Wouldn't it be more effective and safer if deacons and elders were trained with weapons and strategically placed around the church? A balcony would be a great asset. Personally I'd rather only a few chosen men have guns than many, purely for crossfire reasons.
I can see your point---but only to a point. Here's a few reasons that, IMHO, at least, your line of reasoning may fall apart:
1) What if your auditorium building isn't designed to have a balcony? Not every church building is designed to hold a balcony. The church of which I'm a member doesn't have an auditorium that's designed to have a balcony connected to it. The building in which we hold our corporate service is only about 35 YO. As a matter of fact, many newer church buildings are intentionally designed
NOT to hold an auditorium, and for good reasons--fire codes, lack of access for fire and/or rescue people, more cleaning/maintenance issues, etc.
2) If all the armed men are situated such that they only are protecting the corporate meeting auditorium, then who's guarding, say, the nursery? I don't know of any nursery worker who'd feel comfortable wielding a high powered hand gun, nor do I think a parent would want their little one(s) hanging on to a nursery worker who just may overlook engaging the safety mechanism on her hand gun. Far too many people--young or old--have been killed by little children thinking that pistol would make a nice toy to play with his/her sibling(s), or as really young children are wont to do, stick it in their mouth as they crawl around, bumping into anything that's in their way.
Back to the nursery scenario. Maybe the "uninvited guest" doesn't want to kill someone in the nursery. Instead, maybe he'll just kidnap a few of those babies after he's bound and gagged all the nursery workers, robbed them of all their money, credit cards, their driver's licenses, automobile registration, etc., and, of course, all their cell phones.
Would you recommend a young parent to bring his/her baby to that church anytime soon after an incident like I just described occurred?
3) What about a church whose campus consists of several unattached buildings? Does your membership have enough trained and armed men to protect each and every one of those buildings during either SS and/or the "corporate worship time"?
My church has more than one corporate worship going on at the same time. We have our English-speaking service in one building, but we also have both an Ethiopian service in another building across the street that's goes on at the same time, and a Korean service in another building at the same time. Who's guarding them?
If you say, well, let them guard themselves, you run into the problem that 99.95% aren't legally permitted to carry weapons to a church service--or any other public venue--because (a) most of the adults can't speak enough English well enough to pass the required written exams for the legal "concealed carry" permits; (b) To my knowledge, there aren't enough people trained well enough to speak (in the Ethiopian case) Amarigna, Oromigna, Tigrigna, or Somaligna. If you know of some people who are very fluent in those languages, let me know so we can contact them to help out our Ethiopian brothers. (c) Although our Korean brothers all speak some dialect of "Korean," most written exams for concealed carry permits in our area aren't printed in "Korean." Moreover, "Korean" is one of the world's most difficult languages for an America to master. Ask any missionary that either is, or went to Korea to minister to these people how long he/she took to master "Korean" to the extent that he/she could present a series of doctrinal messages on, say, the differences of Pre-, Post-,and A- millennialism. See what he/she will tell you.
4) My church also sponsors a Christian day school with grades starting at 2 YO on up to, and including Grade 12. These meet M-F from 8am to 3pm, plus after school athletics, etc.
Who'll be guarding them every minute of every day these children occupy our campus? And, don't forget that we provide "After School Care," plus some evening programs (e.g., Christmas, HS/MS Drama performances, Thanksgiving, K Graduation, HS Graduation, etc.), oh yes, we also have various kinds of field trips throughout the year on which various grades ride on our school buses. Who's guarding them both to and from their destination(s)? It'd take quite a few willing men who are able to leave their places of employment to become security guards during school hours (plus both before and after school hours as well as the other above-mentioned venues). The only logical means that could be accomplished would be to raise each student's school fees to such a level that many student's (actually, it's most likely their parents who'd be socked with the whopping fee increase.) wouldn't be able to attend our Christian school any more. What about that, Bro. P&S? Then they'd either have to be homeschooled or, worse yet, be forced to attend a government-controlled school some with ill-trained teachers or with teachers who'd teach them that, e.g., it's okay to be gay or an atheist or evolution as a "proven fact" or any other new PC-curriculum that comes down the road. So, are you willing to stand up to your parents of school-aged children and say, "Don't worry, we've got an hour-long SS, plus a Children's Church to teach them
all they'll ever need to know to face the challenges they'll come across in today's world!!" Bro. P&S, are you willing to stand up to our Christian school parents and tell them that they'll just have to make things do--either pay the highly-increased student fees for your children to keep attending our Christian school, or find some other way for your child/children to receive a Bible-centered education! Well, Bro. P&S, are you willing and ready to tell that during our soon-to-come school orientation service(s)?
I'm not intending to rip apart your line of reasoning for a church. Maybe your church doesn't have the same set of circumstances that mine does, but can you now see that some of your suggestions, carried out to their fullest extent, just won't suffice for
each and every church here in modern-day America?
I hope you take this in the spirit I wrote it. I love you, my Brother in Christ and friend, even though we may never meet face-to-face in this life, I wish only the very best for you, your family, and for the church to which God has called you.
