Pastor James Caldwell keeps a three-ring binder in his office at a Baptist church in Orange Mound. The binder has a blue cover and the words “Emergency Response Plan” written in black marker across the front. He pulled it off the shelf when I visited last week and set it on his desk.
“I put this together after Sutherland Springs,” he said, referring to the 2017 church shooting in Texas that killed 26 people. “Updated it after Pittsburgh last year. Updated it again last month.”
Last month was August 2019. El Paso. Dayton. Thirty-one dead in less than 24 hours. Neither shooting happened at a church. Pastor Caldwell updated his binder anyway. He knows the target could be anywhere. He’s read the FBI reports.
“Every time one of these things happens, I get phone calls,” he said. “Members asking what we’re doing. Parents asking if their kids are safe in Sunday school. Deacons asking if we should arm the ushers.”
He’s not alone. Across Memphis, churches of every denomination and size are wrestling with the same questions. The answers aren’t simple, and the conversations aren’t comfortable.
The threat isn’t theoretical
Memphis has roughly 2,000 churches, mosques, synagogues, and other houses of worship in Shelby County. The number is hard to pin down because new congregations pop up in strip malls and storefronts on a regular basis, while others close quietly. The Mid-South is deeply churched. On any given Sunday morning, tens of thousands of Memphians are sitting in pews.
That makes them targets. Not because anyone has made specific threats against Memphis congregations, and because houses of worship share a set of characteristics that security professionals call “soft targets.” Open doors. Welcoming culture. Predictable schedules. Large gatherings of people in enclosed spaces. Limited or no security screening at entry points.
The shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh killed 11 people in October 2018. The massacre at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killed 51 in March 2019. The Sutherland Springs shooting in 2017 remains the deadliest church shooting in American history.
None of those happened in Tennessee. Tennessee isn’t immune. In 2017, a man shot and killed one person and wounded seven others at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ in Antioch, just outside Nashville. That shooting didn’t get the national coverage that Sutherland Springs got three weeks later, and it rattled every congregation in the state.
“Antioch was the one that made it real for us,” said Deacon Robert Ellis at a Church of God in Christ congregation in Whitehaven. “That’s right down the road. That could’ve been us.”
What Memphis churches are actually doing
I visited twelve churches across Memphis over the past two weeks. They ranged from a 3,000-member megachurch in Cordova to a 45-member congregation meeting in a converted house on Chelsea Avenue. The security approaches varied enormously.
The megachurch had a full security team: eight volunteers, three of them armed, all wearing earpieces and positioned at entry points, the parking lot, and the children’s wing. They’d hired a security consultant to design their protocols. They had cameras covering every exterior door and most of the interior hallways. The children’s check-in system required photo ID and a matching numbered tag for pickup. The head of security, a retired Shelby County Sheriff’s deputy, walked me through their lockdown procedure. It took twelve seconds to secure the main sanctuary doors.
The Chelsea Avenue church had a deadbolt and a prayer.
That gap is the central problem. Bigger churches with bigger budgets can afford to implement real security measures. Smaller churches, which make up the majority of congregations in Memphis, are working with whatever resources their members can volunteer.
“We’ve got maybe $800 a month in our general fund after we pay the mortgage and utilities,” said the pastor of a small AME church in South Memphis. “A security camera system costs $2,000. A security consultation costs $1,500. Where does that money come from?”
The armed volunteer debate
Nothing splits a Memphis congregation faster than the question of armed members serving as a security team.
Tennessee law allows handgun carry permit holders to carry in houses of worship unless the church posts a sign prohibiting weapons. A September 2019 law in Texas that explicitly allowed concealed carry in churches made national headlines, though Tennessee has been more permissive for years. The decision is left to each congregation.
At the churches I visited, opinions broke along predictable lines, though not always the lines you’d expect.
Pastor Caldwell in Orange Mound, whose binder sits on his desk like a permanent fixture, decided against armed volunteers. “I thought about it hard,” he said. “I’ve got several members with carry permits. Good people. Responsible gun owners. But I keep coming back to the same question: what happens if they miss? What happens if they hit someone behind the target? This isn’t a shooting range. This is a sanctuary with children in it.”
A Church of Christ elder in Bartlett took the opposite position. His congregation formed a security team of six armed volunteers in early 2018. All six have military or law enforcement backgrounds. They train together quarterly at a local range. They rotate positions during Sunday services so the same person isn’t always at the same door.
“We’re not cowboys,” he told me. “We’re trained, we’re disciplined, and we pray we never have to use what we’ve trained for. But if someone walks through that door with a rifle, I want my people to have a chance.”
Both positions are reasonable. Both carry risk. The churches that are handling this well are the ones having the conversation openly, with input from their members, local law enforcement, and ideally a security professional.
The churches that are handling it poorly are the ones pretending the question doesn’t exist.
What the experts recommend
I talked to three security consultants who work with houses of worship in the Memphis area. Their advice was consistent, and most of it doesn’t involve guns.
Lock doors you aren’t using. A church with six exterior doors doesn’t need all six open during services. Funnel traffic through two or three entries and keep the rest locked from the inside. This is free. It takes five minutes. Almost no churches do it.
Assign greeters with a purpose. The person shaking hands at the front door isn’t just being friendly. They’re the first line of observation. Train them to notice unusual behavior: someone carrying a bag that seems heavy, someone wearing a coat in September, someone who seems agitated or disconnected. Greeters don’t confront anyone. They alert the pastor or a designated team member.
Create a communication plan. If something happens, who calls 911? Not “someone.” A specific person. With a phone in their hand. Who knows the church’s exact address, because a panicked person might not remember it under stress. Who else needs to be notified? Where do children’s ministry workers take the kids? How do you get wheelchair-bound members out of the building?
Know your building. Sounds obvious. It’s not. One consultant told me he asked a church deacon where the closest exit to the sanctuary was during a walkthrough. The deacon pointed to the main entrance, which is the same door a shooter would likely come through. The actual closest exit was a side door that led to the parking lot, and nobody had thought of it as an emergency exit because they always used it to take out the trash.
Build a relationship with local police. Call the precinct commander. Invite an officer to walk through the building. Ask about response times for your area. Memphis PD has offered to do security assessments for houses of worship at no cost. Some churches have taken them up on it. Most haven’t.
“The number one thing I tell churches is to stop thinking it can’t happen to you,” said one consultant. “Antioch is 200 miles from Memphis. Pittsburgh could be anywhere. The sooner you accept that reality, the sooner you start doing something about it.”
The cultural resistance
Security and worship exist in tension. Churches want to be open, welcoming, come-as-you-are places. Security protocols, by definition, create barriers. Cameras feel like surveillance. Locked doors feel unwelcoming. Armed guards feel aggressive.
Several pastors told me their biggest challenge isn’t logistical. It’s cultural.
“I had a member tell me that if we post a security guard at the door, we’re telling visitors that we don’t trust them,” said a pastor in Frayser. “I understand that feeling. But I also have a responsibility to protect every person in that building. Those two things conflict, and there’s no perfect answer.”
The generational divide is real too. Older members tend to resist visible security measures. They’ve been going to church their whole lives and nothing bad has happened. Why change now? Younger members, who grew up with school shootings and active shooter drills, are more accepting of security protocols. Some expect them.
At one church in East Memphis, a member in her twenties told me she specifically looked for churches that had visible security teams before joining. “I’m not going somewhere that isn’t taking this seriously,” she said. “It’s 2019. You have to take it seriously.”
Cost and scale
For churches that decide to hire professional security, the costs add up fast.
An unarmed security guard for a three-hour Sunday service runs $55 to $75. Two services means $110 to $150. Add Wednesday night Bible study and the bill is $165 to $225 per week, or roughly $700 to $900 a month. For a megachurch pulling in six-figure monthly tithes, that’s pocket change. For a church running on a $3,000 monthly budget, it’s not possible.
Armed guards cost more. Figure $80 to $110 for a three-hour shift. Churches that want armed coverage for multiple services and midweek events are looking at $1,200 to $1,800 a month.
Some churches are pooling resources. Three congregations on a two-block stretch of Poplar Avenue worked out an arrangement where they share a security guard who moves between their buildings during overlapping service times. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing, and it cuts the per-church cost to about $250 a month.
“We’re neighbors,” said the pastor of one of the three churches. “We ought to be looking out for each other.”
What happens next
The El Paso and Dayton shootings will fade from the news cycle. They always do. Another mass casualty event will take their place. And another wave of churches will update their binders, have their meetings, and wrestle with the same questions.
Some will act. They’ll install cameras, train volunteers, lock their side doors, and build relationships with the officers who patrol their neighborhood. They’ll be more prepared than they were last month.
Some won’t. They’ll table the discussion until next time. Next time always comes.
Pastor Caldwell put his binder back on the shelf when we finished talking. He noticed me looking at it.
“I wish I didn’t need that thing,” he said. “I really do. But wishing doesn’t keep people safe.”
He locked his office door on the way out. The church’s front door, the one the congregation walks through every Sunday morning, was wide open.