Pastor David Holloway stood in the parking lot of his church on Park Avenue on a Wednesday evening and pointed at the new camera mounted above the front entrance. “I never thought we’d need that,” he said. “This is supposed to be a place where anybody can walk in.”
He paused. “It still is. We just watch a little closer now.”
Across Memphis, churches are having conversations they never expected to have. How many cameras do we need? Should we hire a guard for Sunday mornings? Do we let concealed carry permit holders bring weapons into the sanctuary? How much of the offering budget goes to security instead of missions?
These aren’t hypothetical questions anymore. They’re line items.
Why Now
The mass shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018 killed 11 people. The attack on First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in November 2017 killed 26. The shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 killed 9.
Each incident pushed more houses of worship toward taking security seriously. The effect is cumulative. After Sutherland Springs, some Memphis churches started talking about security. After Pittsburgh, more of them started spending money on it.
The trend isn’t limited to any one denomination. I’ve talked to Baptist churches in Frayser, Catholic parishes in East Memphis, nondenominational megachurches in Cordova, and small storefront congregations on Lamar Avenue. All of them are thinking about this. The scale of the response varies wildly depending on the size of the church and the money available.
The Big Churches
Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, one of the largest congregations in the Memphis area, has had a formal security team for years. The church doesn’t disclose specifics, but members I spoke with said the team includes trained volunteers and at least some paid, armed personnel on Sunday mornings. Cameras cover the parking lot, entrances, and children’s ministry areas.
Hope Church, which has campuses in Cordova and Midtown, has also invested in security infrastructure. Their approach includes trained greeters who double as observers, looking for unusual behavior before and during services. It’s a model that’s becoming common at larger churches — the smiling face at the door is also the first set of eyes in the security plan.
Christ Community Health Services, which operates medical clinics connected to several Memphis churches, told me they’ve upgraded physical security at multiple locations over the past year, including better lighting, door access controls, and panic buttons.
These larger organizations have the budget. A megachurch with 5,000 weekly attendees might spend $50,000 to $100,000 a year on security between personnel, cameras, and equipment. That’s a rounding error in their annual budget.
The Small Churches
For a storefront church on Chelsea Avenue with 60 members and a $2,000-a-month budget, $50,000 is science fiction.
I visited three small churches in North Memphis and Whitehaven for this story. None of them had professional security. One had a deacon who carries a handgun on Sunday mornings. Another had a camera system that the pastor’s son installed, with two cameras covering the front door and the parking lot. The third had nothing.
“We can’t afford a guard,” said a pastor at a church near Millbranch Road who asked me not to use his name. “We talked about it at a board meeting. The cheapest quote we got was $200 for a four-hour armed guard on Sunday morning. That’s $800 a month. We don’t have $800 a month for anything except the electric bill and the mortgage.”
That $200-per-Sunday figure is real. I checked with several security companies in Memphis, and armed guard rates for short-duration contracts (four to six hours) run $25 to $50 per hour depending on the company. A four-hour post at $50 an hour is $200. For a church that passes the plate and collects maybe $1,500 on a good Sunday, that’s a painful number.
Some small churches are turning to volunteer security teams instead. The concept is simple: identify members of the congregation who have military or law enforcement backgrounds, give them some basic training, and assign them to watch the doors during services. It costs nothing except time.
Tennessee Law and Guns in Church
Tennessee’s relationship with firearms in churches has been evolving. State law was amended in 2013 to allow handgun carry permit holders to bring firearms into churches and other houses of worship unless the church posts a sign prohibiting it. The law puts the decision on the individual church.
This creates a difficult choice for pastors and church boards. If you allow guns, some members feel safer knowing that fellow churchgoers are armed. Other members feel deeply uncomfortable sitting in a pew knowing the person next to them has a pistol under their jacket. If you prohibit guns, you’ve made a statement that some members see as naive or even dangerous.
I talked to pastors on both sides. A minister at a church in Bartlett told me his congregation voted unanimously to allow concealed carry. “We’ve got six retired military guys and two retired cops in our pews,” he said. “I’d rather have them armed than not.”
A pastor in Cooper-Young told me the opposite. “We are a sanctuary,” she said. “The word means something. We are not bringing weapons into the place where we pray.”
Both positions are sincere. Both are defensible. Neither completely solves the problem.
The Volunteer Security Team Model
The volunteer approach has become popular enough that several organizations now offer training specifically for church security teams. The Church of God in Christ, which has its international headquarters here in Memphis, has encouraged its local congregations to develop security plans. Several Shelby County churches have participated in active shooter training offered through the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office.
A typical volunteer security team consists of four to eight members who rotate through assignments. Some watch the parking lot from inside a car. Some stand near the entrances. Some sit in the sanctuary near the doors. They’re looking for anything out of place: someone who seems agitated, someone carrying a bag that doesn’t make sense, someone who walks in and starts scanning the room instead of finding a seat.
The value of these teams depends entirely on the training. A retired Marine who spent 20 years in security after his military service is a different asset than a well-meaning deacon with no background in threat assessment. Both can watch a door. Only one knows what to look for.
I attended a church security training session at a congregation in Germantown last month. The instructor, a former Shelby County deputy, spent three hours covering topics including identifying pre-attack behavior, communication protocols during an incident, evacuation procedures, and the legal implications of using force on church property.
He made one point that stuck with me. “Your job isn’t to be a hero,” he told the group of about 15 volunteers. “Your job is to buy time. Get people out. Call 911. If you have to engage a threat, engage it. But your first goal is distance between the attacker and the congregation.”
Camera Systems and Physical Security
Beyond personnel, churches are investing in cameras, better lighting, and improved access control. The cost of a basic camera system has dropped dramatically in the past five years. A four-camera setup with a digital recorder and remote viewing through a phone app runs $500 to $1,500 for equipment, plus installation.
Several Memphis churches told me they’ve installed cameras in the past year. The motivation varies. Some want to monitor entrances during services. Some want recordings for liability purposes. A few churches in high-crime areas told me the cameras help with property crimes that have nothing to do with mass shootings — catalytic converter theft from the parking lot, graffiti, people breaking into the church on weekdays to steal copper or electronics.
Door access controls are another growing area. Larger churches are installing keypad or badge-access systems on side entrances so that only the main doors are open during services. This funnels everyone through a single entry point where greeters can observe arrivals. It’s a basic security principle borrowed from commercial buildings, applied to houses of worship.
Some churches are also hardening their children’s ministry areas. Check-in systems that require a matching code for pickup, locked doors that only open from the inside during classes, and windows that allow observation from the hallway are becoming standard at mid-size and large churches. Parents expect it.
The Emotional Cost
All of this comes with a cost that doesn’t show up in a budget.
A church member in Midtown told me she stopped bringing her kids to evening Bible study because the church doesn’t have security at night. “Sunday morning, they’ve got a guy at the door,” she said. “Wednesday night, it’s just whoever happens to be around. I don’t feel safe bringing my children.”
A pastor in Hickory Hill described the feeling of preaching a sermon about grace and openness while knowing there’s an armed volunteer sitting in the back row. “There’s a contradiction there,” he admitted. “I preach that this is a house of peace, and then I’ve got a guy with a Glock watching the door. I haven’t figured out how to reconcile that.”
An older member of a church in South Memphis put it more bluntly. “We didn’t used to lock the church doors during the week. Now we lock them all the time. What kind of church locks its doors?”
These are real tensions, and there’s no easy resolution. A church that ignores security risks its people. A church that militarizes its entrance risks its identity. Most Memphis congregations are trying to find somewhere in between, and most of them are making it up as they go.
The Insurance Factor
Here’s something that might surprise you. Insurance companies are now asking churches about their security plans. Several Memphis pastors told me their church insurance carriers have added questions about security measures to their renewal applications.
One pastor showed me a questionnaire from his insurer that asked whether the church has a written emergency plan, whether it conducts active shooter drills, and whether it has security cameras or personnel. He said his premium went up when he answered no to most of those questions.
“That’s what finally got our board to act,” he told me. “Not the shootings on the news. The insurance bill.”
Insurance carriers have been paying attention to the liability exposure that churches face. A church that does nothing about security and then suffers an incident could face negligence claims. Having a documented security plan, even a basic one, reduces that legal exposure.
What Comes Next
The church security conversation in Memphis isn’t going away. If anything, it’s going to intensify. Every national incident pushes more congregations to act. Every local crime spike near a church property reminds pastors that the risk isn’t theoretical.
What I hope doesn’t happen is that churches start treating security as a solved problem once they’ve installed cameras and trained a volunteer team. Security is an ongoing commitment, not a one-time project. Cameras need to be maintained. Volunteers need refresher training. Plans need to be updated as church leadership and layout change.
I also hope that churches don’t lose sight of why they exist. A church that locks every door, posts armed guards at every entrance, and subjects visitors to bag checks might be secure. It’s also not a very welcoming place. The whole point of a church is that anyone can come in.
Finding that balance is hard. Most Memphis churches I talked to are doing their best. They’re spending money they’d rather spend on other things, asking volunteers to take on responsibilities they didn’t sign up for, and trying to protect their people without scaring them.
It’s an imperfect process. But it’s happening, and that counts for something.