Martin Sinderman  ·  June 4, 2015

It’s Sunday morning.  Your sanctuary is full of parishioners whose attentions are focused on your message. All is calm…at least for the moment.

When the Unexpected Happens

It could be that the possible tornado you’ve been warned about becomes a reality and hits your facility full-force.  Alternatively, it could be a substantial fire that breaks out in your church’s kitchen – possibly next to a nursery of babies and small children.  Or it could be a nightmare comes true: an explosion, or an individual randomly shooting at those attending the services, that shatters the peace of your sanctuary – and the lives and limbs of parishioners.

Thankfully, crisis situations like the above don’t happen often.  But, they happen. And, they happen often enough that you need a well-thought-out emergency management plan (EMP) in place to guide your response to them.

“You can hope for the best – but you have to be prepared for the worst,” says Brad Fortune, a lieutenant with the Plano, Texas Police Department, who works with faith-based organizations and schools on their emergency planning. 

“And one way you can do that is to have a plan for responding to emergencies and mitigating their impact as best you can – even though you hope you never have to use it.”

What’s in an EMP?
Simply put, a church’s EMP is a document that includes guidelines and other important information that helps direct the actions that need to be taken to in response to specific emergency situations that can occur in a church facility.

At a minimum, any such plan covers three types of emergencies, according to Fortune.  These include law enforcement emergencies, covering how the church responds to situations such as intruders and active shooters, as well as protests/demonstrations and other events calling for a police response; events such as fire, medical emergencies, and hazardous materials; and tornados, earthquakes, ice storms, outbreaks of serious infectious diseases, along with other natural disasters. 

And while these are the areas that every church EMP should include, the plan also has to be customized to fit unique issues affecting its particular facilities.

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