God Protects Those Who Prepare: Church Security Shouldn’t Be Controversialhttps://www.shootingnewsweekly.com/concealed-carry/god-protects-those-who-prepare-church-security-shouldnt-be-controversial/I appreciate feedback. It keeps me grounded, honest and on point. Once in a while it stings, but I learn from those mistakes. Sometimes, though, it makes me shake my head. In this case, there’s just no saving people who refuse to acknowledge that bad people exist. That evil exists. Sure, God will protect you. But God also protects those who protect themselves.
I received some critical feedback after The Urgent Case for Better Church Safety ran last month and it exposed a stubborn blind spot.
Critics attacked the allegedly crazy idea of armed people standing between evil and the congregation. One critic in particular dismissed safety teams as the mark of people who are merely “playing church.” Real churches that “know who God is,” he claimed in so many words, need no security because “He [God] has got them.” The commenter’s prescription was repentance, baptism, and seeking God’s face—while the rest of us should stop playing church.
That reasoning is short-sighted and dangerous. It treats prudence as a lack of belief and preparedness as spiritual failure. It’s the same logic that would refuse seat belts because one trusts God to protect them. Or refusing to seek immediate emergency medical treatment for chest pains. Scripture never equates faith with willful blindness to human evil or physical frailty. God protects those who take wise steps to protect themselves and the vulnerable in their care.
The proven benefits of a church safety team make the case stronger than any slogan. Medical emergencies vastly outnumber violent ones. Cardiac arrests, strokes, seizures, diabetic crises, falls, and choking incidents occur far more often than active threats.
The God who gave humans brains would not object to use those brains. More directly, among Jesus's instructions to his disciples was that they go out prepared - food, cothes,
a sword.
One of the things I learned about my parents' church as a young teen when I was trained to be an usher was that it had a folding stretcher and other preparations against the possibility of a medical emergency (it was also located across the street from a hospital, but that location choice was based on land availability). It's sad that
armed security is now necessary, but it has, literally, saved lives (e.g. the Colorado Springs church shooting).
