SPEAKER_02 0:00

You know, it could have been a heart attack or a stroke or something like that, very serious. And so and you you're not going to respond perfectly to every situation. But if you know something can happen and you think about something like every service, something could happen in the service. Someone could jump up, you know, and rush to the front. Someone could try to be raking in the cars in the parking lot. It's sort of a comprehensive put up the safety net and do what we can to mitigate any any problems.

David Nakhla 0:31

Welcome to the Reformed Deacon, a casual conversation with topics specifically designed to help local Reformed Deacons. There are nearly a thousand deacons in the OPC alone. So let's take this opportunity to learn from and encourage one another. We're so glad you could join us. Let's jump into our next episode of the Reformed Deacon. My name is David Knockla. I'm coming to you today from the OPC offices in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Today we have on our show Matt Butler. Matt will be discussing the topic of church safety in the 21st century. Matt is an elder at Lake Sherwood OPC in Orlando, Florida, and has worked in the law enforcement field for almost 30 years. Matt was originally slated to speak at the National Summit, but with the postponement due to COVID, he's unable to attend. Church safety has been a hot topic for a while now. So we thought it'd be good to sit down and ask Matt some questions so local deacons can learn more about where to begin, what to do, what to think about. So, Matt, thanks so much for being on the show today.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

It's my pleasure, David. Thanks for having me.

David Nakhla 1:39

And my co-host for today is Chris Sudlow. Chris is a deacon at Bethel OPC in Wheaton, Illinois. Chris serves on the Committee on Diac Ministries and specifically on the subcommittee that oversees this podcast, the Diaconal Podcast Subcommittee. Chris, thanks for joining me.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Thank you, David. It's a pleasure to be here, and we're excited to have a conversation with Matt. He certainly knows what he's talking about when it comes to this subject and look forward to uh having a good discussion.

David Nakhla 2:05

Matt, what would you say to those who might say, you know, we've we've gone along fine these past 75 years without a church safety plan? We we probably don't need one now, especially maybe churches in rural communities. Why why do you think a church safety plan is important, or do you think it's important uh for every church?

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Yeah, well, clearly I believe it's important, but making that statement would almost be like, Well, I'm 25 years old, why do I need life insurance? What could possibly happen? And so, in a way, even if you live in a community that's very familiar, rural, it's it's relatively safe, low crime. We've had horrific incidents occur in places that everybody knew, everybody else, and even the the offender was themselves known by the community. And so, you know, again, it's not to scare monger or anything like that, but saying it will never happen to us is maybe one of the worst things you can really say. It it sort of live you live in Pollyanna and it kind of pushes off any potential for anything happening. And I think as particularly as officers in the church, our responsibility is to protect the flock and to to if if we can pre-plan in order to do that, then it's certainly incumbent upon us to do that.

David Nakhla 3:20

Could you share with us any biblical directives that might help us wrap our minds around responsibility in this area?

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Yeah. So I, you know, I thought about John 10, um, where Jesus identifies himself as the good shepherd. Um, I think it's uh John 10, 11 through 13 is the exact reference. And he says that there are those who would come in to seek and kill and destroy the flock. And, you know, his job as the good shepherd is to not only protect us spiritually, protect us as well uh physically and mentally, emotionally. And in these ways, we are walking in the steps of our good shepherd as officers of the church. And we are taking measures to protect our flock physically. This is one of the things where I see it really is in the deacon's corner, so to speak, you know, protecting the physical plan of the church, caring of the physical needs of the flock. This sort of is in keeping with that, kind of in the physical protection of both the the flock and those who would visit our church to hear about our great shepherd.

David Nakhla 4:23

Why don't you share with our listeners a little bit about your background and as as uh not only as an elder in the church, but how that connects with uh your vocation and uh your experience there and impacts church safety?

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Sure. So I uh I came on the sheriff's office here in Orange County uh in Orlando in 1992. I was 21 years old, been it's really the only job, the only vocation and calling I've ever known. You know, again, coming up on 30 years in July of next year, done a variety of things that has informed probably how I see church security and how I see physical protection of the flock. Um, 20 years I did on the SWAT team, starting as an operator and moved all the way up to uh assistant commander. Uh, I've been in investigations, narcotics. I'm currently assigned now to as a director of our fusion center uh and also the head of our intelligence unit. And so not only do I deal with local and state issues, but I deal with national and international issues in ways that I'd never done before. And so, in many ways, my job, my calling has informed my position as an elder in the church and being the guy, the kind of the go-to guy as the law enforcement officer on the session and as an officer in the church, I've always sort of had an eye towards being concerned about church security and you know, vetting people that handle, you know, that deal with our young people and also, you know, just making sure that we are doing what we should do to make sure that people are safe when they come to worship or any events at our church.

David Nakhla 5:56

How has your church, your local congregation, what have you guys done in this regard?

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Actually, the probably the big starting point was that we we recognized that we needed to have something in place, some sort of a policy in place. And so we actually reached out to a couple of different congregations in our denomination, one of them being Matthews OPC in North Carolina, who was gracious enough years ago to supply us with their uh their church safety policy. And so, and they even said, look, you guys can just copy and paste. You can, you know, just insert your names in there and modify however you like. It was a very gracious offer by them, which is what we did. A few other things that we've done over the years, we've purchased a camera system. Our church, and I know you guys have, I know David, particularly, you've been there. It's it's really a beautiful setting. It's on a lake. Um, it's a down a long treed driveway, um, right off of one of the main roads there. But we are surrounded by residential and semi-urban area. And so we've had illegal dumping, you know, people will come and dump on our property. We've had some burglaries occur over the years. And so the trustees and the deacons decided to get a closed circuit uh security system that we can access on our phones. It's very helpful for the people pooling security during worship. You can also do it remotely. You know, I could check on the church right now. We've done some training, and I don't know how much you wanted me to talk about that now if we're going to get to some of that, but we've done some scenario-based training, getting the security team together, people who are committed to filling in during morning and evening worship or any events that we have there. And we do a lot of communication uh between the, you know, the security team, so that we always have somebody on post uh anytime the church doors open.

David Nakhla 7:40

Chris, uh, your church difference setting, what have you guys done in this regard?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

We have at Bethel OPC in Wheaton, Illinois, done. I shouldn't say we, that's really a trustees, I believe, function that put in the cameras security system. And we have a situation where one of our most popular entrances to the church leads directly to the nursery, then from the nursery further into the sanctuary. So we've begun locking that entry door about 10 minutes after the service starts, just out of concern for that. That seems to have been received okay by most of the congregation. I don't think people are anti-protection, especially when it comes to our kids. Matt, I was going to ask you if you might speak to that. You know, the the big headline seemed to be when somebody gets guns involved, and that captures the imagination quickly. But this issue of, you know, protecting our children and so forth, I'd I'd be interested to hear you speak to that.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

Yeah. So, you know, some of it's positional, like where your nursery is, where your children's programs or children's Sunday schools are going on, that you know, has to be some consideration in terms of perimeter security or having somebody that's sort of responsible for that. The way our church was set up, you know, it wasn't our church wasn't built like like most of our churches, they were not built for security. Right. And so you have to overcome sort of that architectural uh challenge of because our our nursery and the children's Sunday school classes are up near the front of the church, near the entrance. Our entrance to the sanctuary is to the rear. And so, you know, we we have a roving patrol, you know, that that checks on there. Um, like Chris said, cameras, cameras are awesome. Cameras and audio, you know, we have cameras and audio, you know, in the nursery. Um, and we always have at least two people assigned. So never one person assigned. So if you have two people assigned, that there's really good chance that you have accountability. And, you know, and if there is any nefarious activity that's going to go on, it's not going to go on when there's a witness, you know, there's going to be someone there that's kind of a check. So that was, you know, one of the things we always recommended is, you know, always have two, two persons assigned to the nursery. And so it that's really it's that's a that's a low budget, uh, low rent sort of situation that you can do in there and that will almost 100% of the time assure you that everything's gonna be fine in the nursery with our little lambs. Most Orthodox Presbyterian churches, in fact, all of them are fairly small, really, uh in size. And so it's a wonderful thing that most all of our churches, most of us know everybody in the church. We don't have any mega churches, we don't have, you know, 600 members where you know it's difficult for the officers to really know who the families are, to know who the individuals are. And so, in a way that creates for us maybe a little false sense of security, uh, particularly where we talk about the younger Sunday school classes or nursery or VBS and some other activities we may do. Even though we are not suggesting that people that are we're trusting with our children may be bad people, but it's always the best policy for us to verify that they don't have a sorted past, criminal past, or uh something that would present red flags for us in terms of letting them be alone with our kids. Background checks. I mean, that is that is foundational. You know, there's a lot of private sources that will do background checks at certain levels. You know, you kind of have to shop around. I I can't really recommend one over another. We have one of our guys that's kind of designated to do that because we have folks that are, you know, we've got some newer members and we want to get them back. I can't, I can't do those kind of background checks. I'm not allowed to do that, you know, as a law enforcement officer. You know, we we always hear about horror stories about people that were in the church for years and years and years, and all of a sudden, you know, they it comes up with molestation stories or some sort of assault stories, and it's it's tragic. But I think we you can probably mitigate a lot of that with the background checks and the vetting.

David Nakhla 11:46

Yeah, we're we're called to be above reproach. And so these measures protect our own reputations, because you know, if there's not the ability to disprove something, it hangs as a cloud, dark cloud, uh, there people wonder. And so these are just prudent measures to multiple people present, having a video camera, that type of stuff that always enables us to prove our innocence, so to speak, and and to protect our reputations. Matt, if you maybe uh allude to a little bit the concern with regards to or thoughts on how we can think about firearms and in our churches, I I know some churches are absolutely against it, others see wisdom in in allowing that to happen. Maybe you could speak a little bit to that as Chris was alluding to.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Sure. You know, I think the biggest thing is to have number one, a skill set established. And that's sometimes that's tough. Who's gonna do that? Who's gonna vet whether or not someone is, I don't want to say qualified, but maybe capable of not only carrying a gun in a responsible manner, but also interacting if they needed to with restraint, obviously. That's one of the biggest qualities you want to have with someone that has a firearm, you know, on their person is that they are not, as it were, trigger happy or aggressive in that way. You also have to deal with a level of training, really. And it's I know it's people say, well, how are we going to train within our facility or on our property? But one of the things we did is I get my security team together and I pulled them. And not all of them carry firearms, not all of them have a concealed weapons permit or, you know, like me, uh sworn officer able to carry a firearm, you know, inside the church. And and we had to make sure I watched, because I've obviously I've I've sort of lived this, you know, firearm lifestyle here for at least 30 years. I had to sort of assess the folks that I thought would be good to carry inside. And I had to gently say to a few others, hey, you know, maybe don't react, leave it, whatever. Uh, you know, and that that's a diplomatic conversation sometimes you have to have. But it's very important because the goal is if something were to happen, we have to coordinate our response. We, if nine, you know, people in the church are armed and we have an armed assailant, whether it's a knife, some sort of edged weapon or a firearm, comes into the church and attempts to attack. You you really want to coordinate your response because you have innocent people between you and your attacker. And we, so we did some, I ran the team through a bunch of different scenarios to get them to sort of understand the idea of fields of fire and friendly fire. And, you know, too much is not good. Honestly, you want just enough to stop a threat. And honestly, to be very honest, most of our threats are not going to be deadly force encounters. Most of them are going to be disruptive people or people that maybe are protesting or want to cause a ruckus in some way. And that kind of lends another set of challenges in terms of I happen to be a defensive tactics instructor and done martial arts for my whole life. And but if you don't have someone that's doing that in the church, you know, you really have to put some thought into what if the person, you know, jumps up and starts to run up to the front and to attack the pastor while he's preaching. You have to actually rehearse these sort of things. You have to get those going through, you know, the mindset so that people start to realize, you know what, it's not just about a guy bringing a gun in the church. It's it's it really covers a whole lot more than that.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

You know, it's interesting. I was speaking with a pastor, and part of their plan is that if they have a disruptor come in, the first thing to do is for him to exit stage left, you know, remove the focal point of the aggression. That sounded good to me, but I'm curious about how you what your thoughts are.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

Well, thankfully, one of my pastors could beat me up because he's uh he's a uh Jeff is a high-level Brazilian jujitsu guy, and he would be one of the guys probably handling business. You know, and it's different, you know. So when Larry Minninger was our pastor before he retired, you know, he's Larry's in his 70s, you know. I wouldn't wouldn't want Larry to jump into the fray, you know, it's just sort of a case-by-case basis. And you know, sometimes there's nowhere to go. It depends on the architecture of your church and and how that's all set up. And and you always have to think, and again, this isn't me being paranoid or maybe over the top, but we have a a saying in law enforcement, we call it plus one. And so if you see one attacker, your thought process should be where's where's the other one? If you find, if you're doing a you know, a pat down search and you find a weapon, you should always be thinking there's another one there, you know. And so, so we think about the plus one, we think about the person waiting in the car outside, we think about those sort of things. And I kind of spread that to my security team just as a you know, just maybe a bonus nugget, basically. But you know, one of the things about church safety doesn't include attacks at all, it includes a fire or a some sort of a hazard, you know, smoke hazard or a sprinkler system activates, you know, act accidentally, and you want to start evacuating people out of there. Having a plan, at least with your security team, to evacuate people in an orderly fashion. If you have a medical emergency, someone faints, you may have to stop the service. Pastor begins to lead people in prayer. Someone needs to be designated to call 911, someone needs to be, you know, probably run driving up to the front or however your property is set up to guide the fire department in. These are the sort of things that I think are helpful to at least think through. And you don't have to, you don't have to brief the whole congregation, but as long as your safety team has some semblance of contingency plans for all these sort of things. And so that's I I want to pitch this safety plan in a broad sense to the churches that are listening because everybody needs one. Everybody needs to have a plan. You know, that's how I that's how I've lived my life. And it's you can't plan for every contingency, but if you're thinking in that way, you're going to be more flexible when that time comes. If you haven't been there in your mind, you're like, okay, well, I've at least thought about this. And and we can react in a way that people, because people tend to freeze, people tend to panic. Um, it's a funny situation when you get people into high intensity situations. We see this with young recruits who perform well in the academy, who are physically fit, who maybe were even in the military or something, and then we see them get into a high-risk situation on the street, and we've seen people freeze. And, you know, it's you don't want to see that in your security team. It that's when they're needed, they need to be able to react.

David Nakhla 18:23

It's very helpful, Matt. In our congregation, we had a till recently he moved, but a member of the uh Philadelphia fire department, he told us, you know, that if every congregation would just take five minutes to talk about an evacuation plan for, you know, if we have a fire, we need to evacuate the building. You know, this is here's the exits. And by the way, that door that you never ever use that says exit over it, that's an exit. Right. And we don't want everybody going out the front doors that everybody comes through normally, which is everybody's instinct. In our building, we don't want all the parents who have children in the nursery to start trying to funnel down the narrow staircase to get to their children to let them know that their the nursery personnel have been briefed. They will be taking your kids out. You'll meet them out in the meeting place on the lawn, uh, that type of thing. Just really simple preparation, simple plan, um, and then communicating the aspects of the plan that's that's important to the general population. That's been the approach we've had. And then to play on what you're talking about. I mean, with regards to the details of security type of stuff, or uh taking down somebody who's posed a threat, we don't feel like the whole congregation needs to know those details, but the things that pertain to the whole congregation, he was saying just if every church would just take five minutes, he says, you will if you do that, you will be one out of a thousand. Uh, because churches just don't really think think about that.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

I would agree with that. My son-in-law is a firefighter, so it's um it's it's it's great to have him as an addition to our family. You know, he's an emt firefighter. The the church safety issue also encompasses medical issues, right? So we we actually have incorporated that into our into our plan. So thinking just kind of thinking organizationally, there we we talked about when we formed our safety team at Lake Sherwood, there was probably maybe eight or ten guys that that jumped at the occasion to come in to meet, to discuss strengths and weaknesses, who who is proficient in firearms, who has a medical background, who has uh, you know, maybe a little bit of defensive tactics, you know, experience beyond basic training or boot camp for some of the guys. The two things I stressed to them was have a plan, yes, have a plan B and think about a plan C. You know, you always want to have contingency plans. And the second thing we discussed was do we explain to the whole congregation broadly what our plans are? And it's funny, we kind of landed on no to that second question. A few of the elders suggested they said, Well, we don't want to scare some of the older folks, we don't want to scare some of the young families. And and I said, Well, I agree with you. I think sometimes if we sat, we talked maybe one thing at a time, like a fire exit, like what you just said. If we just simply covered that, I think they were concerned if I was to start speaking about active shooter protocols or if someone came in with a knife or whatever, that people might be a little freaked out. And so what we said as a group, as a safety team, we'll have the plans and we'll we'll do the directing at the time. Lord willing, it never happens. But if it does, we all have the plan. Right. One of the reasons we do what we do is so they they won't be afraid, exactly. You know, we we don't want them to be afraid, right? So we have some folks that are either non ambulatory in wheelchairs or less ambulatory just because of you know of health reasons, and getting those people to move or evacuate quickly in a in a in a shooting situation or an attack, that's not gonna happen, you know, and so mitigate the threat. That's your first active duty. And then your follow-on is to, you know, obviously to get people out of the area. So we we talked about it and I said, my that was my opinion. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm simply saying that was my opinion based on our uh our kind of our terrain, what we have in there, how close people are to the exits, how easy it is to get people out of the exit. So a lot of what we did was planning as a safety team. And then we said, we will we'll brief our folks if we need to. We do some drills, you know. I we would meet on a Saturday and we would do some scenario training. And it wouldn't get crazy. I wouldn't say, look, you know, this, you know, 12 guys with AK-47s from ISIS is going to come in and they're going to come in from these three exits, and one guy's going to drop down from the ceiling. I I was a training coordinator for my SWAT team for six years, and I can tell you my imagination is wild in terms of what I could plan. But I also knew from that all of that experience that my balance was not to overwhelm. It's not helpful. So I got these guys started on simple things, you know, the most basic of things, you know, you get your emotionally disturbed person who comes in, which we've had, and to have guys move and and begin to get, you know, around them to where if this person jumps up and starts disrupting or whatever, we've got a plan to move them out. We've got someone in the back calling 911. I've got, you know, I've got a radio, police radio, because I go to church in my jurisdictions.

David Nakhla 23:24

What do you think about prevention? What things play into prevention? I mean, I guess you've alluded to some of those, but maybe you could detail some things that uh you would view as preventive measures that things done in advance.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

Yeah. So I think maybe planning the logistics and your infrastructure of your safety team is probably a big deal. Like I would say, number one, you identify people who are interested and capable, right? So there may be some people that might be interested that may not be necessarily capable. You may actually unfortunately have some people that are capable that are not interested. Um, hopefully that doesn't happen and occur in the church. But I think if you can identify the people, and it's you may even sort of bifurcate your team a little bit into the folks that will handle the security and then the folks that will deal with maybe with medical issues, you know, or evacuation type issues. Once you've done that, I think it's good to also have something written down in terms of our churches protecting themselves from liability in certain ways. If we have a policy, it needs to be relatively simple. Uh, it needs to be relatively well understood by those who are practicing it. And it needs to be probably somewhat defensible legally. Um, so it's always a good idea if you have a lawyer in your congregation, or you know, there I'm sure that maybe that's something that you guys can look at in the future to have an attorney that's in our denomination able to look at that and say, yep, that passes muster in terms of having a security policy and sticking to that policy, by the way. So being in law enforcement, it's great to have the policy, but if you deviate from the policy, it begins to open you up a little bit for liability. I think the second thing I would say is make sure the things that you are planning on are supported with equipment or with um tools. So for instance, you know, an automatic external defibrillator, not super expensive, very much been proven to you know, revive people and keep people at least stable until the fire department gets there to transport them to the hospital. In most cases, uh, having a basic first aid kit and even if you want to go beyond that for not much more money, you can get a trauma kit. But the thing is, if you have a trauma kit or a blowout bag, as we call it, you need to train people how to use the the elements that are in there. Have it placed where everyone in your security team knows where it is. We have some physical restraints that I've had for my job that I have placed in certain places, and everybody on the security team knows I go on vacation from time to time. You know, I get I get sick every once in a while, so I may not be able to be there. It's important for everybody to know where it is and how to use those particular tools. So I think those are that's where the prevention really comes in. And finally, when you can, semi-occasional meeting of the security team, making sure everybody's briefed up on what they need to know. And then if you're able to go through some scenario training, scenario training is the greatest uh single thing you can do with your security team. And if you don't have somebody in-house that can do that, you can reach out to your local uh sheriff's office or police department. And oftentimes they will have like a crime prevention unit or something like that. Just sort of begin to sort of make questions. Hey, we've got a security team, but we don't have anybody that's really in the know. Can you send somebody out to help us? And they'll they do uh architectural surveys to tell you about your ingress and egress and your weak points and maybe things you need to consider. They some of them are really good, and they'll be able to come out and say, okay, we we can refer you to this person that maybe the local training coordinator or their SWAT person or their whoever that can help you think through a bank of you know what ifs based on reality, not based on someone's imagination. So scenario training for me, it's kind of second-level stuff, but it's really, really good if you're able to get that.

David Nakhla 27:25

Thank you. That's super helpful, very specific uh actions. Chris, did you have any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Well, I think it's excellent. I was gonna ask a little bit further into the weeds. This is slightly embarrassing, but I was very late to church on Sunday, and this has been on my mind. So the one of the doors, as I shared, was locked, and I knew it was locked. So I went to the side door, which is right at the sanctuary at the rear of the sanctuary. I was bringing donuts for some of the kids in a uh music group, and so I had the donuts, I opened the door at the rear of the sanctuary, there was no one there. I went downstairs, there was no one there. The lights were all on and the you know, Sunday school rooms and stuff down there. I went down to the music room, I dropped off the donuts, I came back out, I went back up to the rear of the sanctuary, and there's still I hadn't seen a soul. So I've basically walked through, you know, the better part of the church building, and no one, at least to my knowledge, saw me. I certainly didn't see anyone. So as I've been thinking about this and our time together today, I thought, boy, we should probably have a couple deacons at the rear of the sanctuary. Uh if that door's going to remain open. How do you could you just maybe briefly describe how you position people during times of worship and gathering at the church?

SPEAKER_02 28:45

Yeah, so a great question, Chris. And you know, our church is as I'm hearing you sort of describe your church, minus the stairs. Ours is set up somewhat like that, where we've got the main entrance coming off of our main road. The first thing you come to is the is the pastor's study and our secretary's office. And then the the Sunday school wing, it's small, but it that's where the nursery is. And so, like you, your church, we lock that door slightly after service starts. It's got a little doorbell that you know the trustees installed. And they actually we have a two-way radio that the person in the nursery has access to as well as a phone. And the the whoever's running the point on security has the other two-way radio and they make sure it's on, do a little check. If they need help, they can just they can yell into that radio and you know, help is coming. The other thing is, you know, you just have to think about how many points of ingress to your church. And, you know, we we have the, you know, as you come down the hallway, the front of the sanctuary uh where the pulpit is, we lock that door. In fact, as as the elders, as we pray with our pastors, and then we all come in through that door, and I make sure that door is locked as we as I pull it in and as I come and sit here, um, whether I'm assisting in worship or I'm going to sit with my family. And so we know that the two doors up front are always locked when the service starts. So it forces an attacker to have to come in around the back into the narthex. And that's where we position our security folks. And there's, you know, there's one that comes in from the parking lot, and there's one that comes in from the driveway or the uh hallway, rather. And the good thing is we've got our security cameras posted in those areas that are the ones that are probably the most likely for the ingress portions. But, you know, it occurs to me also that you might have someone as part of your team, I hate to use this phrase, but be the devil's advocate or the opposition force, they call it op for in the military, where that person looks for weak points every once in a while. They maybe once a month, they walk around and they look for the weak points of your security plan. And sometimes those things evolve. And so it's it's great to have that. I mean, that's what I do it anyway. I I I that's how I work. I'm always thinking about weak points and then how we have to shore those weak points up. And and I think that's just a good way of looking at it.

David Nakhla 31:08

We have some exciting news for you. Registration for the OPC National Diaconal Summit is now open. The National Diaconal Summit is held only once every four to five years. So they prove to be a unique time for OP deacons across the country to gather together as brothers in Christ and enjoy encouragement, instruction, and fellowship. We have an incredible lineup of speakers for you this year, including some seasoned OP ministers, elders, and deacons such as Bill Shishko, Craig Troxel, and L. Trikariko, just to name a few. They will be covering a whole array of topics relevant to the Ministry of Mercy. We anticipate the summit filling up fast, particularly since there is no registration fee for OPC deacons and deacons in training who register before April 1. So don't delay. Head over to our website, opcccdm.org, and register today. Matt, can you give us any specific examples of where where you guys have had to mitigate a situation or respond to a situation that that would be helpful for our hearers?

SPEAKER_02 32:16

Yeah, actually, uh two actually come to mind within the last few years. We we had a young man come, he would come to Sunday evening service, and it was at the time of the year, you know, when it was dark by the time service was starting. He would come in and he would have a backpack with him. And he'd come and sit down. He was a younger guy. He would come in late and then he would wait in the back and he would approach people to start asking for money. And the deacons responded very quickly. A couple of us brought him out and talked to him about that and said, Here is these are the guys you need to talk to. We we don't want you soliciting our you know, people that are here in the church. That's not the way to do it. We we have ways we can help you, but we also don't just give money out. Our deacons vet you know the situation with you. And so he agreed to that. He continued to come back, he came back like four or five weeks. Well, one Sunday night, he uh I watched him. Uh, one of our young ladies got up and walked out to go use the bathroom, and he followed her. And someone else had reported, and I kind of walked out. Someone else had reported that he was in the bathroom earlier, in the women's bathroom. So that was it for me. So I I pulled him aside with one of our deacons, Joel King, and I said, I'm no longer speaking to you as an elder in this church, I'm talking to you as a law enforcement officer. And I said, This is what we're doing. I said, You're producing an identification right now. And if you don't, I'm gonna walk you out to the street and you're not coming back here. And he originally said he wasn't gonna give me the ID. I said, All right, let's let's let's move. And he finally he produced an ID. Sure enough, this guy was a sex offender. And so I told, I put him on notice, you're not to come here on your own, you're not to walk out. I said, if you do, I said it's gonna go very, very poorly for you. You're you know, so he and he eventually, you know, he didn't, you know, he he didn't come back after that. I walked him out to the street and I said, you know, listen, we are here to help you. We are not here for you to prey on our people. And so it was handled directly, it was handled professionally, it was handled hopefully in a Christ-like way. But that's exactly what we're talking about with uh, you know, now granted, I I have the ability to run this guy through the system. I know what his history is after I do that, but not everybody has that. But if you had that situation, that's where you you enlist your local law enforcement, you call them and say, hey, this guy's following women in the bathrooms. Not normal. This is a prelude to an attack. This is, you know, again, we we we interrupted that, you know, and that's what we were looking for security folks to do. Um, the other we had a uh emotionally disturbed person that came in. He he kept getting up and and then he'd sit back down and he'd shake his head and he would just, you know, he wasn't being loud initially, but then he started to do it. So two of our guys came in and sat behind him, kind of, and we had actually trained on this as well. And one of the guys did the reassuring kind of on the shoulder, and Todd, he's one of our guys who was a Marine, you know, he starts talking to the guy and everything. So I I was in the back, but I two of our guys were up front. I was calling our, you know, our our marked patrol units because we live in the county, and I told them exactly where to go. They had staged the back, and then we we ended up getting this guy to walk out and you know, to the to the waiting patrol unit, and they were able to deal with it. And he, you know, he wasn't ultimately he I don't think he meant any harm, but we can't be wrong about stuff like that. We we have to react to that, and if we're not doing it, then who's gonna do it? And so those are just two. I mean, we've had other other situations arise at Lake Sherwood, but we've been able to pretty much kind of mitigate, you know, mitigate and interdict. Um, that's kind of what you want to do as a security team.

David Nakhla 36:07

Yeah, it's it's fair. I'm sure you'd say that if your church has not experienced crazy yet, then it's only a matter of time.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

That's correct. Yeah, because crazy is all around.

David Nakhla 36:19

And you need to be prepared for crazy when it happens. That's right. And uh, and how comforting that must be for the congregation there at Lake Sherwood to see its officers handling things in a deliberate, intentional, pre-planned, calm manner. That just must be so reassuring for the flock.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

It's great, you know, and you know, we we we had a one of our elderly members um faint during the service. This was a few years ago, and Larry was preaching and we dealt with it. You know, it was everything was just kind of worked the way it was supposed to. Someone called 911, you know, we checked on her, made sure she, you know, she she just fainted. Thankfully, it wasn't anything serious, but you know, it could have been a heart attack or a stroke or something like that, very serious. And so, and you you're not gonna respond perfectly to every situation, but if you know something can happen and you think about something like every service, something could happen in the service. Someone could jump up, you know, and rush to the front, someone could try to be raking in the cars in the parking lot during the service. We we have our guys rove, you know, one or two times during the service, you know, with our cameras and everything. So, you know, it's just it's sort of a comprehensive put up the safety net and and and do what we can to mitigate any any problems.

David Nakhla 37:33

So I'm sure that our listeners as they hear this are thinking, man, how do we get a Matt Butler in our church? Right? That's certainly what I'm thinking. Matt, this I I gotta believe that uh our deacons listening to this are encouraged, uh, maybe even convicted. A lot of concerns running through their head. Help them just kind of starting at ground zero. Like, how do we get started? Matt, we're really we're convinced we need to do something. Give us the first four steps or something like that to get moving.

SPEAKER_02 38:04

Sure. Yeah. So I think uh last week when we talked a little bit in preparation for this, I think I I I sent you guys our security policy that we uh use at Lake Sherwood, that we will do the same thing uh because it we we got it from someone else, we will pass it on. It's something that not only ours, I'm sure there are other churches that are willing to put theirs up as templates because you know, not all church are the same. You know, you've got your storefronts, you've got your using someone else's church, you know. Sometimes, like, you know, we had in Gainesville for a while, there was a Seventh-day Adventist church and or your own property. It could be very large, very small, urban, rural, all those, you know, sort of considerations. But I think that's a good place to start because you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You can look at a security policy like ours, which again, not perfect. There's plenty of room for modification and updating, but it'll give you that basic template of things you need to be thinking about. The second thing is make sure, you know, you you're going to have people in your congregation. If you're a deacon, I would assume that you have a you're a pretty decent judge of character. You can look around and say, okay, there's three or four people in our church right now that I would say security. When I say security, I think of them. And it's it's it's sort of as easy as enlisting those people, maybe to to join that team. And it doesn't have to be anything official. I don't, it doesn't have to be a title-oriented situation, it just needs to be people that are willing to be there regularly, people that are willing to be, you know, counted on regularly. It is a big responsibility to shoulder. But when you start to kind of break it down into constituent elements, it's not that big of a deal. It's just, I just need to be there, I need to be on point. Here's the thing from an elder's perspective, they need to know that if they can get enough people to sort of shoulder the burden together, it's not one person that is missing worship all the time. Because when you're when you are part of the security detail, you can't necessarily pay attention to the sermon. There's oftentimes you're not participating in the congregational singing. And you know, you you you don't want that person to be doing that every single week, week in, week out, because we don't want our people to to dry out spiritually. And we also don't want them to burn out either, because this is this is as vital a task as anything else we do in the church. And so, you know, if you can spread the wealth out a little bit, you know, three, four people and have a rotation. Um, but the last thing I would say is, you know, to just engage in some modicum of training, just walkthroughs. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. It just needs to be, you could sit around the table with coffee and just say, listen, that these are our priorities, three to five priorities, safety, uh, that incur, you know, to encourage us to keep people safe in the church, to watch for visitors, to make sure we shake people's hands and we begin to sort of gauge body language. You know, there's there's some probably some online training that maybe down the road, maybe we can engage in here as a denomination that can sort of get it out to the churches of certain things that we want to talk about. And certainly this podcast, I think, is great. And then, you know, and then just sort of regularly practice those things as often as you can. And like we said before, it really sounds like a lot, but honestly, if you once you get started, the momentum will be there. And then everybody will say, Why haven't we done this before? And it's okay, you know, you can you can toss that guilt away, you know, because once you start doing it, you you won't go back to doing it the way you did it before or not did it before.

David Nakhla 41:30

And as an elder, it'd be good for our deacons to do this with the support of their session and the blessing of their session. How would you advise uh them to interact with their session uh as they as they become convicted of this important area as the deacons wanting to bring this to the session? Any any thoughts there?

SPEAKER_02 41:48

You know, it's funny. Uh, you know, for our session, it was sort of a group effort. It was officers and non-officers, you know, all different people in the church. Once, once we sort of threw it out there, I I just sort of did with a another Ron Tribal, who you guys know, um, we sort of went out and recruited, you know, individually. And our session was great in that we just submitted the policy to them and that they were able to look at it and understand it and understand certain concerns that the pastors had that maybe we didn't think about, you know, like like Chris was mentioning about uh making sure the pastor either left or stayed, or what pastor did if there was a medical emergency or if there was a disruptive person. But pretty much I would think that the majority of our sessions would just be very grateful to their diaconate for coming forward with this proactively and saying, hey, we're we're gonna handle this, we'll work with the trustees, we'll work with the session, and we'll get this done. Like I said, I I think we as a collective uh group of officers in the church would sing the doxology if our if if all of our uh deacons were to come forward proactively in that way.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Just a follow-on when we were talking about children and having two people in there that that provides uh two witnesses. Um, I encourage our diaconate to, you know, if we're working with a case that we don't meet with that case individually, we do that with two of us there. And so I would think, you know, for our own sort of positioning men somewhere, we should have two at our point of ingress. Just want to make sure that I'm hearing you correctly on that.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

Yes, uh, two is always better than one. But I would say if you can't have two, then one is better than none. Gotcha. You can put that on a bumper sticker.

David Nakhla 43:40

So, Matt, maybe final question, though. This has been very, very helpful, super informative, encouraging. I think a lot of simple things, important, easy to overlook, maybe not make priorities, but this doesn't need to be overly complicated, but making some good headway is very fruitful in our churches. As we kind of close out this time together, if you Could give two, three pieces of advice, what would those be?

SPEAKER_02 44:05

Start small. Don't feel as if, especially if you're a church that's hearing this now, and as deacons, you're going, yep, everything you guys are saying is spot on. We don't have a policy, we don't have a plan. We don't even have a team. Don't feel overwhelmed that you have to solve every problem in your first week. So start small, even if it's if it's one or two people who agree to do it provisionally until you gather us a larger team or until you write a policy. Start this week. Don't wait. Don't wait. Because again, in God's providence, we don't know what's around the corner, right? We always say, We'll we will see you at church, Lord willing. We don't know what's going to happen, what God has planned for us. And so we look at these things and say, I would dare say almost 100% of the church situations that we've seen over the last several decades, not one of them, not one of them that they say, Oh, we thought that was going to happen this Sunday. And so, in a way, we look at that and say, okay, don't delay. Probably number two is this is you're doing this as unto the Lord. You know, this is the Lord's church. And so this is really a spiritual exercise as much as it is a physical exercise. That the person who would come and harm the flock of God at worship, you know, there's something evil about that. And there's, you know, we are again, we are, you know, doing battle against not flesh and blood in the spiritual realm, but we have to look at this and say, we really have a responsibility as a church, as particularly as officers, to protect our people. And if not us, then who? And so I think that would be the second little bit of advice is to maybe maybe get your theology right on that, you know. Um, again, this isn't a I'm not rebuking anyone, I'm not criticizing, I'm simply saying, I don't think we have an option here. I think this is our spiritual and our this is our spiritual responsibility, you know, to protect the church. And then I think maybe number three is if if you're having a tough time getting started, I think we can avail ourselves. I certainly avail myself as a resource. I will answer my phone, I'll answer my email. You know, we can get you in touch with people maybe in your area. If not, I can I can interact with them remotely. There are plenty of other, I know law enforcement and military firefighters that are in our denomination that are around that should be able to be good resources for people. So don't think you have to go it alone. And uh, you know, I'm offering my support to anybody that would need it, and I would be happy to do it.

David Nakhla 46:41

Thank you, Matt. So helpful. Yeah, the nature of diaconal ministry is often very physical, very tangible, yet at its heart, it's spiritual. It's a spiritual office, it's a spiritual work, and all that is done unto the least of these is done as unto Christ. As we uh office bearers in the church care for the church of Christ. Uh, may it be that uh the Lord would use even this conversation to further care for and protect his sheep. So thank you for our time, and maybe we'll look forward to a future conversation with some follow-up. Uh until then, Lord bless you, brother.

SPEAKER_00 47:17

Thank you, Matt. It's great to be with you. You too. It was great talking with y'all.

David Nakhla 47:22

Thanks for joining us. Go to our website, thereformdeacon.org. There you will find all our episodes, program notes, and other helpful resources. And please make plans to join us again next month for another episode of the Reform Deacon Podcast.