Heart

Faith Based Security NetworkFaith Based Security Network

Aug 5, 2023

Over 400 faith-based defenders from 39 states just participated in the annual Faith-Based Security Operations Summit (SOS.23).

One was a career law-enforcement officer who had never attended the annual summit.

Afterwards he admitted to me he’d never thought church security could be done with volunteers. He just could not bring himself to believe volunteers, with no law-enforcement training, could protect without just being a bunch of good guys with guns (an accident waiting to happen). At the SOS he encountered solid men and women with heart (most without his prior definition of credentials) and saw the genuine data. It changed him.

I also have a media release dated 3/8/17 (written by a security trainer) entitled, “The Church Vigilante Bill.” He wrote it in protest to House Bill 421 which removed licensing mandates for volunteer church security operators in Texas.

The opening paragraph stated, “Are you ready for roving bands of vigilantes in the church parking lots? Gunslingers in the pews just waiting for a false move? Then welcome house bill 421.”

Just 2 weeks after Texas legalized unlicensed volunteers to protect their churches, church neighbor Stephen Willeford stopped the Sutherland Springs, TX massacre. 2 years after laws changed in Texas, unlicensed volunteer Jack Wilson stopped a killer in his Texas church just 2.5 seconds after the attacker murdered the first of 2 victims in the sanctuary.

I know both the men very well who opposed the concept of armed volunteers. Both are good men who’ve contributed lifetimes to the protection of others. They just neither one believed protection could be done right without their specific (and different) credential levels.

Both were wrong. At least one now acknowledges that.

Think About it

“…The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (I Samuel 16:7).

Many have given their life to their church. They’ve sat through Sunday services for 50 years or more. They’ve heard the same sermons and been invited to give their life to Christ 100 times since first doing so in 1965.

They need to be needed, but they don’t need invented things to serve at. They see the genuine need for intentional readiness and they’re faithful to get trained. They protect because they are called to it.

They have heart.

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