John makes is abundantly clear that Jesus expects His followers to work together and be recognized for the love we show to each other. Intentional Church Safety is about how the church family can function practically and efficiently at low cost to provide reasonable safety for those who attend. The goals are three-fold: 1. Protect the people, 2. Protect the organization, 3. Witness to sinners.
This method uses the teams that most churches have in place–either formally or informally, and develops these into efficient and knowledgeable teams that can handle most safety incidents with little or no drama, and use those opportunities as time of witnessing His love to all. Where many churches fall down is in basic organization of the teams, policies, and communication.
In all cases, the focus is first on prevention of incidents. This requires some minimal training and adult consideration of the issues, needs, and people involved for success. This may be as simple as keeping out an infectious person to dealing with a person with mass murder on their mind, to administering first aid in the nursery, to improving the disinfecting done between meals in the kitchen. Some training (more is better) is always needed.
Responding to incidents is required if prevention failes. In all cases, response should be fast and competent. Anything less sacrifices the trust of the congregation and may be a tragedy. This requires rapid and reliable communication and some organization.
Intentional Church Safety is about building, using, and developing teams of volunteers to guide the church safety efforts. This does not prevent hiring special help, but it puts the burdens of overseeing and providing the church’s needs on church members. This does not preclude using professionals in their appropriate roles, but it does help the members define the roles needed.