The world-wide pandemic brought things to a halt, including worshiping in buildings. As we begin to reopen and restart, Robert Hurst shares five important areas a church should consider as they restart their safety and security functions.
The world-wide pandemic brought things to a halt, including worshiping in buildings. As we begin to reopen and restart, Robert Hurst shares five important areas a church should consider as they restart their safety and security functions.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RJolBK8l760pZuOjZ-egRhniTyLLyPMr/view?usp=sharing
SAFE ZONE PODCAST #010 – MULLIGAN MOMENT
(Transcript is produced via Otter.ai and is a direct voice-to-text transcription. Editorial changes are minimal in this first use of the transcription service, but it may give you something to read. Better transcriptions (syntax, etc.) are coming in the future.)
Hi there. I'm Robert Hurst and I welcome you to this podcast of Safe Zone. I'm glad you've taken the time to join me. So let's get started.
Safe Zone is a place where we share ideas and practical tips to help create a safe and secure environment in the place where you worship. Safe Zone isn't just about you. It's about everyone that you love and care for where you worship. Let's get into this episode number 10 of Safe Zone.
Well, as I said last week, it is great to be back and here we go off and running again with another version, another edition of Safe Zone.
Hey, let me ask you something. Have you ever heard of the term a “Mulligan”? Yeah, you know the one if you're a golfer, you know exactly what it is because that great Encyclopedia of the sky called Wikipedia. And by the way, I double checked Wikipedia against other reliable sources that says that a mulligan is a second chance to perform an action, usually after the first chance went wrong through bad luck or a blunder.
So it's best known meaning is in golf, as you probably have heard, whereby a player is informally allowed to replay a stroke, even though this is against the formal rules of golf. The term has also been applied to other sports and games, and then to other fields in general. The origin of the term is a little bit unclear.
Well, you know what, over the last three or four months, I offer to you that we have been offered a “mulligan moment” with this recent COVID-19 pandemic, the impact that has had, how it has shut so many things down, how churches have had to learn to do church a different way, online with empty buildings.
But if you think about it, what it's also done is it's given us a time to pause, to review, to reconsider, and maybe even redo how some of our churches function, including our safety and security teams, whether it's a team, whether it's a function, whether it's a process, whatever. So here's the point, we're in a mulligan moment right now, where we get an opportunity to review where we have been, think about how that matches with what we wanted when we started doing safety and security in in our churches, and then readjust the course for the future.
Now, in my 43 years of doing safety, security and crisis management, I found there are common areas of struggle that everyone can have the opportunity to make better. It does not matter if you're the smallest industry, if you're a government entity, or if you're a large industrial enterprise. I've looked at all of them. I've worked with all of them. And churches are no different when it comes to this. But I have to tell you something in the midst of the pain and the craziness of this pandemic that we call COVID-19
We have been given a moment of grace to create a mulligan moment, a do over if you will, for areas we wish we could change. We all, you, me, the people in your church, your pastor, your leadership team, whatever you call them by, we all get to take a collective breath, and then ask the question, “what would I like to change or do differently in safety and security?”
Now, I don't know where you are on that. But I do know that there are five areas that I've observed over the years, where everyone seems to have “challenges”, should I say, over a period of time, and it's nothing that is egregious. It's nothing that is intended. It just happens. So when you get a mulligan moment like this, you have to kind of say, “Okay, let's take a look at these five areas right now. And let's tweak them, let's change them. Let's just do them over if we need to the first area.”
The first focus, the first one that always comes to mind when I'm working in the arena of security and safety might be a little bit of surprise for you. But it's all about the vision and the mission for your safety and security team in the first place. I mean, do you remember, do you know what your driving force was initially, but also know what it should be about, ultimately, which I offer to you, it's about ministry.
Every safety and security team member should be a minister for your place of worship. Because everybody is, whether they know it or not, or like it or not, it's there in practical ministry, every time they are at the place of worship helping in other words.
Think about it. People get out of a car. If your team is labeled, they're going to go to the person, if it's a visitor, they're going to go to the one that has a badge on of some kind, whether it's their name tag, or “Hi, i'm John”, or “safety team”, “security team”, “first impressions team,” whatever you call your team, a visitor is going to look to someone they think can give them directions.
So there's your opportunity. They get to help the physically challenged person, whether they are a toddler or where they are dawdling at the other end of the age spectrum. At the moment, as they get out of the car, maybe they stumble in the parking lot, maybe they need a door open. It could be a mother that's got 14 kids in her two arms and trying to carry all of the accoutrements that go with that and trying to get into the building, and they get to help that person.
And if you'll think about it, a good team member is one that as they are observing, they'll even do things like pick up pieces of trash they find on the ground, help keep the building clean. If there is a spill, they’ll be the first ones to say, “Hey, we need to clean up this spill over here because it's a it's a slip hazard.”
And above all of this, what they're doing in the meantime, is they're protecting the flock, the people. I mean, we've all used the term, or we've heard the term at one time and other called “sheepdogs.” And that's what we often model ourselves after.
I have a "sheep dog. " It's called a German Shepherd. I guess you knew that's why they have their name. They were originally bred in Germany they were bred as close in sheep herding dogs. More on that story some other time. But if you have a German Shepherd that is really in shepherding mode, they are a happy, fun loving animal that love their sheep. That's why we've had German Shepherds in our family for probably close to 35 years. Because once that German Shepherd adopts the family, I don't have to worry about my family members. They just going love all over him (the dog) I have. As my kids grew up, they could wrestle with the dog, they could ride the dog or whatever.
But I gotta tell you something. If the proverbial wolf, that person, that unknown showed up, a German Shepherd will get a game-face real quick and that's what we need to do.
We love our people. We're ready to be the one that is the most gracious, the most outgoing, the most loving - until the wolf shows up. So that is an area where we get a mulligan moment is to go, “Are we really being sheepdogs? Or have we become the shadow against the wall leaning up against the wall, trying to look hard and physically challenging and “don't mess with me,” and “I'm watching you.”
I've actually seen people like that where I'll go into churches now, I think, “You look more like a prison guard than you do a member of a loving team that should be shepherding and helping people.” So back up, think up, step up and say, “What is our vision for our team and what is the mission that we're trying to accomplish when we step into the building?”
The number two area that we get a mulligan moment here is in the area of our ongoing training in security and an offer to you now we need to include in their health and safety as a part of our team. Let me ask you a couple of questions that you need to be asking yourself,
· How often does your team train together ?
· When you do train, do you train single hazard training, as I call it, but a single hazard would be like, okay, we're going to get together. We're going to talk and we're going to walk through and we're going to practice what we would do if a active shooter shows up or there's a disruptive person or do you try to cover material that is current or that is relevant to that specific present time?
o For instance, are you prepared to safely do CPR on a person who might have a cardiac event during this time of pandemic outbreak when we are still trying to keep social distancing? By the way, there are ways to do that. Have you practice what you're going to do?
o If you have to do an inclement or bad weather response or tornado response? If you get word that a tornado has set down about three minutes from your building, what is your team going to do? How are they going to deal with it?
And folks, I could go on and on with this kind of stuff. Because when I work with teams one-on-one, or when I work with groups where several teams come together, these are the areas that many times I can tell they need to do a good bit of more training. And let me tell you a regular good training encourages and strengthens your team. It also is what makes a team.
I mean, think about this, if you will remember over the years as our soldiers have been at wars in other war zones, and you will see things on TV. Invariably, you will see where entry teams may have taped out or marked out on the ground, what a building might look like. And they literally practice walking into the building, even though there's no walls, there's no ceiling, there's simply a floor plan.
But what they're doing, it's not that they expect to have some magical eye when they get to that building, but what they do know is that if the first man goes in and does this, the second man is going to do that. The third team member is going to do this, etc, and so forth. And they build their team strength, they build their team continuity and it just makes it a stronger team.
Are you doing that? In other words, have you really thought about going ahead now and beginning to schedule your security training for the upcoming year. And speaking of training, let me mention to you, especially those of you in the east and North Texas and South- Central Texas areas, sounds pretty big area, and it is that many people are opening back up to having training events and things of that nature. Safe to Worship is willing to come to you and to work with you and your team in making your house of worship a safer place to be. I prefer to do this where you become the host and you have several churches come together. We can do it either in a seminar setting or in a practical setting. Either way, we will work with you. You can get more information by dropping an email to Info@SafetoWorship. com. The website’s not quite backup yet. We're nearly there. But you can certainly drop us an email and we'll get back to you quickly. Back to the podcast.
The third area that we could really revisit at this point with a mulligan moment is that of our team personnel. Now before you go, “Wait a minute, I've got a good team,” I know you do. But let me ask you - do you have a continual recruiting process in place to replace members who leave because maybe they have to move with the job? Maybe life moves them on to other areas of the country for other reasons, or they may just get burned out and drop out?
Now, I'm not talking about getting a new person a week, but at least begin to look for additional people to help spread the load around. Because a security and safety is a team thing in your church now. But maybe it needs to be a culture thing. This is a great time when you're talking about personnel to begin to restart expectations to the church that everyone is the “eyes and ears” of the security and safety team, and the church. What they observe and then come to you with, well, that that may help you to prevent an issue from happening.
First thing you do is you determine how big you ultimately feel your team needs to be to maybe spread the load, keep people interested in engaged and ongoing, keep them from being burned out. But also during this time, work to increase church awareness.
Area number four for a mulligan moment redo for nearly everyone (oh, this is the one people don't like to hear,) but it's in processes. I know that's a business term, but it still needs to be carried over into our world with processes that are common. They're easy for everyone. And how do we do this? We do it by simply answering some questions to maybe to help clarify if we even have any processes. Or perhaps we not might need to implement some.
For instance, do you have a clear process of opening the building each time it is used?
· Who opens it?
· What door do they start with?
· Is it that one person is allowed to go in? Or do you require several people to be together for safety once they're in the building?
· Is there a process for instance that says, “Be sure to check each and every room?” (Now there's a reason for that in another podcast down the line we'll talk about.)
· Do they know what to look for?
· Do they know to at least glance at windows, make sure somebody hasn't broken in into the church in the middle of the night through a side window.
· If it's Sunday, or whatever your day of worship is, do they check every single room before someone else gets there?
· Do they have checklists for people to reference to make certain they've covered all the bases?
· Does your staff have a clear process for safely encountering strangers who make walk in off the street during the day? Don't leave them to their own wits to be caught off guard. Give them a process.
· Are there processes in place in your house of worship regarding computer security? I mean, we're doing so much more via computer security or computer systems these days. We must be certain our processes are in place for keeping them safe, keeping the software up to date. Keeping unintentional harm or damage being done.
So processes is a good place to take this Mulligan moment and redo.
The fifth and final area most churches, and many businesses, struggle with is what I alluded to above and that is a lack of a culture of safety. Now, I know most of you have a team of safety. But here's something that's interesting. If you look up team in Webster's dictionary, it says in one of the definitions “a team is a group on one side.”
The difference is that a culture is a “set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize an institution or organization.”
So let's do this for the rest of 2020. Starting with this mulligan moment, on this fifth and final area about a culture of safety, let's begin to transition to that culture of safety ,meaning shared ideas, shared values of safety, shared needs. We need everybody involved, and get away from just the “team.” I
n other words, yes, you're on the team, so you're the one that shows up, puts on the radio, puts on the badge, whatever. Yes, that's needed. But let's get everyone involved. Everyone doing just a little bit synergizes the efforts of your team.
Now I'm going to tell you something from practical experience. You can implement this culture by carefully implementing the other four opportunities that we've already discussed. So, there it is. The five things that you can do in this mulligan moment to make your church a safe place to worship.
That wraps it up for this episode of Safe Zone. Take what you learned and helped bring a newfound peace of mind to those you worship with by making it a safer place to worship.
Just a quick favor if you would. Take a moment, hit the subscribe button to our podcast on your iTunes, Spotify, or whatever platform you use for podcasts. That way you won't miss a single new episode release. Feel free to forward this podcast to your friends also, and associates that are in your sphere of influence on a daily basis. After all, we're all in this together, so let's learn together and grow together. Have a great day. Have a safe week, and wherever you worship, let's make it a safe place to worship. God bless and goodbye.