The prior post in this series of articles on integrating church safety and security in your church building shared a church design example of the children’s areas in one of our recent church building projects. But children’s areas aren’t the only ones that need to be kept secure. Office areas in your church design also need safety elements to protect church staff.
Integrating Visual or Video Access Control into Your Church Design
We’ve established in this series that the days when a package delivery person could show up at a church office, push a button, and talk with a receptionist over a speaker system are gone, because audio systems don’t provide enough security. The best church safety protocols require direct visual or video, as well as audio input, before someone is allowed into your church building. The receptionist or volunteer can easily see, for example, whether the delivery person is wearing company-logo clothing and actually carrying a package.
There are additional ways to protect church leaders through access elements in your church design. Providing a separate, private entrance for staff members that leads directly to the office area of your church building means they have a choice about whether to walk through public areas.
Considering Office Rotations and Safe Rooms to Promote Church Safety
One church safety strategy that we’re hearing about lately is the office rotation. This means that the senior pastor plans to exchange offices with another staff person once a quarter. While we have not yet incorporated this feature into a church design, we are open to doing so. We understand that there’s another level of church safety involved when an intruder cannot easily presume to know which office belongs to which church leader or staff person.
Another level of safety which we have researched and discussed with customers is a safe room. This is a room that has dedicated power and ventilation, and which serves almost as a concrete bunker within your church building. While we haven’t yet included a safe room in a church design, it is an option some churches are considering.
Keeping Funds and Files Safe in Your Church Building
Beyond protecting people, which is always critical, it’s important to incorporate ways to keep both money and information safe in your church design. Another type of “safe” room would be a room that holds a safe, such as the counting room where ushers or other volunteers and financial officers can securely count, store, and prepare offerings for deposit. Any financial offices should also be difficult to access from public spaces, locked, and well-protected. The same should be true for the file storage and server rooms in your church design.
In our next post, we’ll share an example of an office entrance area church design that includes multiple layers of security. Meanwhile, we continue to present additional free i3 webinars on a regular basis. Find out what other church building topics we’re talking about here and sign up today.
