Is Your Church Prepared To Stop Active Shooters Or Angry Mobs?

Over the last 25 years, gunmen and gunwomen have launched around two dozen fatal attacks at Christian churches across the nation. As demonstrated by the invasion of Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota last month, even congregations that haven’t encountered an armed threat still face mounting hostility against their faith and parishioners.

There’s no denying houses of worship are targets for violence. There’s also no denying that death tolls in church shootings were kept at a minimum thanks to the heroic actions of good guys with guns like Jack Wilson, Caleb Engle, and Jeanne Assam.

Yet, select churches still don’t have a solid security preparedness plan in place beyond relying on 911. In some cases, congregations actively hamper a threat response by prohibiting law-abiding citizens from carrying self-defense weapons on their campuses.

According to Ben Fries, a 15-year law enforcement officer and owner of a professional safety and firearms coaching and training organization focused on equipping churches to handle threats, solely relying on police forces to protect your flock is not enough.

“The biggest thing worth correcting right off the bat is the mindset that ‘it can’t happen here. It won’t happen here,’” Fries told The Federalist.

It’s due to repeated violence against faith-based organizations that Fries and his team at Fries Consulting and The Fries Foundation travel all over the U.S. to help churches, faith-based or private organizations, and others handle threats by exercising their Second Amendment right to self-defense.

“We fully believe in an armed society is a polite society,” Fries said.

[READ: Every Church Needs A Security Plan Fortified By The Second Amendment]

These training simulations, designed to “increase preparedness against protesters, conflicts, and violent encounters,” are not your Daddy’s active shooter drills. In fact, Fries rejects the term “active shooter drill” entirely.

“The narrative and the language that you use to formulate your thoughts makes your reality, so I want to be careful that we don’t say active shooter training, because I don’t agree with that. We deter active threats,” Fries clarified.

Fries’ course starts with evaluating the building’s strengths and weaknesses and ends with a realistic run-through, sometimes featuring blank gunfire, of the church teams’ response to a potential security breach in a sanctuary, foyer, and other worship spaces.

More recently, Fries expanded his threat deterrence classes to include more participants than simply church “safety team members.”

“I want ushers. I want greeters. I want volunteers. I want church elders, leaders, anyone. And, yeah, if you want to have part of your congregation show up, I’m all about this because we’re about empowering and shifting the mindset from being a victim that ‘Woe, this is me. This is happening to me’ to ‘I’m going to be a protector,’” Fries explained.

Fries acknowledges that some congregants may not feel comfortable carrying a weapon, due to state laws or lack of practice. He’s even encountered Christians who have “an aversion to violence” and are hesitant to take a shot, even in a life or death situation. Either way, Fries says everybody is eligible to participate in a church-wide safety response.

“That first line of defense is your greeter who helps your armed safety team intercept these problems,” Fries said. “I’m telling you, it works. We’ve seen it work. We’ve had 70-year-old women that are on the team because, well, they’ve gone to these churches for 20 years, and they know what’s normal and what’s not.”

Fries is not exaggerating. One month after a Ft. Wayne, Indiana church commissioned him to teach a threat deterrence course in 2024, a man who allegedly expressed the desire to “kill everyone” brandished his weapon at the church’s outdoor live nativity. The suspect was reportedly disarmed by a security team that also prevented him from driving into the crowd.

“They united as one and stopped this gunman. And that was our litmus test that our program works,” Fries said. “And after that, we just knuckled down.”

To concerns that a bad actor within or with close proximity to the congregation could learn about the church’s safety plan, Fries says “good.”

“For far too long, we have been silent and not showing what we’re doing to prevent this,” Fries said. “And I think if you have a poison pill in your congregation that’s thinking, ‘Maybe this is my church to make a stand in,’ or whatever it is. Not here. These churches know what they’re doing. They’re practicing.”

Fries also recommended churches and congregants add an extra layer of protection to any lawful self-defense actions they may take by retaining the services of a legal defense firm such as Right To Bear.

Already, Fries said an estimated two million church safety team members and trained volunteers show up ready to protect and defend their respective houses of worship every Sunday. His goal is to keep adding to that number, even traveling to “a couple of these kind of higher threat areas” in Wisconsin in the coming months to ensure congregations there are prepared for whatever may come their way.

Jordan Boyd is an award-winning staff writer at The Federalist and producer of “The Federalist Radio Hour.” Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.