The Christian Chronicle Podcast
The Christian Chronicle Podcast explores the news and stories shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world.
The Christian Chronicle Podcast
Episode 131: How prepared is your congregation for an active shooter? (Rick Arrington)
On Sunday, June 22, 2025, a gunman armed with an AR-15 assault rifle opened fire on Crosspointe Community Church in Wayne, Michigan, as it assembled for worship. A fast-thinking deacon and two armed members of the congregation's security team killed the gunman before he could enter the church building and take the lives of any members or visitors.
As the frequency of active shooter situations at houses of worship is on the rise, how many congregations are prepared if the worst case happens?
Our guest is Rick Arrington, a security expert who trains houses of worship, schools and law enforcement agencies across the United States. A retired police lieutenant and an elder with the Rocky Mount (Virginia) Church of Christ, Arrington is the founder and CEO of the Crime Prevention Center and author of Securing the Faithful: Preventing and Addressing Crime in Places of Worship from Sunset Institute Press.
In this episode, Rick explains how congregations can better secure themselves against active shooters and other threats without abandoning the compassion, kindness, hospitality and openness that are to characterize the church of Christ.
Link to Crime Prevention Center
Link to The Christian Chronicle's coverage of active shooters at Church of Christ congregations
Listeners to this episode get a 50 PERCENT DISCOUNT on Rick's Securing the Faithful online training course. Click on the link below and enter the discount code PSQ5ZGC at checkout. crimepreventioncenter.org/training-courses/online-securing-the-faithful-course
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Family and friends, neighbors and, most of all, strangers. Welcome to the Christian Chronicle Podcast. We're bringing you the stories shaping Church of Christ, congregations and members around the world. I'm BT Irwin. May what you are about to hear bless you and honor God. We start today in Wayne, michigan, about a 45-minute drive from where I live. It's Sunday morning, june 22, 2025, and Crosspoint Community Church is vibrating because it's the first day of Vacation Bible School. The auditorium is decked out like an Alaska camping expedition to reflect this year's VBS theme, true North. Extra. Kids, parents and volunteers fill the auditorium in anticipation of one of the biggest events of the year at Crosspoint.
BT Irwin:As the excitement builds inside, a 31-year-old man pulls into the parking lot outside. He steps from his car wearing tactical gear and carrying an AR-15 style rifle with multiple loaded magazines and a semi-automatic handgun with extended magazine and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. He is not a stranger to Crosspoint Community Church. His mother is a member and he has visited the congregation several times. Meanwhile, deacon Richard Pryor is arriving late to service. As he pulls into the parking lot, he spots the man pulling guns out of his car. Pryor drives over, stops, rolls down his window and asks if everything is all right. The man, now armed, does not respond and begins walking toward the church building. What happens next is a blur. The man opens fire, attracting the attention of two armed members of the congregation's security team. Pryor makes the split-second decision to hit the shooter with his truck. The shooter, however, is able to keep spraying the church building with bullets. A bullet from his gun strikes the leg of Ron Amon, an armed member of the church security team. As he responds to the scene, he ducks for cover behind an air conditioning unit and returns fire. Bullets pepper the lobby of the church building as those inside the auditorium duck for cover and flee for safety. Jay Trombley, another armed member of the church security team, returns fire from the lobby. Moments later, the shooter is struck by a bullet from either Amon's or Trombley's gun and dies in the church parking lot, the only death to come as a result of the mass shooting event he attempted to start.
BT Irwin:Mass shootings, perhaps once unimaginable for most church folks in the United States, may now be a nightmare lurking in the back of many Christians' minds when they assemble on Sunday mornings. The Christian Chronicle has covered at least three fatal shootings that took place in Church of Christ congregations over the last few years. After the attempted mass shooting at a church right here in my own city, I recognized that we never devoted an episode of this podcast to securing our congregations against active shooters. I thought, just as my son's school conducts active shooter drills twice a year, it may be a good idea for congregations to at least put some thought into that awful but necessary question. What, if so?
BT Irwin:I reached out to Rick Arrington. Rick is a professional security consultant and trainer who serves as an elder with the Rocky Mount Church of Christ in Rocky Mount Virginia. He is a retired police lieutenant with the Roanoke Virginia Police Department and he made church safety a personal mission starting about 12 years ago. He wrote the book Securing the Faithful on the subject of church security. You can find that from Sunset Institute Press link in the show notes. He's here with us now. Rick, thank you for bringing your experience and wisdom, along with your pastoral gifts, to share with us today. Quite well, in the case of Crosspoint Community Church in Wayne, michigan, the shooter was someone who had come to the church a few times and had met with the pastoral staff for counseling and help. What do we know about the people who have come to church, armed and ready to do as much harm as they can. Is there a profile that's beginning to emerge, after so many years, of these events?
Rick Arrington:The facts we know is generally there are three type of what we would call triggers, or the things that initiate this type of attack. One of them is really you're going to be surprised, really it's robbery, domestic spillover and impersonal conflict, and that's in churches and that's not all across the board, but in churches specifically. So when we start to look at that deeper, we see that where churches are failing is in protecting around those things. Those three together are responsible for about half of the attacks. Wow.
Rick Arrington:So the profile that's kind of starting to emerge is and this is all based on articles and research into the actual post events and what we're starting to see is, almost exclusively, the shooters are male up in the 90% range. What we're also seeing is that it's a single individual, usually not like two or three. Attacking so that's up in the 70% range. Attacking so that's up in the 70% of drains. Most of these events happen, or these active shooting events, that is to say, fatal events, are when services are not in session. So it would be on a Monday morning, for example, someone comes to the building thinking the money is stored there to rob the church. Or, if you think about the domestic spillover, quite often it's someone at the church the elders or someone is counseling at the church, at the church, and so the person shows up there knowing there's counseling uh, their spouse or whatever, and that's how it would end up spilling over there.
Rick Arrington:I have to say that, while there are a lot of churches doing something and that's my emphasis is, regardless of the size of the congregation, you can do something. Uh's always better than nothing, but I would say that I'm still hearing a lot when I do seminars. Oh well, we want to do this, but our minister, our pastor, our rabbi when I'm doing various faith organizations says that God will take care of us and we don't need to worry about this and those sort of things. I'm still seeing that a lot Most congregations that I deal with that come to the seminars are preparing in some way, which makes sense, because they wouldn't be at the seminar otherwise. But I don't know how many of the others are or not. I just I just have no idea. I just get a sense that a lot are still not prepared.
BT Irwin:I've been a church guy my whole life, you know preacher's kid, and I've been in ministry and I've worked with elders and you know it's hard enough to to to gather the people and resources to pull off a vacation Bible school or to, you know, to find enough uh ushers to pass the communion on Sunday morning. So when it comes to church security, having a plan, uh having the funds maybe, and then having the people to work church security I imagine some leaders may think, well, having the funds maybe and then having the people to work church security. I imagine some leaders may think, well, I can't even find enough people and resources to do the churchy stuff that we have to do. I don't know how we're going to handle security. So for those who are in that boat, kind of basic, simple plan, do you think a smaller, medium church could pull off just to to start better securing uh their assemblies and their and their premises from active shooter situations?
Rick Arrington:Yeah, there, uh, there are very uh, actually, first thing I would say, there, uh, there are a lot of free plans. Uh, department of uh, homeland security has a free plan out there, a way to look at church security. Now, I can't I can't vouch for any of those plans, but I can tell you that you know that those are likely going to be helpful. My, my emphasis is always this we have to keep it very, very simple. Something that people can remember, something that they can quickly implement, and that's especially in a church. But my simple plan is this I have a plan. I call it three R's, and that's essentially.
Rick Arrington:One is to recognize what is out of the ordinary. So, out of the ordinary the reason I use that term is what we're talking about is actually suspicious. But when I say out of the ordinary, it makes better sense to people because every congregation is different. So the congregation that you go to is going to be different from the one where I'm at or where I'm visiting or whatever. So something that's ordinary for a college town congregation would be extremely out of the ordinary in a very rural area. So that's the first thing is identify, recognize what's out of the ordinary. Two is to report it, and this is where you have an issue. A lot of times in New York there's that phrase that's well known now of see something, say something, but the problem is they never tell you who to say something to.
Rick Arrington:So this is where the report comes in. If you have a safety team, and the safety team can be one person or maybe two people, it depends on the size of the congregation. Obviously, the seminar and the way that I do planning for the safety team is, you can scale it based on the size of the congregation. So report it to that individual who has already has some sort of plan in mind, some sort of plan that is in place and hopefully they have instructed the, the congregation. When they tell you to do X, y and Z, you do it and and then the third are beyond. Beyond recognizing report is to respond. So you respond accordingly, meaning that the safety team is going to do one thing but the congregation would do something else. The minister should be with the congregation because somebody needs to be there to bring them some peace, to calm them, and so they shouldn't be part of this safety team reacting. So that's pretty much the way that I go about simplifying the plan.
BT Irwin:So recognize report and respond Correct. My son's school has an active shooter training twice a year and over the last month or two my wife has been going through all employee active shooter training for the museum where she works. Would you recommend that congregations actually train all of their members for active shooter situations?
Rick Arrington:for active shooter situations. I do recommend training all of the members, but I recommend training them according to their role. So it's going to be a different type of training. For example, if you do have a safety team, we want to train the safety team and how to recognize, how to respond when someone reports to you incidents. We would want to train them on how to operate any equipment, if it's video or whatever. So they're going to have one type of training.
Rick Arrington:You're going to have to train the congregation also in recognizing what's out of the ordinary and reporting it. But they don't necessarily respond in the same way. They would report it to the safety team, but their response would be to do what the safety team says, without curiosity, without delay, without questioning oh well, why are we doing this? You have to respond immediately. So the way we would train the congregation is if the safety team says, run to the basement, you just go to the basement. You don't say why People want to interact, they want to assist. But if they haven't the training that the safety team does, sometimes they're in the way because the safety team is concerned about them more so than dealing with the problem.
Rick Arrington:So that's the different types of training and I always encourage only one, two depending on the congregation of people to make the phone call to 911, to be trained in what to say, to be trained to tell them okay, this is what's going on, our safety team is detaining this person, our safety team has got this person down, or whatever it might be. But they need to be trained and you don't want, you need to train the entire congregation to that. You don't want all of them calling because you overrun 911 and they become overwhelmed, don't understand what's going on, because you got all of these differing reports.
BT Irwin:In my experience I've been a part of, I've been privy to conversations in congregations that are talking about security, and whenever it comes up as an agenda item to discuss, there are always two big questions that seem to rise to the top, and the first has to do with the church's special calling and commission in the world, and that is we're called and commissioned by our Christ to bless those who curse, love those who hate, pray for those who persecute. We're a hospital for the sick and troubled people. So the concern I hear among church leaders is that if we make security a priority, could our congregation become exclusive for the very people, exclusive of the very people that Jesus calls and commissions us to accept, embrace and welcome in? So when you started off our conversation, you talked about three triggers robbery, domestic conflict, spillover and personal conflict and you painted that picture of maybe an elder or a minister counseling somebody who's going through a difficult situation.
BT Irwin:I've worked in churches. People come all the time looking for money and for food. We believe that the church is called to love these very people and come alongside them, and yet they may also pose the greatest threat to the church, and so I've seen leaders really struggle with. Well, how can we be the church to these people and keep ourselves safe at the same time? I reckon you've had to answer that question a lot of times and I have.
Rick Arrington:My answer is this First off, what my role is is to give considerations so that the leadership, the elders of every congregation, have to make the decision. It's not something I could tell them and say, hey, across the board, everybody do this. So I'm going to give them considerations, and here's my consideration. Now there are folks who say, well, you know, we don't want to scare them or whatever, but at the same time, think about this, and I believe wholeheartedly that the Bible supports the concept of protecting the members also, and what I mean by that is that we have to protect them so that they can serve.
Rick Arrington:And if you think about the account of the Good Samaritan, he provided that service, he provided that help, but he didn't take him home with him.
Rick Arrington:He still kept a level of security there. And so there's times when we have to kind of thread the needle. For example, if you're doing a food pantry, and the type of people that would come to a food pantry you may have among them might be someone who's addicted to drugs, it might be someone with a mental disorder, so you have to plan for that, and one of the things that I would encourage churches who have that to do is to have a stand where someone is there, meets them, greets them, asks them for their name, their address, and essentially does what the Bible tells us to do, which is to open ourselves to them. But when you meet them, you greet them, you can determine are they under the influence of drugs or alcohol or whatever? Are they a danger? And if so, you can say why don't you sit right over here? And we'll have someone prepare you a box of food and bring it to you. Yeah.
Rick Arrington:And then you, just before they leave, you say you know in the future if you come we don't we don't generally serve someone who's under the influence, yeah, that sort of thing. But you don't introduce them into the building at that point where everybody else where they can endanger people. So there are safety measures In the assembly itself during church services. One of the things that I really emphasize is to limit the access points to as few as possible. Generally, if it's a smaller congregation, one and most congregations about 80% of the congregations of faith-based organizations, churches of all kinds are 100 members or less. So you have one point of entry and you have people greeting them.
Rick Arrington:Isn't that what we should be doing? Greeting them. The only difference is we train those greeters, cross-train them to discuss, to talk to them and identify those things that are out of the ordinary. For example, someone who won't shake your hand, someone who won't tell you their name, those sort of things. Now, I'm not talking about how a person looks unless they're wearing clothing that's unseasonal, for example, a long trench coat when there's 90 degrees outside, but I'm saying that what you're trying to do is to identify behavioral cues that say this is out of the ordinary and you kind of mentally check those off, and the more of those you see, the more you then need to alert your safety team if you have one that this person may deserve a little extra watching so that they can maybe sit near them, behind them, whatever.
BT Irwin:That's been one of the biggest hesitations that I've heard from church leaders is that they want the church to be a welcoming, hospitable place for all right. God calls all of us, invites all of us to be a part of His family, and so there's been that reticence that if we put too much of an emphasis on security, we may keep away some of the very people that the Lord has called us to love on, and I got to ask other. The other big question that's just come up repeatedly in my church struggled with this a few years ago is whether or not to arm the security team. I've been to congregations that I know for a fact their security team is armed. I went to one a couple of years ago where you could actually see his gun on his belt, one a couple years ago where you could actually see his gun on his belt.
BT Irwin:Some congregations choose not to do that for scriptural reasons. You can find scriptural reasons for both. So, based on your experience right now, are more congregations now choosing to arm their security team, like Crosspoint Community Church obviously did, or are most congregations still choosing to not arm their security team? And in the case of congregations that don't arm their security teams. What is how? How might they be able to secure themselves Nevertheless against an active shooter situation? There's a lot in that question there, so I'll just let you know active shooter situation.
Rick Arrington:There's a lot in that question there, so I'll just let you know. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. But to answer your question, the first point is you made a point about being welcoming and all you can still be welcoming. Good security in a church should be invisible. Let me explain what I mean. First off, there are congregations I know one in particular in Tennessee that hires off-duty police officers in uniform to stand in the back of the church. That is an immediate turnoff to a lot of people visiting because the first thing they think is, oh, it must be dangerous. Here.
Rick Arrington:My point behind saying it being invisible is this we want to protect, you know, the congregation but at the same time we don't want to hurt the mission of the church, which is, of course, the mission of the church is to reach those lost individuals, to invite them in, to bring them in to evangelize them. So we can't hurt the mission of the church. But how much harm is done in the church when there is a shooting in a church, where, let's say, we will just say some children are shot in a church, or or or adults for that matter but how much harm is done by that going out to the world and the answering of people saying, well, how come they weren't prepared? Like you're pointing out, at Crosspoint they were prepared and they and they reacted. There's going to be a lot of people who will criticize that. I understand that, but what they, what they're not realizing, is how many lives they actually saved that's right and how that they helped the mission.
Rick Arrington:Because those people who have been considering, been thinking I was thinking about going over that church If there's a shooting and nobody reacted to it, there was no one there to protect Then they go. I'm not going there, I'll find somewhere else. You see where I'm going with this. It impacts the mission of the church. Now, on the firearms question, of course that's a eldership decision and and the states are different also. Also, but I link first off the answer to your question is many, many more are having their safety team harmed.
Rick Arrington:I fully believe that you know the same Jesus that said turn the other cheek. Or that said you know Malchus called Malchus out for cutting the ear I mean Peter out for cutting the ear off of Malchus. The same Jesus said in Luke 22, do you have a sword? You know, sell your cloak and go buy one. The difference is in the context. In the context with Malchus, nobody was going to stop him from from completing the mission that was given to him by the Lord. Yes, the will of the Lord was going to be fulfilled. In the case in Luke 22, he's telling them you're going to be going out without me, these are going to be some dangerous times for you, and so by a sword, you're going to need to protect yourself. So there are different situations that, in the context, yes, there are times when a firearm would be needed.
Rick Arrington:My answer to the firearm question is this authorize someone to use firearms. They should make sure that they are uh, well trained in the use of firearms. They should make sure that they are insured, because the uh they, these individuals, are going if they do use a firearm, they're likely. And this goes back to my law enforcement experience. I just want to make sure they need to tell them when the police show up, you're going to be neutralized. They're going to disarm you and probably have you prone on the ground, uh, and take the gun away from you. They're going to take you downtown and they're going to uh, question you about all of this. They need to be prepared for that, otherwise they feel like I'm being arrested and I was just doing something good. Yes.
Rick Arrington:That's part of the training that needs to go and they all need to qualify annually whoever's carrying that firearm. They need to be able to if there is some legal issue that comes up to be able to show that, yes, they are proficient, yes, they know not to shoot through a wall, you know and that sort of thing Be aware of their target and beyond All of that sort of training, be aware of their target and beyond all of that sort of training, I guess the final thing you ask in that, like I said, a lot to unpack, but I think the final thing you asked about was the non-lethal weapons, the potential for non-lethal, and there's a lot of non-lethal weapons out there and the considerations are huge. But you think about there are tasers, there's pepper spray, there's pepper canisters, there's just a number of plastic bullets, rubber bullets, beanbags. Here's the concern If an individual is there we're talking about an active shooter for you to use any force at all.
Rick Arrington:I train safety teams. Their role is to keep the congregation safe and that might mean looking out, seeing a guy get out of the car with a gun and you lock down the door and send everybody to a room. You've accomplished your goal the safety team at a church is not a church police department. They are not to chase the guy, they're not to try to apprehend them. Arrest them. If the guy runs and flees, let him go Call the police. That's their job.
Rick Arrington:Please let them go Call the police. That's their job. But in the case of non-lethal, if an individual comes in there with a gun, a taser is restricted by distance. Yes, and it absolutely cannot be fired quicker than a bullet the speed of a bullet than a bullet, the speed of a bullet.
Rick Arrington:Pepper spray if you were to use pepper spray in an enclosed environment, it will fill the room. It will impact the person using it, those others in the room. So these are all considerations that you have to make if you're talking about less than lethal weapons. And my thing is, when it comes down to the only time that we would want to use lethal weapons as a last resort to protect individuals from imminent harm. And I don't see where pepper spray would be needed If we have a congregation of two or three individuals that can help and you just subdue the individual if they're not armed, I don't see where any of the non-lethal weapons would be appropriate, in my opinion.
BT Irwin:I have a good friend who has a concealed carry permit and he's worked church security and he talked to me at length about this, the necessity for proper training. His number one concern is, if he ever had to use his weapon in a church setting, is that he would hit a bystander, uh, that he would hit somebody other than the, the active shooter. And, um, he talked quite a bit about the, the emotional toll it would take on him to take someone else's life, even to save other people's lives, and I never thought about all that before. But he, he, he was very serious about being properly trained, not only on how to handle a firearm, but how to respond in a situation in a crowded space and how to prepare himself emotionally for the fallout from that. Those are all things I'd never considered before that conversation.
Rick Arrington:A lot of individuals don't think about the psychological impact. When I teach school security, there are people who bring up the idea of arming teachers and I've had teachers say hey, I have a concealed carry, don't you think it's a good idea to arm a teacher? So I asked that teacher First off. About 80 percent of the school shooters are students. So I asked the teacher okay, uh, let me ask you this. You had this student last year and he comes in and he's shooting. Can you shoot him? Can you take his life? Have you considered that? And then like, oh, I, and they're like, oh, I don't know, I don't think I can. That's the psychological issue.
Rick Arrington:It takes a lot out of the individual. As a police officer, I was fortunate and I retired. In law enforcement, I was fortunate. I was involved in several shootings, but I never had to take a life. Someone else did that was with me, but I never had to take a life. Uh, someone else did that was with me, but I didn't have to.
BT Irwin:When my wife and I were talking about what happened at Crosspoint Community Church and the. You know the story is Richard Pryor, who was a deacon there, uh, hit the shooter with his truck. Um, made the split second decision to, to, to run over, try to run over the shooter with his truck. And my wife said to me I don't know if I could do that. You know just the idea of running over another human being with a truck. Right, that's not a gun, but that speaks to just the emotions. For people who are conditioned and trained their whole lives as Christians to care for people and to guard human life. It's not as simple as it sounds, as my friend pointed out to me. So here at the end I just want to ask you is there anything else that you really feel like you need to talk about here that congregations and their leaders need to consider right now that maybe they don't know, or it's something that you just you try to share with audiences wherever you go? That maybe isn't so intuitive to us on this subject.
Rick Arrington:Well, a couple of things. I would say this. First off, if you have individuals, a safety team doesn't have to be a person that's a bruiser, a brawler or anything of that nature. They don't have to be armed. A safety team can be a few members and, of course, we solve all church situations. All of the needs of the church are solved, as they did in Act VI, right, we look out among us to those who have certain skill sets, and you pick those and you emphasize to them.
Rick Arrington:The first point I'm making here is emphasize that your ultimate goal is to keep the congregation safe. You do that by either moving the threat away from the congregation or the congregation away from the threat. Very simple stuff. So if you got an individual that's screaming, yelling, acting crazy, and they want to, you know I'm going to kill this or that or whatever. And you and you talk to them and they get them outside the door, close the door, lock the door. You've done, you've succeeded in what you're supposed to do. You can then call the police and what have you?
Rick Arrington:The second point I would make is that, as I said, statistically this stuff happens outside more than inside, happens outside more than inside. If we have a safety team, then I want them checking the parking lot before, during and after. The reason the parking lot is as a person pulls in, when they get out of the car, that's when you're going to see the firearm if they have one, that's when you're going to see the person that you don't recognize and you can watch them carefully. If you begin service this is what I would tell you also is that once service begins, that single point of entry that I was talking about, you want to five, 10, 15 minutes into the service, lock the door. You know having an egress by a panic bar, but lock the door and I've had people our congregation, we did this for about six months before I told anyone and they didn't notice.
Rick Arrington:The only time you notice is when somebody comes visiting and they can't get in. They knock on the door and they're like well, we, you know, I've had people ask me why, why are we doing that? That's not, you know, we're keeping people out. No, think about it. When Peter was in prison, they were praying for him and, of course, when he was let out, he goes to where they're at and he had to knock on the door because they were locked in. And if you read it, it says for fear. They were locked in for fear.
Rick Arrington:So this is very scriptural to do this. And then you know, before service is over, what I would say there's always a closing prayer and during that closing prayer your safety team, someone goes out, walks the parking lot real quickly, makes sure nothing suspicious out there, comes back in and then everybody can leave safely. Everybody can leave safely. That's a very simplistic thing to do, but it's just the thing that we do need to do. And during the non-hours, as with most churches of Christ that don't have a full team there during the Monday through Friday, the preacher may be there by himself. Lock the door, lock the door, give him an intercom or a camera, something that he can see who's out there and he can communicate with them. I can't overemphasize that point.
BT Irwin:You never know who's going to show up. The last church where my dad served in Eastern Tennessee, somebody came to the door and the door was locked. But they got him on camera and it was a bear. So you just never know who's going to show up. I know, I know. My dad sent me the video of it. He's like look who came to visit the office today and there was a. There was a black bear standing at the door trying to get in. So we're going to put a link to your website in the show notes. Are there any other resources that you'd recommend that churches check out? Of course your book will link that in the show notes Any other resources that that you recommend to church leaders.
Rick Arrington:I would definitely tell them to first off contact their church. Insurance companies often have a resource that's free and of course I'm talking about free because the congregations, like I said, especially smaller congregations, have limited resources and most of our resources are we need to put out for evangelism, but that's free. Department Homeland security contact. I will say this security contact.
Rick Arrington:I will say this I teach a lot of law enforcement on how to do assessments and security at churches and I would say contact your local police department or sheriff's office and ask for anyone that can do an assessment of the church.
Rick Arrington:Those are always free and they'll there'll be a great wealth of knowledge. Not only will it give you something free to work with, if they have it, but also you'll be able to get them into the building so that they can see the building layout in case they have to respond. And the final thing is, while they're there, you can maybe invite them to come back to church. So I really emphasize working with the local law enforcement because a lot of those, believe it or not, I've got a lot of friends that were working in law enforcement that are now either ministers or very active in church, and it's just because their hours are kind of odd. Sometimes they may have to show up in uniform while they're on duty, but you know, if the church is open to that, recognizing that, you might be able to get a lot of assistance from the local law enforcement.
BT Irwin:That's excellent. Well, rick Arrington is a professional security consultant and trainer who serves as an elder with the Rocky Mountain Church of Christ in Rocky Mountain, virginia. He's author of the book Securing the Faithful. We'll put links to Rick and his information in the show notes. Rick, thank you for sharing your experience and wisdom with us today.
Rick Arrington:Thanks for having me.
BT Irwin:It's been a pleasure. We hope that something you heard in this episode encouraged, enlightened or enriched you in some way. If it did, thanks be to God and please pay it forward. Subscribe to this podcast and share it with a friend. Recommend and review it wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Your subscription, recommendation and review help us reach more people. Please send your comments, ideas and suggestions to podcast at christianchronicleorg and don't forget our ministry to inform and inspire Christians and congregations around the world is a nonprofit ministry that relies on your generosity. So if you like the show and you want to keep it going and make it even better, please make a tax-deductible gift to the Christian Chronicle at ChristianChronicleorg slash donate.
BT Irwin:The Christian Chronicle podcast is a production of the Christian Chronicle Incorporated, informing and inspiring Church of Christ congregations, members and ministries around the world since 1943. The Christian Chronicle's managing editor is Audrey Jackson, editor-in-chief Bobby Ross Jr and executive director and CEO Eric Trigestad. The Christian Chronicle podcast is written, directed, hosted and edited by BT Irwin and is produced by James Flanagan at Podcast your Voice Studios in the Motor City, detroit, michigan, usa. Until next time, may grace and peace be yours in abundance.