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Beloved in Christ,
 
First, let me say thank you to the many people who were present for the Active Shooter discussion and training last Sunday. There were many who contributed to making it happen by attending district trainings, assembling best practices, debating how to implement best practices in our context as church policies, and preparing the script that Carol and I shared. I’m thankful to those who had a role to play in all that. Also, none of the preparation would be valuable at all without the thoughtful participation of everyone who attended, asked questions, raised new ideas, and proposed innovative approaches. Not only did we successfully review existing policy, a necessary activity for local churches, but we also began a conversation that will continue.
 
One comment that was made during the event was about possible actions that could be taken to prevent an Active Shooter situation from occurring. In the moment, I responded by shutting down the question and stating that it was outside the scope of the training for the day. I regret that comment and apologize for the impact that it had to communicate that I do not care about prevention of violence in the church. That is not the case. In the future, when we talk about emergency preparedness, we will begin with prevention measures.
 
To be sure that future conversations are beginning with everyone aware of current practice, this is a list of how we already try to safeguard church attendees:

  • Greeters are stationed at doors when the doors are unlocked
  • Greeters have access to walkie-talkies to communicate with each other in the event of disturbance at one door
  • Doors to the building are locked about 10 minutes into any event, including a worship service, and they are kept locked unless a greeter returns to the door
  • Building users other than church members are informed of these practices and also follow them
  • When a building user is in the building and has a concern about building security, they text me and I work immediately to resolve the issue
  • We keep a record of all exterior keys and who they are checked out to
  • Office staff who are within sight of the front door keep their office doors partially closed so they are not visible from the front door if they are the only ones in the building.

We have been lucky not to have people enter the building intent on doing harm to those inside. We did have a person come to the building on a weekday evening last winter who would have been able to do harm to building occupants, who was denied entry due to our precautions. I am thankful to the building users who were in the building at the time and their diligence in following the guidelines. I was able to get to the building quickly, with another member of Building and Grounds, assess that there was no damage and make sure that everyone got to their cars safely. All that said, we were lucky. Things could have been much worse. So, it’s definitely important to talk about the precautions.
 
To that end, I will be working with Building and Grounds and Leadership Board to schedule another conversation with anyone who wishes to discuss these or other ideas that might aid in the prevention of emergency situations. My hope is that we can all learn from each other as we care for our community. Details about that conversation will be shared once we have a schedule and format selected.
 
Many Blessings, Pastor Laura