![]() I rely on God to bring the monthly blog/newsletter subjects to me each month. Sometimes it’s not until the last minute that happens. This one I have been sitting on for a couple of weeks but still waited until now to put it together. With the shooting that happened this weekend at the church in Texas, it just adds to what I wanted this month’s subject to be. There is a lot of “noise” going on around this weekends events and I pretty much wait at least 72 hours before I really dig in or venture any kind of comment. Fortunately, we have a video from the live feed that was streaming at the time the killer acted and the responder took him out. But there is a lot that happened in that video that shows how untrained and unprepared they were right from the beginning. This is why our seminars are for not just the security teams of the church, but for ushers, greeters, children’s workers, staff, etc. Security must be a total team concept. We can and have been asked and are adjusting our seminar schedule in order to be able to answer questions and to give a preventative perspective on the events. So, what do I mean by “Beware of the Sheep”? Let me start with a story from my own church that happened early on in the establishment of our security team and then I will tell you of the lessons learned. We had a medical incident that was happening outside the auditorium and near the front door area of the church. We were handling it as we had been trained to at that point. We had a man come up to us and identify himself as a doctor and wanted to help. We let him know that whatever it was, that it was minor and thanked him but we had it under control. This same man then went up the side ramp that led to the stage and handed the pastor a note in the middle of his message that stated that there was a medical emergency in the entry way and that the family member needed to come out. Ok, so let’s look at the lessons that we learned. First off, we were a pretty small team at the time with a very large footprint of a property to cover.
I have a friend that is a security director and he told me a story last week that goes to the mindset of the sheep and of our society in general. People don’t like to be told they can’t do something and that is what he experienced here. This director had planned this training months ago, notified local law enforcement of the training that he was going to do in case people saw it and reported it. He reserved the building for an early morning training that would end about noon. Put signs up on all the doors around the building that were bold and bright red notifying people that training was taking place and the building was closed for their safety. Communication to ministries and staff went out weeks prior to the training. So, now here is what the sheep did.
Now, it doesn’t matter if it is a real-world situation or a training situation, we have to beware of the sheep. We never know what or how they are going to act. In another upcoming podcast I talk with a children’s director that points out that she has heard that in an emergency situation that a parent will revert to a 5th grade mentality. We also see in the video of this weekends shooting that there was a variety of actions from the sheep and even those that may have been the Sheepdog but lacked the training and were actually putting the sheep in danger. Watch them as the video ends. As a Sheepdog called to the protection of the flock, sometimes the sheep need to see our teeth to know that we are serious about their protection when they step outside the boundaries that are there for their safety.
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October 2020
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