This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Man Talk, brought to you by TAWCMN, talking and walking Christian men's ministry, where they're devoted to breaking down the walls of race and denomination, and challenging men to take their God-assigned role. Here's our hosts, Will Hardy and Roy Jones Jr., a black guy and a white guy. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Man Talk Radio. I'm Will Hardy, the black guy.
And I'm Roy Jones Jr., the white guy. And you know, Roy, something has come up in news recently, and we've all been reading about it. And you know, we got a gentleman here who's going to talk about something I think that's near and dear and important to the church community at large.
Tell them what it is. Yeah, thank you, Will. We've got Ben Ziegler joining us tonight, and he and I actually go to church together. He's the head of security at First Christian Church here in Kernersville, North Carolina. So given the current environment we're in, of course, we're dealing with the health crisis right now, but it's all relative to the well-being of your church members and attendees at different plateaus.
It's either security or it's health or other things. So we thought it'd be a great time to bring Ben in and talk a little bit about Church Security Night, and we'll actually probably get into a little bit of the coronavirus piece of it as well, so we can talk a little bit, you know, about those precautionary measures that we need to be taking and thinking about. So if you're listening today, this is an important topic, you know, as all the topics that we discuss and we try to keep it relevant to some of the things that's happening, you know, around the community and in the world seen at large. So let's get right into it, Roy. Yeah, thank you, Will. Ben, why don't you introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your background, what it is exactly you do as part of the security lead there at the church, and then we'll kind of go from there with some questions to follow up behind your introduction. Sure. Well, gentlemen, thank you for having me.
This is a relevant topic. I've been going to First Christian for about 15 years. I was on staff for about four years, and so I understand a little bit about the ministry aspect of a church and what has to happen behind the scenes to make sure that it's a worshipful environment. About four years ago, I was asked by senior leadership if I would restart the safety ministry at the church. And I say use the word ministry because I think that's really what it is. We're called to minister in all roles, but the security aspect of that is very different. If you look at the church, it's a difficult place to really protect because you're inviting in people who may not know how to act in a church. You're inviting people in who have ill intentions.
That's where you want them. You want people like that in the church. They just can't act up. And so we have to be very vigilant and very intentional about how we protect the church. So that's a good lead-in, Ben, and talking about protecting. So if the person's listening and maybe they've not been exposed to church security, you know, with all the events we've done, we've had probably more than the average person's exposure to security and what the protocol looks like and why the need's there. But if a person's just listening today, they may say, well, church security, that just seems so odd. You know, it's one of those things that you just don't expect there to be something bad to happen other than we've had over the last, what, four years, I think we've had a couple real relevant events that happened down in Charleston.
And I think there was one out in Texas, if I remember correctly, and a couple other church shootings. But what does that exactly mean, church security team? Is this just a group of guys or ladies that have got their concealed carry permit that, you know, you say, okay, you can be part of the team and you can be part of team.
Nope, you don't quite look right, so I'm not going to choose you. And is that what it looks like? Or is it a more comprehensive selection process, more comprehensive training process?
Can you tell us a little bit about that? Unfortunately, that is the scenario in a lot of churches. And I say unfortunate because that tends to be where people immediately go when they talk about church security.
But let's make sure that Bubba has a gun, because Bubba is going to know exactly what to do, and he's going to protect us. A church safety ministry really is in place to do two things. One, it's there to protect the people. And secondly, it's in place to protect the ministry of the church. We want to protect the church's ability to minister so that everybody has the option, the availability to worship in a safe environment. It's a ministry. We want to we do this because we love people.
We love even that person with bad desires enough to protect them from doing something bad. And we're willing to do whatever it takes to protect them and protect the rest of the church. If the first response is, well, let's make sure Bubba has a gun. The church as an entity has a liability issue. Then the churches put their eggs in Bubba's basket. Do they know how well he's trained?
Do they know his ability to assess the situation? The church is really looking at the liability issue. At the end of the day, how often will a church utilize somebody with a gun?
It happens almost never. Not saying we shouldn't prepare for it, but that's not what happens. So that means when you say liability, that means if he does something that's out of the ordinary, then the family members or someone who might be related to that individual who they shot could come back at them and perhaps bring some type of lawsuit or something. If somebody in ministry leadership asks somebody to make sure that you're bringing a gun to protect us, there could be a liability issue on the church. So if you look at the difference between a safety ministry team versus just some good guys with guns, a ministry looks at people every Sunday. A ministry helps out every Sunday. We are helping with medical situations, with lost kids. We're helping with people that don't know which Sunday school class to go to.
We're helping eliminate people's fears by addressing situations, none of which involve a gun. And so there's a preventive measure. There's a reactive measure, but we're very intentional. So you're the liaison for the ministry, basically. So you're the typically, correct me if I'm wrong here, Ben, but you would typically be the maybe one of the first five faces someone from your team would be one of the first five faces they'll see as they walk through the door. So to your point, if a person's not oriented with the building, knowing where to go, they could ask one of your people, your people would give them proper directions. But by the same token, if that person walks in with a trench coat, and it's not bad weather outside, there's actually going to be a radar that goes up, I guess, a flag that person says, okay, man, I need to search your coat, or would you step over to the side? Let's talk for just a moment to get an understanding what their intentions are. And again, our first intention is to minister to people. And if we see something suspicious, we're going to try to understand what's going on. And a lot of times that first reaction is to go talk to somebody, maybe you have somebody that feels very emotional, and they just don't look right, and they're just there's something going on. We can sit back and watch, or we can go interact, we can go and talk to them and try to understand what's going on.
That also allows us to assess, do we think that there's a threat situation here? You know, and that's good, too, because I think, overall, in the general concept behind when a person says church security, that's the first thing they think. They think guns, you know, and, you know, bring guns into church. And, you know, you have all the ideologies behind, well, why do we need guns in church? Well, the same reason why bad guys come into church to do bad things.
So I think that mentality that a person has to say that all it's all about guns, you know, I think that's been clarified when you when you address the issue about individuals who need direction or, you know, other security measures that you guys have in place as part of the protocol. You know, so if you're listening out there and you don't have something like this in place, regardless of your size, then, you know, you should get with someone who has the ways and means that could help you because, you know, there's a lot of churches, of course, most of the churches, unfortunately, you know, they're not large congregations, they're smaller congregations. So what would you say to a pastor who, say, has a church body of under 25 people?
What would you say to him as far as security if they can't actually have a person or go out and hire someone to do security for them? The basis for church ministry is the same regardless of the size of the church. It has to start with support of the leadership, the elders, the deacons, regardless of who takes responsibility and who does what, if they don't have support of the leadership, it's not going to last and it's not going to be effective. So the first thing is leadership has to understand there's an issue and they have to support an intentional effort. The second step is there has to be somebody that has to take responsibility and lead the ministry, right? Ministry just doesn't happen.
You guys know that. No, no, we've talked about many times, Ben, we've got to step and we've got to take the step of the natural and then let God come along and do the rest of the supernatural. Same holds true here, I think, with what we'll say in small church, but I think that requires someone in the church to make the step. Maybe it's a person who's not even qualified, but if they say, hey, I'm going to figure out how to do this, then God will bring along the resources, bring that police officer that needs a church home or, you know, that former military person that's got expertise in that field to come along.
That's where we've got to trust God, but if you're not doing it and you don't step up and start trying to make something happen, then you can't expect God to bring the resources alongside. And I think, you know, what's the, if you plan to fail, you fail to plan. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, right? So the same holds true in all of our jobs and in the church ministry and everything. So if we don't have some sort of plan moving forward, we're putting ourselves in a bad situation. And unfortunately, that would be really, really sad if the church hadn't had no preparedness at all. There has to be an intentional plan.
You're not going to succeed if you don't have an intentional plan. Yeah. And that's a great lead into my next question. And Ben, maybe you know this, if you don't, maybe we can look it up during break, but did the church in South Carolina have a security team and plan in place? I do not know that.
I do not know that. One of the challenges that they had is that was not a Sunday morning. It was a Wednesday night or something. Thursday night or something.
Very small Bible study. And that's a vulnerable time. Sunday mornings, there's typically a lot more churches have something in place versus an off night. Right. Well, I mean, that, then there is another good point that we need to make sure if you're listening, you're part of a church that just raised a flag with me, you know, which we can talk offline, but that's one of those things, I guess, every service, if the building is open, then there should be somebody there that's capable of properly providing security and defense. Right.
So just to be, I guess, proportionate to the number of people that are there. Well, I think we are coming up on a break and when we come back, we want to continue our conversation with Ben, you know, in reference to church security, an important topic that we all need to hear. You know, I'm finding out and learning that it's more about, not about guns per se, but about other things that, you know, the security team would bring to the church. Yeah.
Well, that's a great lead in as we're heading into the break. And I guess it's about people, you know, at the end of the day, it's about people and it starts with people. So the guns are just the mechanism in which to provide the service, you know, hopefully it never is required, but that's what will be used for that.
But it's more about the people. And I appreciate you saying that, Will. So, hey, we'll be back with you in just a few moments. We appreciate you joining our show.
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Call 336-885-1987. Welcome back to ManTalk Radio and we're talking with Ben Ziegler, who is the head of church security at First Christian Church in Kernersville, North Carolina. And before we went to the break, you know, Roy had brought up some things, Ben, but I wanted to ask, you know, being the head of security, what does the head of security look for in people and the process that you may have to go through in selection process to select individuals for the team and what steps would you have in place in order to build a effective security team at a local church?
Two good questions. And first, what do we look for in people? This is ministry first, and it may surprise a lot of folks that that's really the main characteristic.
People that understand awareness, people that understand situations, but people that can talk to somebody that's having a bad day, people that can quickly assess and make good decisions. It's not necessarily just going to be the big beefy guys like Roy. It's going to be people that are able to minister and they come in all shapes and sizes and ages. And really that goes for any size church. It's not just the bigger church that has all the beefy people.
You want all walks of life that are able to fit in and help to minister in this area. Yeah. You know, because communication, you know, being one of the first five faces that you perhaps might see when coming into a local church, you know, that individual has to be able to communicate with the general public, you know, and congregates, you know, in particular, so as not to be overbearing or, you know, that the individuals feel threatened or that type thing.
Absolutely. We have dealt over the years with a lot of different situations. Almost all of them involve using your voice, talking to people, listening, watching, and talking people down from situations or talking to understand what's going on. That really is about awareness. That's about the ability to communicate. That's about the ability to love people. That is wonderful. So, Roy, what do you think about when you, you know, someone talks about church security and, you know, individuals at large, you know, what would you think the face of a person who wants to go into security should look like, you know, you having some experience with weapons?
Yeah. As far as the right candidate, well, I think, you know, obviously the first thing that comes to mind, the person has to be certainly even-tempered, you know, and just be able to think quickly, but not react without understanding what the consequences of the reaction are going to be. And I know that's a difficult thing to talk about, but as you go through these dry runs, your mind starts to work through potential scenarios. And then it's just like anything, if you're like playing football, playing baseball, if you start thinking about the what-ifs, then you start getting, you subconsciously getting trained and engaged in the event, even though it's not happened.
So at some point, I think you start to just naturally respond and the steps just start to fall into place. I think it's got to be a person that's even-tempered, even-killed, that's obviously experienced handling guns because, you know, that's, it may at the end of the day come down to that, that you've got to use deadly force to stop what's about to happen. And as I said, while we were on break, I was going to go in and pull up that situation in Charleston where Dylan, I believe, was the guy's last name.
He sat in the service for an hour before, and then he stood up, said, I'm here to shoot black people, you know, and then he started killing people. And in that particular article, I think they estimated there was 176,000 incidents or something crazier, some high number, I have to go back and double check the numbers, a really high number of some sort of church incident throughout the year, and I think that was globally, but, and it was really remarkable to hear those numbers. And I don't know if that includes fistfights, because we know people in church aren't always behaving, right, because we've seen what happens in town halls and everything else. But the point being that, and we'll follow back up on your question, is just, I don't know if there's truly a stereotype, but I think the right person that loves God first, and I failed to say that, that needs to be the very first thing, because that's just, I think that being a natural expectation since they're hopefully in church and serving the ministry, they love God first, and then these other things have got to come in line behind that. Yeah, you know, and I think if a person is manifesting the fruit of the Spirit, you know, Galatians 5, 22, and 23 talk about, you know, for the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, meekness, temperance, faith, and then it goes on to say, besides these or against these, there is no law. So if you're practicing the fruit of the Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit is being manifested in you, then I think being under the Holy Spirit control, then, you know, because you're under Holy Spirit control, then you can do those security measures, and you can do them in a way that, again, would protect the congregants at large, but also, you know, fulfilling the responsible duty that God had placed you over, because it is, as Ben said, it's a ministry. It is a ministry, and I think, personally, as you were just saying that, Will, it comes to mind that if a person serving in that role, back to what we always said, just said a few moments ago, if you step in the natural, God's going to come along and do the supernatural. So if you're stepping in to protect, then we got to trust that our Father's going to use you somehow, and we don't know what that looks like. I mean, it could be that your life gets sacrificed because you stepped into that role in order to save others, or it could be when he comes alongside of you that you're accurate. You have the shot, and you can deal with the situation to save others. So it's all about faith.
It's about the Holy Spirit residing in us, like you said, and making those steps in out of love to serve others, and I think God's going to come along in the supernatural. So Ben, you know, you've got a team of pretty diverse folks, and I mean literally diverse, so you've got them from all walks of life, occupations, experience sets, and how would you answer Will's question about what does that potential candidate look like? You know, I think that they're able to minister, and everybody brings different abilities to minister. Will, you can minister to a group of people that maybe I can't. That's why we want men, we want women, we want Latinos, we have Asians on our team, we have, you know, all sorts of folks because certain people naturally have a better ability to minister in a lot of cases to others. We want that ability.
We want somebody to be comfortable. We had a situation several years ago where preacher was speaking about abuse, and young lady walks out of the back of service just crying, very emotional. The last thing she probably wanted was a big old guy coming over to try to see if she was okay.
We didn't do that. We asked one of the ladies on our team to go over and talk to her, and they talked for an hour and a half. I don't think a guy could have ministered to her like she did. So, you know, we didn't protect anybody physically that day, but we ministered to her, and she felt the results of the ministry that that team is all about.
Wow, that's good. Well, the diversity we were just talking about, Ben, just came to mind, you know, what that brings to the table, not just the communication side outwardly, but as far as part of the team, you're able to sit there and talk as a team, and so where a person might have a subconscious bias that they're talking through as they're talking as a group, you may identify with what you may say, okay, this is the blueprint I'm going to be looking for, or this may be the way I react in this situation. But by having that diversity, lady, different race, different ethnicity, whatever it happens to be, they can bring a different light and a different experience set into that situation such that it creates, if you think of the unit as one unit, the balance becomes in the one unit, it rises to the top as a balanced approach, because you've got the diversity. If you've got all white guys, or all white women, whatever, or all black men, or all black women, and you've got a diverse population, then you could have some bias, subconscious bias, which we all know exists, that could surface in terms, and then you can have a gap in your security. You could actually create a gap just by that subconscious bias, right?
Oh, absolutely. It's like an effective police force. Typically, a local police force will look like the community. You don't want a police force looking completely different than the community.
They want to be able to fit in, they want to be able to naturally relate. We expect we want the same thing on our team, because we want to minister to everybody. Anybody that walks into our church, I want to make sure that I've got people that can effectively minister to them. Now, that doesn't mean that a white guy can't minister to a black guy. I'm not saying that, but sometimes it helps to be able to send somebody that looks like the person who's struggling.
They may be able to open up a little bit quicker, they may be able to more quickly identify what's going on, and that's what we have to get to. So how important is the support of the pastor in this particular ministry? I could not, would not do this without support of leadership. When you look at the charge that my team has, we are there to make decisions for the church. A lot of times, something goes on, we have to address a situation. The minister's on stage.
There's no going to get him. Other ministers are teaching Sunday school class. My team knows that we are there to assess and make decisions, and the church leadership will stand behind us. We've made mistakes before in how we've approached people, what we've said.
We're human. Ministry team has told us we'd rather go to somebody Monday and apologize for how you overreacted than have to address a situation that you underreacted and lost somebody, people got hurt, et cetera. There is no way you can run an effective ministry, regardless of what type of ministry, if you don't have the support that you have, the support of leadership, period. Well, I know, and just watching our own Sunday services and Wednesday night services and the role of your team, first let me publicly commend you guys and your team and ladies for all that you do, because it's one of those things that I never think twice about. And I'll be quite honest that I used to always carry for that very reason, because I didn't know the capability of where I used to attend church.
It wasn't near the level that church is. And for that, we want to commend you and say thank you for all that you folks do. And then the other piece I know the pastor, just in watching him, his comfort level is amazing because he knows that you folks are there. And that means a lot.
And he's able to minister in a much more relaxed level, knowing that if something were to switch or to flip, that he's got you men and women there in the background taking care of things. Well, we're coming to the end of this show, Roy, but we're going to pick this up next week. And we're going to talk with Ben some more on church security, how to build a security program, you know, because this is something again, that it's very important. So listen next week when we talk about church security with Ben Ziegler. That's right.
And as always, we want to close the show. If you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior, we just want to take a couple seconds here with you. Just make a confession that you are a sinner. Recognize that Jesus died and you're covered by the blood and he rose on the third day. And if you'll accept him into your heart, confess your sins and turn and start following him, you can have eternal freedom and life when you leave this earth. And you know, there's nothing like eternal life in Christ. So be thankful that you have breath and that you can still make this choice.
Yep. And men, it's time to get off the sidelines. We challenge you every week, start doing something. If you're not serving in your local body, we encourage you to start serving. Get beside the security guy, go to the pastor, find out what makes you tick and start serving God in a deeper level. And most importantly, lead your family, lead your children. I'm Roy Jones, the white guy.
And I'm Will Hardy, the black guy. And we will see you next week. As we wrap up today's show, be assured that TAWCMM, Talking and Walking Christian Men's Ministry is building a community of men that are Christ followers with a desire to be servant leaders in their homes, communities, churches, and work environments. Check out our website for upcoming events and regularly scheduled meetings. Drop us a note for topics that you would like to have us visit in the future. Thank you for joining us on Man Talk today. Visit us at www.tawcmm.com. Men walking the talk.
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