II – Aware

Self-Defense In Spiritual Warfare: Know Your Enemies

The resulting corollary of the 5 SemperVerus components is SELF-DEFENSE.

Practicing SELF-DEFENSE is the strategic, tactical, and intelligent ability to responsibly protect yourself from menacing spiritual and physical threats.

Notice the inclusion of the spiritual aspect that is often overlooked when considering self-defense. In the SemperVerus Brotherhood™, where we Stay True to what is right and Stay True to our aim, we are vigilant to be situationally aware (including spiritually aware) so that we’re prepared to ward off the enemies of our soul.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Situational Awareness: Spiritual Self-Defense ]

The pastor of Ada Bible Church, in Grand Rapids, MI, Aaron Buer, preached the 4-part sermon series titled Enemies of the Soul, which examines the reality and nature of spiritual warfare in our daily lives. He explores how attacks to our soul come from three directions: the devil, the world, and our own nature (the flesh). His final sermon explains that we defend ourselves from these threats by consciously and constantly putting on the armor of God. Watch each of the videos below to sharpen your everyday defenses and protect your soul.

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Gentle Response De-Escalation Training for Church Security Teams

Gentle Response is the organization founded by John Riley, a retired police officer and certified crisis intervention specialist with the National Anger Management Association. He and his team travel all over the United States conducting Conflict De-escalation Training seminars.

SemperVerus attended this excellent seminar, held in Immanuel Church, Holland, Michigan, May 14, 2023. With Mr. Riley’s permission, here are notes we took during that seminar and scenario training:

•   “A gentle response defuses anger” Proverbs 15:1 (MSG)

•   Conflict de-escalation: lowering the intensity of an agitated person to minimize a potentially volatile situation from becoming a critical violent incident.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, A Prayer for Church Security Team Members ]

•   Peacemaking and de-escalating people’s anger is the goal, while staying alert to your own personal and public safety. When overwhelmed, stay safe and be an expert witness.

•   Mindset Priority: Each church security team member must have a “ministry mindset” — Every contact (even eye contact) is a ministry opportunity to represent the mission of the church. Don’t let your actions be heavy-handed and damage that mission.

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John Farnum Advises How to Manage Stranger Danger

What do you say and how do you act when a stranger disrupts your purposeful ambulation by asking you, “Do you have the time?” or “Hey, have you got a match?” or some other “come-on” to disorient you and possibly set you up to be victimized by a criminal act?

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Video: How to Manage a Stranger’s Approach and Maintain Self-Defense ]

John Farnam is president of Defensive Training International and has personally trained thousands of federal, state, and local law enforcement personnel, as well as private citizens, in the responsible use of firearms. In this video interview with the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network, he offers strategic advice in safely disengaging from unwanted interaction with possible predators. Following the video below are highlights to remember.

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Decision-Making Under Stress—19 Factors to Consider

When confronted by a criminal or terrorist deadly force threat, human performance experiences extreme stress, affecting the potential victim’s self-defensive cognitive, physical, and emotional ability.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Chart: The Spectrum of Potential Threat Personas in Self-Defense and Church Security ]

Police veteran, founder of Critical Incident Review, and use-of-force expert Jamie Borden, explains in his book, Anatomy of a Critical Incident: Navigating Controversy, the many critical factors that must be taken into consideration when evaluating police officer behavior in these highly complex encounters.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, The 5 Elements of Self-Defense Law ]

Law enforcement officers are the book’s target audience, but the following split-second decision-making elements excerpted from the book also apply to responsibly armed self-defense citizens and church security team volunteers facing life-and-death conditions. Where the word “officer” is located in the book, it is replaced with [defender] in this excerpt:

[ Read SemperVerus articles on the topic of CHURCH SECURITY ]

• Tunnel Vision — The phenomenon where a [defender] becomes narrowly, visually focused on a specific threat, potentially missing other critical elements of the situation.

• Auditory Exclusion — A temporary inability to process or encode certain sounds, often due to high stress, which can lead to missed commands or critical background noises. This is not an individual going deaf; rather just not encoding or filtering the audible stimulus, affecting the ability to recall later. The question becomes: not was the sound audible in the evidence, rather, was the sound perceived or heard by the [defender].

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Concealed Carry Daily Prayer ]

COGNITIVE OVERLOAD:

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