Security Planning For Your Church in Florida

Talking about churches and security may seem off-putting at first, but it’s important to recognize that your place of worship is a crimi­nal’s target. Just recently, a man broke into a Florida church in search of valuables to steal, doing thousands of dollars in damage.

Churches often have expensive sound and video equipment, antiques, artwork, and even cash. If your house of worship only holds services once a week, the building could be empty for six days out of every seven. That gives thieves plenty of time to plan and execute their crimes. Putting in the right security measures helps keep your church and your church members safe from all sorts of emergencies.

In this blog, we’ll look at how to implement church security without negatively impacting your congregation.

Start With an Expert Assessment

Being a person of deep faith doesn’t automat­i­cally mean you have any experience with church security. It might almost be the opposite, where you tend to trust too much or want to provide as much as possible to your community. Security experts can help you temper your generosity with a solid helping of safety.

During an assessment, a security expert walks through the building and works with you to develop a plan for access control, video surveil­lance, and emergency alert systems.

Plan and Install the Right Security Measures

Faith-based insti­tu­tions often lack even basic security systems. They may have a door and window alarm system, but that’s often all there is. Beefing up security doesn’t mean offering less service to your congre­gation. Instead, it means making the services you already offer more safe.

Access Control

Your Sunday school volun­teers don’t need access to your safe unless they’re also on the church board in a financial position. Your church members don’t need access to the boiler room or the sound system. Putting in an access control system means you can let the right people access the parts of the building they need without adding any extra risk. Plus, you can add or remove people from specific areas as needed. If you hire a new staff member or let someone go, you want to be able to quickly add or remove their access to the building. Keys can be easily copied, but automatic locks that only work for those with the right digital creden­tials are substan­tially more secure.

Adding Video Surveillance

While you wouldn’t want to include video surveil­lance in areas where people might be receiving one-on-one counseling, putting up cameras in areas where you store money or in all public areas of the church is a good idea. You can preserve your member’s privacy while also capturing enough detail on where people are headed to be useful if a crime is committed.

Emergency Systems

Old-fashioned fire alarms do one thing — they interrupt every­thing and start a mass evacu­ation. But, what if the emergency is an active shooter or a hurricane, or a flood? You don’t respond the same way to all emergencies, and neither should your emergency alert system. Installing voice evacu­ation systems lets you commu­nicate more clearly about what the emergency is and guides people in different parts of the church to their closest exit.

Create Emergency Plans for Every Scenario

There are an endless number of potential emergencies that can crop up, but only a few ways that you can respond. Develop plans to handle as many scenarios as you can. Make sure your disaster plan includes what to do in inclement weather, during acts of violence or medical emergencies, and for evacu­ation. Have your leadership team well-trained on each response, so they can lead the rest of the congre­gation if something goes wrong.

Schedule Frequent Emergency Drills

Don’t rely solely on training. Running drills that test your ability to implement your plan is critical to making it happen when things go wrong. Experience is what makes the difference between a properly followed emergency plan and one that takes hours to complete.

Train Your Staff and Members on Security Protocols

Your congre­gation is often your best resource for handling emergencies, but only if everyone knows what to do. Talk to your congre­gation and collect infor­mation about special skills they might have. If you have police officers, nurses, EMTs, or doctors in your congre­gation, keep them in the loop when making your emergency plans. The more church security training you offer, the more people you have available to help.