Churches now have to think about security as crime against places of worships have increased lately
Pastor Rick Stathum is the pastor of Salem Baptist Church in McDonough, Georgia. It is a medium-sized church with a congregation of about 2,000 in this far suburb south of Atlanta. He is very aware that the world has changed along with his role as Senior Pastor is to keep his church, himself and the members of his congregation safe.
Pastor Stathum said “I think that we have all seen the national news, the shooting of a pastor recently in his church when he was speaking before his congregation,” Stathum said of an incident that happened earlier this year at an Illinois Church. “In fact I have shared with our church before and messages in the past that those kinds of things were coming and basically that we need to do everything that we can to be prepared.”
Since taking over as Pastor of Salem Baptist Church, Stathum has had to deal with theft from cars in the parking lot, medical emergencies during church services, non-custodial parental disputes in the daycare center and even a road rage incident that ended with a man pointing a gun at a woman on the front steps of the church.
“The fact is we have got to be pro-active rather than re-active and the kind of world that we live in and what people are doing, it was only a matter of time until tragedies found themselves happening in the church,” Stathum says.
Both Pastor Stathum and Sheriff MacBrayer say having a security team in place, along with locking doors and installing security cameras can help reduce the number of crimes and speed up reaction to other emergencies that have become reality in places of worship all over the country.
“All around us there is evil, all around us there is trouble and there is difficulty and that also happens in the church,” Stathum said. “We do our very best to provide an atmosphere not only for children, but all the way through senior adults that is safe and a safe haven in a difficult world.”
Report By Brooks Blanton
