The beginning.....

This is the start of what I can only hope will be a useful tool to a lot of people. After searching the web many times I have been unable to find many that are discussing how to protect houses of worship. That's right. Churchs, Mosques, Synagogues, and Temples of all kinds need to be protected. The times are changing or maybe they have just changed, but these facilities are often targeted for arson, burglary, robbery, and many other crimes. Why? Well, quite simply, they are soft targets for the bad guys. Unfortunately all the things that are most important to these locations for their members and visitors are also what often draws the attacker. However, it is not necessary to either give up these values and interests that make us want to visit houses of worship or to remain entirely helpless either.

This is the place where we will discuss how risk management works and how to apply it to sacred places. It's a process - not a product. This is a theme that will be repeated many times here. Effective programs require a systems approach... and so on with lots of industry jargon and complex mystical terms. This is the place where safety and security will be addressed the way it was meant to be, simply! It is not hard and it most certainly is not mystical. It should be methodical and well thought out. I should blend with an organization's culture. It should exist for the sake of the organization. So if it is going to work, it must work for the organization and support those goals.

Some risks are unavoidable, some avoidable, but all are managable in some way. First we recognize their existence and then we figure out how to best to deal with them.

Whenever there are no inquires to drive our discussion, we will make comments about articles in the news. Yes, believe it or not it would appear that from media sources that a house of worship somewhere in the U.S. is a target of crime everyday. Expand that to the world and it's gotta be a certainty.

Keep coming back. With a little luck you'll learn something that might prevent a problem at your location!!!