Interview With Christian Clark: Creator of Secure The Church App
SemperVerus interviewed Christian Clark, owner and lead architect at Swell Development, LLC. He is also a broadly experienced volunteer on his megachurch security team. He is the creator of a fascinating and comprehensive new mobile app developed explicitly for church security teams and other church ministries where communication among volunteers is vital.
[ Bookmark the SemperVerus CHURCH SECURITY INTELLIGENCE CLIPBOARD ]
From your experience as a volunteer church security team member, what is the need you’ve seen for creating an app that focuses on church safety and security?
As I served throughout the years on church security, I began to notice areas of deficiency in the way that church security was normally executed. There were many gaps in planning, communication, engagement, and visibility that created potential areas where church security could fail. Secure The Church aims to close those gaps.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Checklist: Church Security/Safety Equipment ]
What is the Secure The Church app?
Many churches have already created security teams to help secure themselves from the various threats they face. Secure The Church is a software as a service (SaaS) application that allows churches to take their security teams to the next level by helping them create and implement a strong security plan and by increasing volunteer communication, engagement, and visibility.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Church Security: Radio Communications Best Practices ]
Explain SaaS and its difference from native apps.
Software as a service (SaaS) is an internet-based service where the data and software are hosted by the company offering the service. A native app can be a part of an SaaS system, but it can also be standalone. One of the advantages of an SaaS system is that customers of that service usually don’t need to purchase any additional hardware or equipment and can simply pay monthly to use the service.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Church Greeters and Ushers: Eyes and Ears for Security ]
What are the key concepts around which you’ve built the Secure The Church app?
The key concepts of Secure The Church are planning, communication, engagement, and visibility. We want to help churches develop a solid plan for securing their church through assessments and church security best practices.
We want to provide churches with the tools to communicate with their volunteers and engage them to ensure that security and medical coverage goals are being met.
We want to provide visibility for volunteers so they know who is serving with them during active events and services.
We also want to bring any potential issues or concerns to users’ attention through bulletins and communicate policy and procedure documentation through shared documents in the system. We’re providing reports and tools for administrators to see what gaps in coverage there have been in the past, as well as what gaps in coverage there may be for future scheduled events and services.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, The 5 Lines of Defense in Church Security, Beginning Outside ]
How many and what types of church safety teams does Secure The Church accommodate?
Secure The Church is designed with the ability to include many church teams in the system. Churches can choose which of these teams they would like to have use the system and how they interact with the overall security plan. Secure The Church has categories for security, medical, facilities, hospitality, pastoral, and children’s ministry teams.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, A Directory of Medical Kit Resources ]
Describe each of Secure The Church’s category tabs.
• Bulletins: The Bulletins section allows the church to alert volunteers to any current issues or potential future issues that they should know about. There are predefined categories that allow administrators to choose which type of bulletin it is. This ranges from facilities issues to event changes to security concerns to suspicious persons.
• Documents: The Documents section is the area where administrators can post policies and procedures for volunteers to reference.
• Events, Services, and Trainings: These three sections operate the same. The only difference is that they’re separated into different buckets. Events is for non-church service events (Bible study, women’s events, etc.). Services is for typical church services. Trainings is for scheduling trainings for different volunteer teams. In all three sections, there’s the ability to schedule recurring events and also schedule one time events. Users can then volunteer or commit ahead of time for events and then, when they arrive at the event, they can sign-in showing that they are there and present.
• Teams: The Teams section allows users to see church teams, and which members are part of those teams.
• User: The Users section is an area where administrators can manage user access and invite new users into the system. Users must be invited and create their own account.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Self-Defense Includes First-Aid Defense: Turn to ProTrainings to Learn ]
How is Secure The Church updated with fresh information?
Church administrators can manage church Events, Services, Trainings, Bulletins, and Documents. Church team members can volunteer for events and sign in to Events. One of the big goals of Secure The Church is to facilitate communication between team members. Communication features are currently in development and will be available in the near future.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, A Prayer for Church Security Team Members ]
Why is it important for team members to include a photo of themselves in their app user account?
A complete user profile, including a picture, helps other users to be able to put a face with a name in the system. When a user is signed in to an Event, Service, or Training, the system will show them who else is signed in and give them the ability to view that user and their profile. This works toward the goal of visibility so that volunteers know who they’re serving with.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Church Security Demands a Higher Standard Than Mere Every Day Carry ]
What is the process a team member uses in the app to volunteer for a specific church service or event?
When a user logs in, on the main dashboard, there will be a list of upcoming events, services, and trainings along with bulletins. If there are any active events currently happening, those will show at the top and each one will have a sign-in button if that option is available to the user. Once a user signs-in to an event, the dashboard will change and focus primarily on that event. In the focused version of that event, the pertinent bulletins, along with the currently signed-in users will be displayed. Each user that is signed-in will have an actionable badge displayed with their name that can be clicked to display their photo and information.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Always Carry. Always Alert. ]
Explain how the app will facilitate chat functionality among team members.
An upcoming feature that will be added to Secure The Church is a chat/communication facility that will allow users that have signed into the same event, the ability to communicate with each other. One of the core features of Secure The Church is highlighting the event that a user is currently signed into and displaying all of the pertinent information that is relevant to that event. Communication between volunteering users is a key part of that.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Self-Defense and Church Security Lessons by John Correia Reviewing an Attempted Carjacking ]
How can a church acquire the Secure The Church app for their own security/safety teams?
If a church is interested in exploring using Secure The Church, they can email us at info@securethechurch.com or by going to https://securethechurch.com, clicking on the interested button, and filling out the form.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Understand the Times and Know What to Do ]
Is there anything else you’d like to say?
Yes, we’re always open to feedback on how we can improve the service. We would love churches to give it a try before they commit to paying for the service. If there’s anything they feel can be improved or added we welcome input and if it makes sense for the product, we will add it.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Enroll in the Sheepdog Church Security Academy Safety Member Certification Program ]
Invite SemperVerus® to present its 5 life-changing success-generating components—prepare, aware, be, know, do—to your organization to inspire and motivate your members.
Join the SemperVerus Brotherhood™!
Discover more from SemperVerus
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.