Church Lobby — North Lindenhurst, NY

A woman was injured Wednesday, May 20, when a two-car crash sent her vehicle through the lobby of a church in North Lindenhurst. News 12 Long Island reported the collision happened at an intersection adjacent to the church and that the impact pushed one of the vehicles into the building. The woman was transported for treatment of her injuries, and no one inside the church was reported hurt. Building inspectors were called to assess structural damage at the entry. The cause of the underlying crash is under investigation.

Source

🛡️ My thoughts: this could've easily been a mass casualty incident if this happened while church was in service. What are you doing to keep vehicles out of your building? You need to have bollards placed in critical areas to protect the body of Christ.

INTERNATIONAL

ISCAP Burns Three Churches, Kills 13 Christians in Cabo Delgado — Northern Mozambique

Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) killed 13 Christians, wounded several others, burned three churches, and destroyed 233 homes across Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province during the week ending May 16, 2026, as claimed in Al-Naba Issue 547. Fighters used small-arms assaults, arson, and improvised explosive devices in coordinated village strikes. A separate IED disabled a Rwandan Army vehicle deployed to the province as part of ongoing counterinsurgency operations. ISCAP has maintained continuous attack tempo in Cabo Delgado throughout 2026, with Christian villages and churches remaining recurring targets. The pattern mirrors ISCAP operations across the border in eastern DRC, where Christian communities are being systematically displaced.

🛡️ My thoughts: Mozambique is becoming quite a hotspot. I've noticed terrorist activity increasing in that nation. I know that is also a popular place for missionaries to go to. If you support missionaries in that country, just make sure that they are watching out for their safety.

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Cwt Rollcall 052926 (1)

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The New Crusade Sons Of Tarrant Manifesto

1.18MB ∙ PDF file

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This is the attackers manifesto. It is here for learning purposes as is their first person video of the attack (below). It is not meant to glorify them in any way. Know thy enemy. Learn how to identify these people and learn how to stop their behavior before it starts.

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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), faggot 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.

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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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The shooters involved in the San Diego mosque shooting went live with their crime. I show the video along with an analysis of what you can learn to better protect your church.

***GRAPHIC WARNING****

The video is very graphic and shows the shooters suicide.

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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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If this was useful, leave a comment with what your team would do differently after reading it, and share it with your pastor or your team leader. These conversations are how congregations get ready before the morning it counts.

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BLUF

Federal authorities have interrupted one operation inside a continuing IRGC-directed terror campaign that planned to firebomb a Manhattan synagogue and Jewish centers in Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Arizona. One commander is in custody. The network, its infrastructure, and its standing intent are not. Your church is not a named target in this case, but the enemy’s stated selection logic and operating method are the parts your team needs to understand this week.

Key Judgments

• Highly Likely: This plot was one operation in a continuing state-sponsored campaign directed by Kata’ib Hizballah and the IRGC through the front group Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, and the arrest of the principal does not end it.

• Highly Likely: The IRGC infrastructure behind this campaign remains intact and operational overseas, with roughly twenty attacks and attempted attacks across Europe and Canada since early March 2026 and an established model of paying criminal third parties to execute.

• Highly Likely: The enemy’s stated selection criterion in this case was support for Israel. Each U.S. target was described in the complaint as a supporter of Zionism, not merely as a Jewish building.

• Likely: The IRGC’s broader doctrine of striking Zionist interests globally can, by the assessment of counterterrorism analysts, expand past Jewish community targets to include religious and political organizations that actively fund or lobby for Israel, which would place Christian Zionist organizations inside that definition.

• Likely: Inspired and copycat actors not under direct IRGC control will continue to act within this environment, and these are the hardest cases for law enforcement to interdict in advance.

• Possible: Associates named in the complaint remain at large and retain some capability to act inside the United States.

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What Happened

On Friday, May 15, 2026, the Department of Justice unsealed a complaint in the Southern District of New York charging Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, 32, an Iraqi national, with six terrorism-related counts. Prosecutors identify Al-Saadi as a senior member and commander of Kata’ib Hizballah, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and allege his involvement in nearly twenty attacks and attempted attacks throughout Europe and the United States. The European campaign involved arson, explosive devices, and chemicals against Jewish schools, synagogues, and charities, with responsibility for many attacks claimed by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, a front group for the IRGC that outsourced the acts to local criminals to preserve deniability. When Al-Saadi sent an undercover officer the locations of the Manhattan synagogue and the Jewish institutions in Los Angeles and Scottsdale, he attached Arabic-language documents describing each congregation as a staunch supporter of Zionism outside Israel and a beacon for solidarity and support to Israel and its Zionist objectives. He provided photos and maps of each site, asked whether the targets should be hit with an improvised explosive device or set on fire, agreed on a price of $10,000 in cryptocurrency, and sent a $3,000 down payment with a demand that the attack occur on April 6. He was apprehended in Turkey and transferred into FBI custody. The NYPD said it worked with the targeted synagogue’s leadership to ensure its security when the threat was elevated; the synagogue has not been publicly identified, and Al-Saadi was ordered detained pending trial with a next court date of May 29. U.S. Department of Justice + 5

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Threat Pattern Analysis

The fact that should hold your attention is not the arrest. It is the campaign the arrest did not stop. One international security analyst stated the point directly: although the plot in the United States was stopped, the infrastructure the IRGC has created remains intact. This is a state-aligned proxy operation with a consistent signature, and that signature is what church security leaders should study. NBC News

The selection logic is the first element. The enemy did not choose these sites because they were Jewish buildings in the abstract. The complaint’s own attached documents framed each target by its support for Israel. That distinction reaches further than the synagogue door. The IRGC and its online proxies routinely threaten to strike Zionist interests globally, and counterterrorism analysts note that this loose definition can expand past Jewish community targets to include religious and political organizations that actively fund or lobby for Israel. A church with a public Israel-support footprint fits that expanded definition on its own terms, not by speculation.

The execution model is the second element. The work was outsourced to criminal third parties with no prior ideological footprint. A hired arsonist does not behave like a radicalized congregant. He produces almost none of the behavioral indicators that traditional threat assessment relies on, because his motive is payment, not belief. The third element is method and timing. The plan against the U.S. targets was simultaneous arson across three cities. Simultaneity splits law enforcement attention, overwhelms regional response, and maximizes propaganda value. Taken together, an intact sponsor, a broad selection criterion, paid execution, and a multi-site arson preference, this is a repeatable model, and it does not depend on the man now in custody.

What Your Team Should Know

The direct targets in this case were Jewish institutions, so the synagogues and Jewish centers in your area carry the highest near-term risk profile right now. Senior security professionals have described the current period as the most elevated and complex threat environment the Jewish community and the country have faced in modern history, driven in part by IRGC sleeper-cell activity across the West and by inspired actors who give law enforcement little advance warning. If you have a working relationship with the security leadership at a nearby synagogue or Jewish center, this is the week to confirm it. Shared situational awareness across religious institutions in the same area is one of the few defenses that scales against a simultaneous multi-site model.

For your own congregation, the honest read depends on your footprint. A church that publicly raises money for Israel, runs an active Israel advocacy or lobbying ministry, displays Israeli colors prominently, or shares a campus or close proximity with a synagogue fits the enemy’s stated selection logic as analysts assess it can be applied. Those congregations should treat their near-term exposure as real and rising, not remote. A congregation with no public Israel-support footprint and no Jewish institution nearby carries materially lower exposure this week. Both are true at the same time, and your team should know which one describes your church before you set your posture.

The outsourced-attacker problem changes how you watch. You are not necessarily looking for an angry man with a manifesto. You may be looking at a paid stranger conducting a single reconnaissance pass, or arriving once after hours to place an incendiary device against an exterior wall. That shifts the emphasis toward physical-site hardening and hostile surveillance detection, and away from behavioral profiling alone. Arson was the chosen method here. Walk your perimeter with that specific threat in mind.

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Threat Indicators

• Persons photographing or filming entrances, cameras, utility connections, or the building exterior, or appearing to measure or sketch the layout

• Repeated drive-bys, or a parked vehicle with occupants observing the property over time

• Strangers asking unusual questions about service times, attendance, security staffing, or building access

• Containers, accelerant odor, or tampering with exterior gas or utility connections, particularly found during opening checks

• Online threats or posts referencing Israel, Zionism, retaliation for the conflict with Iran, or Soleimani, directed at your church or at religious institutions in your area

• Coordinated or near-simultaneous suspicious activity reported at synagogues or Jewish centers near your campus

  File an SAR for Suspicious Activity Here

Recommended Actions

• Church security teams should increase exterior patrols and after-hours checks this month, with specific attention to incendiary pre-staging at ground level and against exterior walls.

• Church security teams should physically inspect fire detection and suppression coverage, exterior ignition vulnerabilities, and combustible storage placement, and correct what they can this week.

• Church security teams should establish or refresh a direct contact with the security leadership of nearby synagogues and Jewish centers, and with their local law enforcement, FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, or regional fusion center.

• Church security teams that lead or host public Israel-support activity should assess that footprint honestly against the enemy’s stated selection criterion and brief leadership on what it means for posture.

• Church security teams should brief greeters, parking, and door teams on hostile surveillance recognition, and give them a simple, low-friction way to report it without confronting anyone.

• Church security teams should route observed suspicious activity into a reviewed reporting channel, including the national CWT reporting platform at alert.christianwarriortraining.com when a local channel is not available.

• Church security teams should review their contingency for a simultaneous or secondary incident and avoid a plan that commits every resource to the first event.

• Church security teams should confirm camera coverage of all exterior approaches and verify recording retention before, not after, an incident.

Threat Assessment

For the church security community, the present threat level is ELEVATED (YELLOW), and it should be held there with discipline rather than relaxed because an arrest was made.

The reasoning runs in one direction and then the other. The principal in this operation is in U.S. custody, which removes one commander and one specific plot. That fact alone would argue for a lower posture. It is outweighed by what remains. It is Highly Likely that the parent network continues to operate, given its sustained tempo across Europe and Canada and the analytic judgment that its infrastructure is intact. It is Highly Likely that the enemy’s targeting criterion is support for Israel rather than the narrow category of Jewish buildings. It is Likely that this criterion, under the IRGC’s stated doctrine of striking Zionist interests globally, can extend to religious organizations that actively fund or lobby for Israel. It is Possible that named associates remain at large with some capability inside the United States.

Applied to Christian congregations, direct targeting by this network is currently Unlikely for the majority of churches, and that is why the posture is YELLOW and not higher. The value of this brief is not a warning that your church is next. It is pattern recognition and an honest read of your own footprint. A congregation with a public Israel-support mission, or one sharing close proximity with a synagogue, sits closer to the enemy’s stated logic than a congregation without that footprint, and should weight its watch and its hardening accordingly. The correct posture for the community is heightened awareness and physical hardening this month, a deliberate strengthening of the relationships that let religious institutions in the same area see a coordinated threat forming, and a clear set of conditions that would move the posture up. Those conditions are an associate of this network assessed inside the United States, any U.S. religious site attacked using the arson-plus-outsourced-attacker signature, any IRGC or HAYI communication that explicitly names Christian or church targets, or coordinated suspicious activity at multiple religious sites in one region within a short window. Written down in advance, the next decision is mechanical, not emotional.

Biblical Lens

“And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night.” — Nehemiah 4:9 · ESV

“The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.” — Proverbs 22:3 · ESV

Nehemiah did not choose between prayer and a guard. He did both, in the same breath, and he kept the watch posted around the clock because the threat was real and it was not going away. Proverbs 22:3 draws the line between the team that reads a warning and changes something and the team that reads it and does nothing. You have the warning. Prudence is what you do with it this week.

Take a few minutes after your next team meeting to walk your building with this case in mind and to assess your congregation’s footprint honestly. Then share this brief with your pastor and your team leader, and leave a comment with what your team is changing as a result. Watch and pray.

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Report Suspicious Activity Here

This week: 7 reports across 7 states. Recording-and-transmit behavior was the most consistent thread, with three congregations in the West and upper Midwest catching subjects documenting entrances, balconies, and sacred space with phones or boom-mic rigs.

Patterns This Week

Three of this week’s seven reports (Minnesota, Oregon, and Nevada) involved subjects documenting the building with cell phones or recording rigs; two of those three also involved coordinated, multi-person teams and transmission of imagery off-site. Two reports (California and Louisiana) demonstrated that an outside team with radios in the parking lot visibly changes a suspect’s behavior, and in both cases the suspect’s evasive response became the report’s strongest indicator. Gravel and unpaved lots continue to appear disproportionately in vandalism reports, with Arizona’s bias-incident escalation reinforcing the need for trail cameras and motion lighting in those spaces.Arizona

Tucson metro area — racial-slur vandalism in a gravel lot

On Friday, May 8, 2026, a safety team member at a non-denominational congregation in the Tucson metro area reported that an ongoing nuisance pattern (an individual doing burnouts in the church’s gravel parking lot) had escalated into a targeted racial slur scratched in three-foot letters into the gravel surface. The reporting team flagged the incident as URGENT and as part of a pattern of prior incidents at the same lot. No law-enforcement report had been filed at the time of submission.

🛡️ Takeaway: Gravel and unpaved lots erase quickly. If you have one, get a trail camera and motion-activated lighting up now, and photograph any bias-incident message before weather or foot traffic destroys it.

CWT case 20260512-D049D75B

California

West Covina area — Saturday-morning surveillance with evasive driving

On Saturday, May 9, 2026, a safety team member at a Church of Christ congregation in the West Covina area noticed an earlier-model white Chevrolet pickup parked on the east side of the lot near a tree after a First Saturday meeting. When the team member walked toward the vehicle to offer assistance, the driver started the engine, reversed down the lot to the dumpster, accelerated forward to roughly 60 MPH down the north parking lane, slowed to turn into the driveway, and exited eastbound. The team obtained a photograph of the vehicle and plate; West Covina PD was notified, and the reporter flagged ongoing threat and prior incidents at the property.

🛡️ Takeaway: If a parked vehicle starts its engine the moment you walk toward it, that is your data point. Note the plate, retreat to cover, and let law enforcement make the contact.

CWT case 20260509-407AC879 · WCPD case 25-10040113

Louisiana

New Orleans suburbs — Palm Sunday road-rage threat against a child

On Palm Sunday, March 29, 2026, a member of a United Methodist congregation in the New Orleans suburbs was followed into the church parking lot by a driver who believed the member had cut him off in traffic. The suspect left, then returned in a back-up vehicle and sat in the lot for 15 to 20 minutes; the parking-lot team observed him, and he dropped his head several times when he realized he was being watched. He eventually exited, walked to a truck parked two spots from his own, placed a note on the windshield, and left. The note, retrieved by the team, contained a hateful anti-Christian tirade and language wishing the children of the truck’s owner would die of cancer. Parish deputies were called, a partial plate photo was captured, and firehouse cameras next door corroborated the return-trip behavior. The church board has since authorized parking-lot cameras as a direct result.

🛡️ Takeaway: Everything still starts in the lot. A radio-equipped outside watcher is the difference between a written threat against a congregant’s child and an incident that slips away with no evidence.

CWT case 20260515-B27BFA75

Maryland

Rural western Maryland — daytime perimeter walk targeting the water well

On Wednesday, May 13, 2026, security cameras at a Bible church in rural western Maryland (roughly one hour west of Washington, DC) captured a female with a clipboard walking the church doors and pausing to inspect the building’s water-well casing and cap. The reporter (safety team) stated this was the first unexplained capture on their system; routine traffic on those cameras has historically been pest control, meter readers, or lawn care, all explainable. The team’s chief concern was the water-well dwell time, raising chemical or biological contamination questions in addition to standard pre-attack reconnaissance. No law-enforcement report has been filed.

🛡️ Takeaway: Water infrastructure is part of your attack surface. Inspect and lock the well cap with a tamper-evident or keyed cover, document anyone who touches building utilities, and file a non-emergency report to start a paper trail.

CWT case 20260514-8B9C4AD6

Minnesota

Northwest Minneapolis suburbs — boom-mic recording rig at the altar

On Sunday, May 10, 2026, a safety team member at a Catholic parish in the northwest Minneapolis suburbs observed an adult male carrying a cell phone on a stick with a microphone, actively recording the entrance, the lobby, the sanctuary, and then stepping up to approach the altar and tabernacle. The team escorted him out. The subject was a white male, approximately 5’10″, with a scruffy gray close-trimmed beard, a colored headband, a large headphone-style headpiece, and a multicolored jacket; he arrived and left on foot, and was observed being picked up by a vehicle a block or two north of the property. The reporter has photographic and security-camera evidence and rates confidence high. No law-enforcement report has been filed.

🛡️ Takeaway: A subject openly recording sacred space with a boom or cell-on-stick rig, then approaching the altar, is the documented provocateur surveillance pattern. Escort calmly, preserve every video frame, and file a police report the same day to establish the timeline.

CWT case 20260513-F4E87C6D

Nevada

Reno area — second-hand account of a four-man probe

Logged this week from a relayed account: on Sunday, March 29, 2026, three to four adult males, described by the original witness as Middle Eastern, were observed filming the entrances of a church in the Reno area and walking the building’s perimeter. One of the group entered the children’s ministry area. When the host church’s security team came outside, the group drove away. The reporter relaying the account stated the affected church handled the incident internally and has a sworn law-enforcement officer on its team. The original witness and church remain unverified by CWT at this point; source confidence is rated medium.

🛡️ Takeaway: Children’s wing access is the worst-case escalation in a surveillance probe. Treat the kids’ wing as a controlled-access zone with dedicated check-in and a hard separation from any visitor’s normal walking path.

CWT case 20260511-7FA60B7B

Oregon

Portland metro area — coordinated two-man recording team with real-time off-site transmission

On Sunday, May 10, 2026, a safety team member at a non-denominational congregation in the Portland metro area observed an unknown adult male (Subject 1) enter the worship center holding a cell phone as if recording video. The reporter followed and confirmed the phone was actively recording, with the subject paying special attention to entrance and exit locations and the closed-off balcony area before performing a slow sweep of the entire room. A second male (Subject 2) entered, met Subject 1 in the back row, and began recording with his own phone; a security associate watching cameras observed Subject 1 sending the video content by text to an unknown number in real time. After service, both subjects approached two older female congregants in the lobby; Subject 1 was overly handsy, repeatedly touching shoulders and putting an arm around the women, who later confirmed they had only met him that morning. Subject 1 gave the name “Vladimir” and claimed he was from Russia; Subject 2 gave the name “Eugene” and claimed he was from Estonia. Subject 1 left in a white Mercedes-Benz; Subject 2 left in a white Dodge cargo van. The incident has been reported to the FBI tip line.

🛡️ Takeaway: A two-man team will split roles: one documents the building, one socially engineers the welcome team or older congregants. Brief greeters and lobby staff to recognize over-familiar contact with first-time visitors, and reconcile that against camera-room observation of phone-held-vertically recording behavior.

CWT case 20260514-89017C96

How to Submit

If you observed suspicious activity at your church this week, report it at alert.christianwarriortraining.com. Reports are reviewed by CWT, logged, and where appropriate, anonymized and published here so other safety teams can pattern-match in their own areas.

— CWT