New Church Safety Team Leader? Start Here

Article Summary

Most people who lead a safety team are volunteers who said yes before anyone showed them how to lead. Your job is to hold the vision and take care of the people who serve with you. You do that inside a church that runs on its own leadership model. Being the most skilled person on the team matters less than you’d think.

It usually happens without much ceremony. Someone on staff pulls you aside and says, “We’d like you to lead the church safety team.” You’re willing, maybe even honored. Then the real question shows up: how do I actually do this?

Plenty of people end up in this role without ever having led anything. Others arrive with years of leading cops or soldiers and assume it will transfer. Both groups have things to learn, and I came in with the second group.

What Does a Church Safety Team Leader Actually Do?

Your job is to set the tone, not to be the best at everything. Think about coaches. Most of them weren’t all-pro players. They were often solid players who understood the game and could help other people play it well.

You’re the one holding the vision. Your team needs to know what we’re here to do and where we fit in what the rest of the church is doing. When I took over as safety director at one church, the team I inherited was called security. One of my first changes was to call it church safety. It was a small change, and it told everyone what kind of team we were going to be.

Then you have to keep saying it. I’m wired for duty. Give me a task, and I’ll keep doing it until you tell me to stop; no pep talk required. It took me a little while in ministry to learn that most volunteers aren’t wired that way. They need to hear the bigger picture again, and then again after that. Repeating the vision may feel redundant to you, but it’s part of what a leader does.

Why Police and Military Leaders Have a Transition to Make

Churches often look at a retired cop or a veteran and see a ready-made safety leader. A lot of that experience carries over. Leading a ministry still isn’t the same as leading troops or officers, and anyone coming from that world has a transition to make. I had to make it.

I spent years as a gang specialist. The teens I dealt with were gang members, carjackers, and thugs. Over time, I developed a pretty negative view of teenagers in general.

When I came back to church, one of my first steps into safety was Wednesday nights in student ministry. Instead of gang members, I saw students who could have been anywhere else on a Wednesday night. They chose to be at church. Each week, I softened. Eventually I started calling Wednesday services my mid-week therapy session.

First responders often see people at their worst. In ministry, you’re serving the people the church exists for, and your posture has to change to match. Our post on warrior vs. guardian mindset goes deeper on that shift.

Your volunteers serve alongside you as fellow laborers, but the team still has a chain of command. If you come from police or the military, you already know how to run one. What changes is why people stay. In ministry, they stay because of the relationship, not the rank.

Check Your Ego and Hand Things Off

If you’re new to leading, surround yourself with people who know more than you do in specific areas, and lean on them. Being the leader doesn’t mean you run every piece of the team yourself.

That includes the schedule. Get someone to handle scheduling, and develop people who can lead a service without you. Staying for all three or five weekend services is the fast track to burnout.

At a multi-campus church where I served as safety director, each location had a team lead, and each service had a shift lead. Shift leads knew what was going on with the people on their shift: work, family, life, whatever they needed. Team leads knew what their shift leads needed and reported up to me.

Here’s a simple test for whether your structure works. If you brought one large pizza to your team, would everyone get a piece? If not, you’re probably trying to handle too many people yourself.

Learn the System Your Church Already Uses

Most churches schedule volunteers through a management system like Planning Center. Learn yours well enough to walk your people through it.

When our church switched to Planning Center, I heard “Am I on the schedule?” a lot. My answer was usually another question: “Did you get an invitation?” Some folks didn’t know it was sitting in their email. Scheduling frustration is a quiet way to lose volunteers. Knowing the system better than they do heads most of it off.

You’re a Shepherd, Too

Use the word shepherd in church circles, and someone will remind you the pastor is the shepherd. Okay, calm down. There’s a lead shepherd, and there are assistant shepherds. Being an assistant shepherd is a perfectly good job.

Shepherds protect, but they also lead and teach. A team that has never had a real leader doesn’t know the drill yet, and you can’t assume they know what you know.

I learned that with radios. After years in law enforcement, a radio was second nature to me. I didn’t think twice about handing one to a new volunteer. Then I walked over to the kids’ area and found someone staring at it. What channel are we on? What button do I push? Nobody had shown them, and that was on me.

Part of your role as a shepherd is making sure your people are equipped and trained well enough to actually help the church.

Communication Is More Than the Radio

Say “communication” to a safety team and everyone thinks radios. Your team should know how to use them, and you should also have a way to talk that doesn’t tie up the radio. At one church where we served, cell service was terrible. We moved non-emergency conversation to Voxer and kept the radio clear for what mattered.

The bigger part of communication is keeping your team informed, and that starts with you finding out what’s going on. One year, our church held its annual student event a couple of weeks after school started. There were hundreds of teens, loud music, and every eye on the stage. I was responsible for the stage area.

Near the back, a man about 6’2″ in black pulled on a ski mask. He lined up on the main aisle like he was about to rush the stage. I moved toward him from behind, going from Condition Yellow to Orange and nearly to Red on the Cooper Color Code.

As I closed in, I recognized him. He was a student leader, and rushing the stage was part of a skit nobody had told safety about. I only knew his face because those Wednesday nights had put me in that room for months. It could have ended differently.

We had a good relationship with student ministry, and the ball still got fumbled. Part of your job is chasing down what other ministries have planned, so your team isn’t finding out in the moment (or too late).

Where Does the Safety Team Fit in Church Leadership?

The church runs on a leadership model, and the safety team works inside it. That shapes how information moves.

We don’t want 10 team members going to the kids pastor to say the 3-year-old room needs to tighten up check-in and check-out. We don’t want five people separately telling the lead pastor about the same incident. You tell whoever is over you, and you’re done. Teach your team the same habit. Our post on church safety team accountability covers how fast different problems need to reach different levels of leadership.

Problems shouldn’t be the only thing leadership hears from you, either. Take good news up the chain, like a volunteer who handled a tense moment well or a drill that went right. If safety only shows up with bad news, every conversation starts on the wrong foot.

What Do You Do When Leadership Says No?

Leadership will not approve every idea you bring them. Early in my career, I was on a protective team for an ambassador in Central America. We normally wore guayabera shirts. They fit the local culture and let us blend in (as much as a ginger can blend in there). The long-sleeve ones counted as formal wear, the same as a sport coat. The ambassador wanted sport coats anyway. They were hotter and drew more attention, and we wore them.

The person you protect makes the call. In church, that’s leadership.

So pick your battles. If you object to everything, you won’t have any credibility left when something truly matters.

I once asked to limit our Sunday morning entry points from five to two. Those two doors already carried 80 to 85% of our traffic. Closing the other three meant three fewer doors to watch or lock down in an emergency. I pointed out that the other 15% would adjust after the first Sunday and that newcomers follow the crowd. The answer was no. So we do the best we can with what we have.

When push comes to shove, “this is a church” wins. Your role is to support the church in its mission. Getting resentful or salty about a no is a quick way to a bad result. It also costs you the trust you’ll need for the next request.

Take Care of Your People

One lesson from the military carries over perfectly: leaders eat last. People get tied up in titles and authority and forget that the number one job is taking care of the team.

In church safety, cold pizza is normal. The team waits until attendees eat, and usually the other volunteers too. A greeter can step away once the service starts, but the safety job doesn’t pause. If your team already eats last, the leader eats after them.

Taking care of people looks different for different people. Some want a weekly check-in. Know what is going on in their lives. Others simply want to hear “good job” once in a while, and some don’t need anything at all. Find out which is which.

That’s where the pizza test comes back around. No single leader will know 30 people well, but a shift lead can know the people on one shift.

Where to Go From Here

If you’re in your first few months, start with the three conversations every new church safety leader should have. If your team feels cut off from the rest of the church, read why your church safety team is operating in a silo.

Key Takeaways

• A leader’s job is to hold the vision and take care of the team. Delegating covers the skills you don’t have.
• Police and military experience helps, but leading in ministry takes a change in how you see the people you serve.
• Concerns go to whoever is over you, once, not around them.
• Leadership will sometimes say no. Supporting the church’s mission means accepting that without resentment.