Why Life Safety Ministry Teams Cannot Afford to Train Only for Guns
By Trinity Safety Training Group 18 September 2026
Church safety training has historically devoted considerable attention to firearms threats, and understandably so. Some of the deadliest attacks against American houses of worship have involved firearms, and armed Life Safety Ministry Team members must be prepared for that possibility.
But firearms can also become disproportionately represented in our training. Part of the reason is simple: people enjoy shooting. Range days are popular, measurable, familiar, and relatively easy to organize. Guns are also powerful, technical, and, for some people, psychologically reinforcing. They can become what we somewhat irreverently call an “appendage amplifier.” Put a pistol on someone's belt and it can become surprisingly easy for “church safety training” to gradually become “gun training.”
The problem is that threats do not care what we enjoy training for.
The Weapon We Tend to Overlook
Knives and other edged tools are ordinary objects. They are inexpensive, readily accessible, easily concealed, and commonly possessed for completely legitimate reasons. Seeing a pocketknife clipped inside someone's pocket generally tells us virtually nothing about that person's intentions.
That normalcy is part of what makes an edged-weapon threat challenging. A firearm may become recognizable as a weapon before an attacker reaches immediate contact distance. A knife can remain completely concealed during an otherwise ordinary interaction and appear only when the attacker is already within touching distance of another person.
For churches, that distinction matters tremendously because proximity is built into ministry.
Greeters approach strangers. Ushers stand beside congregants. Pastors counsel people experiencing crises. Children's workers interact with parents during custody disputes and emotionally charged situations. Benevolence and recovery ministries routinely encounter people under significant stress. Volunteers shake hands, hug people, pray with strangers, and intentionally close distance because personal interaction is part of ministry.
An edged weapon can transform one of those ordinary interactions into a potentially lethal encounter almost instantly.
This Is Not a Theoretical Threat
American houses of worship have experienced edged-weapon violence.
In December 2019, an attacker entered a rabbi's home in Monsey, New York, during Hanukkah observances and attacked congregants with an 18-inch machete. Multiple victims suffered serious injuries, and one later died.
In 2020, an attacker entered a Bible study at Grace Covenant Church in Virginia and stabbed the pastor. Another person who intervened was also stabbed before people present were able to subdue the attacker.
Federal authorities also disrupted an ISIS-inspired plan targeting churches in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in 2024. According to the Department of Justice, the planned attack contemplated multiple methods, including knives, firearms, and fire.
These cases should not be interpreted as evidence that knives are replacing firearms as the predominant threat to American churches. They demonstrate something more useful: an LSMT that prepares primarily for an armed gunman is preparing for only one form of potentially lethal violence.
Three Feet Away in a Crowded Church Is a Different Problem
Consider what an edged-weapon attack might actually look like inside a church.
It probably will not resemble two people standing several yards apart with an unobstructed area between them. The attacker may be physically entangled with the victim. Other congregants may instinctively grab the attacker. People may be screaming and running in several directions. Chairs, tables, doorways, pews, children, elderly congregants, and other team members may occupy the same small space.
The attacker may be moving continuously while the victim is simultaneously trying to escape.
That makes the problem enormously complicated.
An armed LSMT member may have an effective defensive tool available and still be unable to safely employ it at that particular moment. An innocent person may be directly behind the attacker. The attacker and victim may rotate positions during the struggle. Someone may suddenly run through the responder's field of view. Another team member may approach from the opposite direction, while a well-intentioned congregant attempts to intervene.
The LSMT now has to solve the original threat without creating another casualty in the process.
That is why edged-weapon preparedness cannot simply consist of telling armed team members, “A knife can be a lethal weapon.” Everyone already understands that.
The real training question is:
What capabilities does our team possess when potentially lethal violence occurs at conversational distance in the middle of innocent people?
The Physical Problem Is Different
Close-distance edged-weapon violence can create demands that are very different from those associated with a more distant threat.
Distance may disappear immediately. Movement becomes critically important. Physical positioning matters. Furniture and architecture suddenly matter. The ability to communicate while people are physically struggling matters. Multiple LSMT members responding independently can actually complicate the environment if they have never trained to coordinate around close-contact violence.
The team also needs to understand that an edged-weapon event may become a physical intervention problem before it becomes anything else.
That does not mean every LSMT member should suddenly become a martial artist, nor should churches conduct unsafe amateur “knife fighting” exercises. It means teams should realistically evaluate whether their members have ever been trained to function when violence occurs within arm's reach rather than across a room.
Can members move without unnecessarily crowding the problem? Can they protect other congregants and create space? Can they communicate with one another while people are moving? Can they recognize when another responder has entered the problem? Can they adapt when an attacker, victim, or bystander changes position?
Those are LSMT capabilities, not simply weapons skills.
The Mental Problem Is Different Too
An edged-weapon assault can also be psychologically difficult because of its intimacy.
A responder may encounter screaming, blood, frantic movement, physical contact, and a victim desperately attempting to escape while the attacker remains only a few feet away. Instead of observing a clearly separated threat, the responder may be looking at several people physically intertwined and trying to determine exactly what is happening.
The objective is not to “win a knife fight.”
The objective is to stop people from being injured while avoiding creating additional victims.
That distinction should fundamentally shape training.
LSMT exercises should occasionally force members to confront ambiguity, proximity, movement, multiple people, communication problems, and rapidly changing circumstances. They should learn that responding to close-distance violence may require several capabilities working together rather than immediately reaching for the capability with which they are most comfortable.
Don't Forget What a Knife Does
There is another reason edged-weapon preparedness belongs in Life Safety training rather than being treated exclusively as a security topic.
A serious edged-weapon assault can create catastrophic hemorrhage very quickly.
Once the immediate threat has stopped, the incident can transition almost instantly from a security emergency into a medical emergency involving one or several critically injured people. The team may simultaneously need to establish scene safety, summon EMS, direct arriving law enforcement, manage frightened congregants, retrieve trauma equipment, communicate casualty information, and begin lifesaving hemorrhage-control measures within the scope of members' training.
This is where a genuinely integrated Life Safety Ministry has an advantage over a team that thinks primarily in terms of security.
The security problem and the medical problem may be separated by only seconds.
The Attacker May Not Choose Just One Method
The disrupted Idaho church plot also raises another issue worth considering. Authorities alleged that the planned attack involved knives, firearms, and fire.
An edged weapon should therefore not always be conceptualized as a stand-alone attack category. It can be a primary weapon, a secondary weapon, a contingency weapon, or one component of a larger attack.
That means recognizing one weapon should not automatically cause an LSMT to stop looking for additional hazards.
The presence of a knife does not establish the absence of a firearm. A stopped attacker does not automatically establish that the incident is over. Smoke or fire elsewhere in the building should not automatically be assumed to be unrelated. An abandoned bag, vehicle, second person, or other unusual circumstance may deserve additional attention. The first event may not be the whole incident.
That is an important mindset for any organization responsible for protecting a large number of people.
Train for Problems, Not Preferred Tools
None of this diminishes the importance of preparing for firearms threats. It broadens the definition of preparedness.
A mature Life Safety Ministry should periodically look at its training calendar and ask a very simple question: Are we training for the problems our people might actually encounter, or are we primarily training with the tools we enjoy using?
If most of the team's training revolves around firearms, there may be important capability gaps involving close-distance violence, edged weapons, medical emergencies, disruptive individuals, domestic situations, behavioral crises, fire, vehicle threats, evacuation, communication, and coordinated response.
Those gaps deserve attention. Because the person creating the problem gets a vote in how the incident unfolds. The next person who attempts to hurt someone inside a church may never produce a firearm. They may already be standing three feet away when the threat becomes apparent.
If our entire concept of potentially lethal violence begins with the sound of gunfire, we may already be behind the problem when the weapon comes out of someone's pocket.
If this guide would help your pastor, ministry leaders, or Life Safety Ministry Team, please share it with them. Visit trinitysafetygrp.com for more practical guidance and training resources to help your church prepare.