Access Control Is an Act of Love (Part 2)
Chris Atkins is the Founder & Principal Advisor of the242momentum — a Gospel-centered readiness firm with operational standards contributed by ECAP (The Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention). With over 25 years of service spanning intelligence, military, and ministry roles, Chris has led operations across more than 40 countries, specializing in security analysis, protective operations, intelligence, and emergency planning. As Director of Safety and Risk Management for a multi-site/multi-state church, he oversaw protective strategies for 14 campuses, supervised more than 200 contracted law enforcement officers, and provided leadership for a volunteer security team of over 700 personnel. His expertise lies in building faith-driven, resilient teams that protect the momentum of Gospel-centered movements.
This is the second of a two-part series on access control. Click here to read part one.
The Creative Challenge: Older Facilities
Most access control content assumes a modern building with a budget to match — electronic readers, camera systems, intercom entry points. The reality for most churches is a facility built in another era, with multiple entry points that were never designed for monitoring, a limited volunteer base, and no budget for infrastructure.
The good news is that effective access control does not require technology. It requires assignment.
Every door needs an answer to one question: who is responsible for this door right now? That is it. The answer does not have to be a paid staff member, a security system, or a camera. It can be a volunteer with a specific assignment, a simple chain lock during non-entry hours, a sign that redirects guests to a designated entrance, or a physical arrangement that makes the monitored path the obvious path.
Staffing ratios matter more in older buildings. A newer facility with ample windows, open sightlines, and visible corridors can operate effectively with fewer workers because the environment itself supports awareness. An older facility without those advantages requires more intentional coverage — more workers, more clearly defined zones, more deliberate positioning. The same standard of protection is achievable in an older building. It just requires more planning to get there.
Simple physical improvements can close the gap significantly. Dutch doors allow a worker to monitor a hallway while maintaining a physical boundary. Window additions to solid doors increase visibility without structural renovation. Adequate lighting in corridors, stairwells, and transition spaces eliminates the blind spots that create both access risk and supervision gaps. These investments are often modest in cost and significant in impact.
Storage rooms, janitor closets, and unused spaces deserve the same attention as primary ministry spaces. These are among the most common locations for inappropriate access to occur — not because someone planned it, but because nobody thought to lock them. Every door on the children’s ministry corridor should have a defined status: locked during service, monitored, or assigned to a named worker.
Fire exits present a specific challenge. Local fire code may require these doors to remain operable from the inside, but they can and should be alarmed — so that any use during service is immediately visible to the team. An alarmed fire exit is not a propped door. It is a door that tells you when it opens.
A roving worker who checks hallways, backs up primary workers for breaks, and monitors transition spaces is one of the highest-value roles in a children’s ministry access control plan. This person is not assigned to a room. Their assignment is visibility — the spaces between the spaces that fixed-position workers cannot see.
Some of the most effective access control I have seen in older facilities came from churches that simply decided which doors were open during which hours and assigned a person — a greeter, a volunteer, a deacon — to every open point. No technology required. Just definition and assignment.
The Door Nobody Meant to Leave Open
Some of the most serious access control failures in churches are not caused by outsiders. They are caused by insiders who never considered the consequences.
A discipleship group propping a side door so members can come and go freely during a Wednesday evening session. An elder leaving a rear entrance unlocked while he runs to his car. A facilities volunteer wedging open a corridor door to make equipment moves easier. Each one a small act of convenience. Each one an unmonitored entry point that someone else will eventually find.
The person who finds it may be looking for a quiet place to sleep. May be in the grip of something that has removed his judgment. May have a history that the congregation knows nothing about. May have been watching the building for weeks, learning which doors get propped and when.
And in most of these scenarios, the first person he encounters is not a greeter or a safety volunteer. It is a woman working alone — the administrative assistant finishing up after everyone else has left, the children’s director preparing materials for Sunday, the worship leader rehearsing in an empty building.
The Church has a responsibility to those women that rarely gets named directly. Their safety is not a secondary concern. It is part of the same stewardship conversation as the children’s wing and the Sunday morning environment — and it deserves the same preparation.
A simple policy that every propped door is an unacceptable entry point — communicated clearly to elders, discipleship leaders, facilities volunteers, and anyone else with a key — is not a burden. It is a boundary that protects the people who give the most and are often the most exposed.
When someone enters without an open invitation, when the person at the door is behaving in a way that puts staff on edge, when a familiar face returns with something different in his eyes — the staff member working alone needs to know exactly what to do. Not because she should expect the worst, but because preparation is what allows her to serve without carrying that weight alone.
That preparation begins with the doors. And it begins long before Sunday morning.
What Welcoming Actually Looks Like
The church that has thought carefully about who enters its building, how children move through its spaces, and what happens when something feels off is not a church that has sacrificed hospitality for security.
It is a church that is free to be genuinely welcoming — because its volunteers are not carrying decisions they were never equipped to make, its children are protected by structure rather than luck, and its congregation can worship without the low-grade anxiety that comes from a building that has never been thought through.
The open door is a beautiful thing. What it opens into should be just as carefully tended as the welcome that precedes it.
That is what access control looks like when it starts with love instead of suspicion.
Next Steps
These are the conversations and decisions worth having before the following Sunday.
For children’s ministry leaders: — Confirm that check-in and check-out is managed by screened and trained workers with a defined verification process. — Establish or review the access control boundary — who it applies to, which spaces it covers, and what visible identification your workers are using. — Walk the space and identify every door, closet, and corridor that does not have a defined status during service times.
For pastors and elders: — Establish a written policy that prohibits propping doors — and communicate it to every person with a key. — Identify any storage rooms, janitor closets, or unused spaces that are currently unlocked during ministry hours and address them. — Define who is working alone in the building during the week and what their protocol is when something feels off.
For facilities and older buildings: — Assess sightlines and lighting in children’s ministry corridors. Identify where visibility gaps exist and what the lowest-cost solution is. — Verify that fire exits are alarmed and that any use during service will be immediately visible to the team. — Consider whether a roving worker role would strengthen coverage in your specific layout.
The standard that holds everything together: Access control is not a project with a completion date. It is a practice with a weekly rhythm. The question is not whether the system is in place. It is whether the people running it know what they are doing, why it matters, and what to do when something feels off.
- Access Control Is an Act of Love (Part 2)
Every church I have ever worked with says the same thing when the subject of access control comes up. “We want people to feel welcome.” And they mean it. The open door is not just a policy — it is a theology. The church exists to receive people, to gather them, to make room. Putting a lock on a door feels like a contradiction of everything the building is supposed to represent. But here is what I have learned after years of working inside churches of every size and context: the open door, without structure behind it, does not protect the people inside. It just makes it harder to know who is there. - Flipping the Narrative About Southern Baptists and Sexual Abuse
During Passion Week this year, I contemplated how it took the empty tomb to flip the narrative about Jesus. Leading up to the cross, the narrative was scandalous. Jesus was labeled a lawbreaker, usurper, heretic, and pretender. To most, the truth of the scandal was substantiated on Friday at the Cross. They supposed He wouldn’t allow the crucifixion if he wasn’t all the things they said about Him. - Access Control Is an Act of Love (Part 1)
Every church I have ever worked with says the same thing when the subject of access control comes up. “We want people to feel welcome.” And they mean it. The open door is not just a policy — it is a theology. The church exists to receive people, to gather them, to make room. Putting a lock on a door feels like a contradiction of everything the building is supposed to represent. But here is what I have learned after years of working inside churches of every size and context: the open door, without structure behind it, does not protect the people inside. It just makes it harder to know who is there.