| Soli Deo Gloria |
| "For the glory of God alone" |
| 07/27/09 - Church Security: the ignorance of denial |
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I know I have mentioned this before in past articles, but it bears repeating, I am continually amazed at church leaders and congregation members who cannot fathom that their church can be the victim of a crime. I am not talking about something “shocking” like a shooting, I am talking about crimes that we continue to report on every day, like burglary, arson, internal theft. The Christian community is looking conservatively at thousands of crimes this year alone and we are barely half way through the year. Hundreds of church break-ins, dozens of arsons, millions of dollars in losses and yet we continually hear the same thing from church leaders after crimes occurred in their church– note the following quotes from various news sources of :
Just so there is no misunderstanding that I am calling people names, look at the definition of the words “ignorance” and “denial” from Webster’s dictionary: ig·no·rance Function: noun : the state or fact of being ignorant : lack of knowledge, education, or awareness de·ni·al Function: noun : refusal to admit the truth or reality I truly believe that these people represent the whole in the Christian community. They use words like “shock” or “unbelievable” all the time. They don’t get it and won’t accept it. Why the disbelief? Is it because it is “their” church and not one of the thousands of other ones that have already experienced incidents. The word “ignorance” not only applies to the lack of knowledge that they may be a victim of a crime, but that they don’t understand criminal’s motives, especially when we hear things like this from a news interview of a Pastor:
I appreciate this Pastor’s heart, but he is wrong! Crime has very little to do with the economy. The criminals that are breaking into churches, stealing, vandalizing, and burning are not the good upstanding citizens that just lost their jobs and have to feed their children. They are criminals who do this for a living, most often with an addiction problem, who see the church as a “soft target” and could care less that it is a House of God. Take note of this headline, because it sums it up:
They steal your money, musical instruments, flat screen TV’s, computers, etc. so they can sell them to friends or pawn them for cash – to buy more drugs or alcohol. And on a final note I would like to reiterate what we try to teach Christian leaders about crime prevention and this is important: you are responsible to prevent crime, you, the leader of the church. Don’t look to the police. The police cannot make you turn on your lights, secure your doors and windows, use your alarm system, and put procedures in place with your staff and volunteers to reduce opportunity. Because ultimately that is what we are talking about, reducing the opportunity of the criminal to succeed. If you make the target hard, they will go elsewhere. But remember, ultimately the responsibility rests with the leader of the organization to ensure they are good stewards of what God has given them. So don’t blame the economy, don’t blame the police – accept responsibility, don’t be ignorant and don’t live in denial. In Christ, Jeff Hawkins Executive Director |
