A man dressed in black walked into a Utah sacrament meeting carrying a revolver, sat down in the lobby with his hand on the gun, and waited while the entire building evacuated around him.
I am the security team. It's a small church in Mission Viejo. After one of our longtime members was murdered while visiting a nearby church with his mother, the pastor asked me if, as former law enforcement (not retired and it was 40 years ago before I went to law school) I had a carry permit and asked me to carry at church and keep an eye on things. I've carried ever since. Once I was driving our pastor to do a podcast way up in Modesto, we stopped at a Starbucks and I bought him coffee. He said he felt like the president because he had armed security and didn't have to pay for anything! LOL
Some on our safety team are armed, indicated via a subtle difference in garb. Non-team members with a CCW (of which we have several) are welcome, but asked to self-identify so they aren't mistaken in an emergency. The team carries radios, and there's also a radio and a way to block the door in each classroom.
Excellent report, excellent outcome. Praise God the perp was still in the state of mind of shouting for help in that silent way and not simply shooting anyone and everything.
Our exterior doors are locked and manned by armed security team members, dressed like everyone else but with radio earpieces and subtle identifiers including IDs on lanyards we can pull out for LE to identify us. ( We meet with them, they know us, our church layout and they appreciate our training efforts to continued improvement.)
We are all carrying radios, our children’s department also has the same radio on the same channel that we would use for lockdown notifications and any other information that needs to be shared. Radio checks are conducted prior to services as everyone comes online.
Multiple layers of defense between the outside and the children’s department ( steel doors, barrier bars on doors to classrooms, etc).
Multiple team members are strategically positioned throughout the sanctuary during services. Exterior cameras are monitored and the grounds are patrolled by armed security during services.
But most importantly, we pray for God’s protection over our church family.
Thank you Keith for all you do. May God bless you, brother!🙏
This article provides sound advice and a warning to every church/ synagogue. I will do my best to send it on. I certainly do not know the leadership or security teams of any church since I am confined to home. What I will do is send it on to friends who are members of various churches/synagogues and urgently ask them to please pass the email newsletter along to their respective leadership. One Canadian friend did pass it along to her pastor and they took moderate action. Hopefully this warning (and I am thankful that no one was hurt) will convince others of the valid threats we are facing. I tell people..".this is not a Netflix movie one can sit back and watch. This is reality". I am always reminded of the conditions and mindsets that preceded the genocide of the Jewish community in Nazi Germany. Warnings did reach the Jewish community, while there was still time to escape. Many Jewish and Christian individuals correctly read the mood of the country, took heed and escaped in time. I read that Germany was considered "THE most civilized nation on earth!" consequently very few suspected that such barbarity and cruelty could occur. Once the Holocaust "officially" took hold, millions were trapped and escape was impossible. I dont think that many in America are correctly "reading" the signs of the times or taking heed to the developing mood of the nation. God bless your ministry.
Approaching anyone with a gun is short sighted. This person should have been covered from a point of best cover, wait for law enforcement to approach. They could have tried to get compliance with verbal commands, or gone to less lethal. If you don’t have a gun out when approaching a person with a gun, why risk bad things happening.
Safety team member, going from a bigger church that’s had 20 years of experience to put together a team to a plant from this church where the daughter church freely copies as much as feasible from the parent.
Though I’ve been on the team since this May, we meet at a performing arts center for worship and use the adjoining high school facilities for Sunday school. Officially, safety team members don’t carry while serving but unofficially, we’ve decided by using Ed Monk’s model we’re intending to keep the victim count for an active attacker event to single digits. Take that comment for what you will.
Our childcare room leads as well as director get radios. However I have seen that often times calls made over these radios go unresponded to so a team member would go in to the areas to notify the room leads of a lockdown condition.
It’s not ideal since we don’t have our own place to call home, but we’re working on formalizing our procedures and all that.
I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I was raised in the Church and now at 70 I know the ONLY way I can defend my family and myself is with a firearm. I and my only son living near me are both CC holders. We both carry and I know of several other members who carry. But you are right. We are not organized. That needs to be address. I also know our Bishop is aware that people carry and specifically ask because of a problem person. I don't know the details, but at least he is not against us. I know Bishops and Stake Presidents from other areas encourage carry by specific people. Our Church has always emphasized that the main responsibility of the father is to provide for and PROTECT his family. All the leadership has to do is remove one line from the Church handbook of instructions. They instead made a presentation of run, hide, and fight. Thanks a lot... I'll fight with my pistol. I've never been athletic, fast, nor frightening. I need an equalizer. And I hope I NEVER use it.
Our church is a megachurch and the local sheriffs train on campus because on weekends the church has the most people in the city. Our security team has greeters as well as the greeting ministry, bike patrol, and the parking ministry that security interacts with. The children's ministry has lockdown rooms.
Thank you Brother Graves. I would never have heard about this from our church leadership. This is the scenario I painfully live out every Sunday.
We have men and women in watch towers that spend their volunteer time trying to organize, plan, train and implement to prepare for incidents like this. We talk about emergency preparedness. The church has provided a separate website just for emergency preparedness but never address issues such as this. Plans are applauded and disappear into a black hole. Flee, hide and fight? Members who are trained and carry against church policy are considered "illegal" by our church leaders. Its a nightmare. I have been point on several incidents such as this over the past decades. I guess a bloodbath is what its going to take. But only in Salt Lake City near church headquarters.
I’m sorry you have to deal with this. I worry that people think that I’m singling out the LDS church, but there are a lot of denominations that follow this lead. We all need to learn. This is the wrong way to do things. I’m praying that my neighbors don’t get upset with me. I live about 800 feet from a temple. I’m literally the only non-LDS person in my neighborhood. I know they watch this channel and I hope that they understand that this is all brought out of love.
Keith, I am the Safety Team Leader for my church in Ocala, Fl. Our children's area is secured, and each classroom within is secured during the service. Every classroom has a radio on a different channel than the safety team. Our dispatcher has a radio on the children's channel and a second radio on the safety team channel. Should we need to take action that announcement is made to all the classes at once on their channel. Every Sunday before we start the safety team verifies that all class radios are on the correct channel and volume is at MAX! Our team is armed. We allow by law members to carry concealed, but we do not know all who carry! Our safety team members carry a "Don't Shoot Me" banner in their hip pocket if something should happen, we display that bright orange banner which will go from the rear hip pocket over their shoulder and to the front of the person on their opposite front hip. Safety team members also wear a ID lanyard/ID Badge.
I’m curious how people identify the concealed carriers - especially in situations where they may well know they are prohibited from carrying by policy or legal statute. While I agree that it would be great to meet with them and obtain agreement of what they will or won’t do in the event of a violent encounter, identifying them in order to have that conversation seems to be quite a challenge. What have others done to address this?
It needs to be announced from the pulpit by your pastor. I don’t mine will never ask that from the pulpit, but I know a lot of churches would do that. A newsletter announcement, briefings in the men’s and women’s Bible Study. There are a lot of ways to reach these people and to train them and interact with us. I have an article on here about how to reach out and train your concealed carriers.
Keith, would you mind posting a link to the article? I’m going to try to search for it but I’m fairly new to the platform and am doubting my skills 😀
My concern is that we’re in GA where it is illegal, by state statute, to carry in a church without formal consent of the leadership. And our church’s policy is to not grant that permission except for vetted members of the safety team. So, leadership is unlikely to ask for people to come talk about it and if someone were to admit they were already carrying, they’d be admitting to breaking the law (even if the consequences aren’t overly punitive). So I think we might first need to discuss loosening our policy on allowing people to carry even if they’re not on the safety team. Then we can ask people to come forward and talk to us - allowing us to train/qualify them before granting permission as well as discussing with them our desire that they stay out of the way during an incident.
I am the security team. It's a small church in Mission Viejo. After one of our longtime members was murdered while visiting a nearby church with his mother, the pastor asked me if, as former law enforcement (not retired and it was 40 years ago before I went to law school) I had a carry permit and asked me to carry at church and keep an eye on things. I've carried ever since. Once I was driving our pastor to do a podcast way up in Modesto, we stopped at a Starbucks and I bought him coffee. He said he felt like the president because he had armed security and didn't have to pay for anything! LOL
Some on our safety team are armed, indicated via a subtle difference in garb. Non-team members with a CCW (of which we have several) are welcome, but asked to self-identify so they aren't mistaken in an emergency. The team carries radios, and there's also a radio and a way to block the door in each classroom.
Excellent report, excellent outcome. Praise God the perp was still in the state of mind of shouting for help in that silent way and not simply shooting anyone and everything.
LDS needs to wake up, in more ways than one.
Our exterior doors are locked and manned by armed security team members, dressed like everyone else but with radio earpieces and subtle identifiers including IDs on lanyards we can pull out for LE to identify us. ( We meet with them, they know us, our church layout and they appreciate our training efforts to continued improvement.)
We are all carrying radios, our children’s department also has the same radio on the same channel that we would use for lockdown notifications and any other information that needs to be shared. Radio checks are conducted prior to services as everyone comes online.
Multiple layers of defense between the outside and the children’s department ( steel doors, barrier bars on doors to classrooms, etc).
Multiple team members are strategically positioned throughout the sanctuary during services. Exterior cameras are monitored and the grounds are patrolled by armed security during services.
But most importantly, we pray for God’s protection over our church family.
Thank you Keith for all you do. May God bless you, brother!🙏
Thank you for the kind words. Thank you for your commitment to the Lord and your community.
This article provides sound advice and a warning to every church/ synagogue. I will do my best to send it on. I certainly do not know the leadership or security teams of any church since I am confined to home. What I will do is send it on to friends who are members of various churches/synagogues and urgently ask them to please pass the email newsletter along to their respective leadership. One Canadian friend did pass it along to her pastor and they took moderate action. Hopefully this warning (and I am thankful that no one was hurt) will convince others of the valid threats we are facing. I tell people..".this is not a Netflix movie one can sit back and watch. This is reality". I am always reminded of the conditions and mindsets that preceded the genocide of the Jewish community in Nazi Germany. Warnings did reach the Jewish community, while there was still time to escape. Many Jewish and Christian individuals correctly read the mood of the country, took heed and escaped in time. I read that Germany was considered "THE most civilized nation on earth!" consequently very few suspected that such barbarity and cruelty could occur. Once the Holocaust "officially" took hold, millions were trapped and escape was impossible. I dont think that many in America are correctly "reading" the signs of the times or taking heed to the developing mood of the nation. God bless your ministry.
How would I go about getting training so I could travel to churches and help organize and/or train security teams?
Approaching anyone with a gun is short sighted. This person should have been covered from a point of best cover, wait for law enforcement to approach. They could have tried to get compliance with verbal commands, or gone to less lethal. If you don’t have a gun out when approaching a person with a gun, why risk bad things happening.
Safety team member, going from a bigger church that’s had 20 years of experience to put together a team to a plant from this church where the daughter church freely copies as much as feasible from the parent.
Though I’ve been on the team since this May, we meet at a performing arts center for worship and use the adjoining high school facilities for Sunday school. Officially, safety team members don’t carry while serving but unofficially, we’ve decided by using Ed Monk’s model we’re intending to keep the victim count for an active attacker event to single digits. Take that comment for what you will.
Our childcare room leads as well as director get radios. However I have seen that often times calls made over these radios go unresponded to so a team member would go in to the areas to notify the room leads of a lockdown condition.
It’s not ideal since we don’t have our own place to call home, but we’re working on formalizing our procedures and all that.
I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I was raised in the Church and now at 70 I know the ONLY way I can defend my family and myself is with a firearm. I and my only son living near me are both CC holders. We both carry and I know of several other members who carry. But you are right. We are not organized. That needs to be address. I also know our Bishop is aware that people carry and specifically ask because of a problem person. I don't know the details, but at least he is not against us. I know Bishops and Stake Presidents from other areas encourage carry by specific people. Our Church has always emphasized that the main responsibility of the father is to provide for and PROTECT his family. All the leadership has to do is remove one line from the Church handbook of instructions. They instead made a presentation of run, hide, and fight. Thanks a lot... I'll fight with my pistol. I've never been athletic, fast, nor frightening. I need an equalizer. And I hope I NEVER use it.
Our church is a megachurch and the local sheriffs train on campus because on weekends the church has the most people in the city. Our security team has greeters as well as the greeting ministry, bike patrol, and the parking ministry that security interacts with. The children's ministry has lockdown rooms.
Thank you Brother Graves. I would never have heard about this from our church leadership. This is the scenario I painfully live out every Sunday.
We have men and women in watch towers that spend their volunteer time trying to organize, plan, train and implement to prepare for incidents like this. We talk about emergency preparedness. The church has provided a separate website just for emergency preparedness but never address issues such as this. Plans are applauded and disappear into a black hole. Flee, hide and fight? Members who are trained and carry against church policy are considered "illegal" by our church leaders. Its a nightmare. I have been point on several incidents such as this over the past decades. I guess a bloodbath is what its going to take. But only in Salt Lake City near church headquarters.
I’m sorry you have to deal with this. I worry that people think that I’m singling out the LDS church, but there are a lot of denominations that follow this lead. We all need to learn. This is the wrong way to do things. I’m praying that my neighbors don’t get upset with me. I live about 800 feet from a temple. I’m literally the only non-LDS person in my neighborhood. I know they watch this channel and I hope that they understand that this is all brought out of love.
The squeaking wheel should get the grease. Ive witnessed church bashing for over 40 years. Your discussion is not.
Keith, I am the Safety Team Leader for my church in Ocala, Fl. Our children's area is secured, and each classroom within is secured during the service. Every classroom has a radio on a different channel than the safety team. Our dispatcher has a radio on the children's channel and a second radio on the safety team channel. Should we need to take action that announcement is made to all the classes at once on their channel. Every Sunday before we start the safety team verifies that all class radios are on the correct channel and volume is at MAX! Our team is armed. We allow by law members to carry concealed, but we do not know all who carry! Our safety team members carry a "Don't Shoot Me" banner in their hip pocket if something should happen, we display that bright orange banner which will go from the rear hip pocket over their shoulder and to the front of the person on their opposite front hip. Safety team members also wear a ID lanyard/ID Badge.
Thank you for all you do!
That is an awesome plan!
Thank you. WA2CZR 73
I’m curious how people identify the concealed carriers - especially in situations where they may well know they are prohibited from carrying by policy or legal statute. While I agree that it would be great to meet with them and obtain agreement of what they will or won’t do in the event of a violent encounter, identifying them in order to have that conversation seems to be quite a challenge. What have others done to address this?
It needs to be announced from the pulpit by your pastor. I don’t mine will never ask that from the pulpit, but I know a lot of churches would do that. A newsletter announcement, briefings in the men’s and women’s Bible Study. There are a lot of ways to reach these people and to train them and interact with us. I have an article on here about how to reach out and train your concealed carriers.
Keith, would you mind posting a link to the article? I’m going to try to search for it but I’m fairly new to the platform and am doubting my skills 😀
My concern is that we’re in GA where it is illegal, by state statute, to carry in a church without formal consent of the leadership. And our church’s policy is to not grant that permission except for vetted members of the safety team. So, leadership is unlikely to ask for people to come talk about it and if someone were to admit they were already carrying, they’d be admitting to breaking the law (even if the consequences aren’t overly punitive). So I think we might first need to discuss loosening our policy on allowing people to carry even if they’re not on the safety team. Then we can ask people to come forward and talk to us - allowing us to train/qualify them before granting permission as well as discussing with them our desire that they stay out of the way during an incident.
It is pronounced Grand Blank. Spelled Blanc. What you are doing is great Keith.