By Emma Gibson
CU News Corps

DENVER — Parishioners in Colorado and around the country are questioning what they would do if someone decided to target one of their weekly services or prayer sessions.

Many places of worship in Colorado have responded by creating safety teams to protect their members. No matter the name — active-threat team, life-safety team, security team — the groups’ goals are the same.

Members from churches statewide have volunteered to watch for and try to defuse potentially threatening situations during religious events before someone gets hurt. In some Christian churches, select team members with concealed-carry permits are armed during every event, in case there is a problem.

"I’m hoping that more churches all over the world will begin to practice some type of a safety protocol," said Marcus Ferrell, director of security and safety at Potter’s House Church of Denver. "Terrorism is real and, unfortunately, the church is not left out of that discussion."

It’s been 10 years since the last church shootings in Colorado, but the memory is still fresh for many who live here. On Dec. 9, 2007, Matthew Murray went to a missionary training center on the campus of Faith Bible Chapel in Arvada and New Life Church in Colorado Springs, killing two people in each location.

Around 12:30 a.m., Murray asked Tiffany Johnson, the 26-year old director of hospitality at the missionary training center, if he could stay the night. She let him in, but asked him to leave 30 minutes later. When Murray left the building, he shot and killed Johnson and Philip Crouse, 24, and wounded two other staff members before he ran from the scene. He evaded police for the next 12 hours.

Just after 1 p.m., Murray began shooting in New Life Church’s parking lot. As he walked by the vehicles of the 7,000 parishioners preparing to leave, he killed two sisters as they climbed into their family’s minivan. Neither Stephanie Works, 18, nor her sister — Rachel, 16 — survived.

Murray wounded three more churchgoers before an armed volunteer on New Life Church’s Life-Safety Team wounded him, which led to Murray fatally shooting himself.

After New Life Church’s Life-Safety Team shot Murray, "that kinda put an exclamation point on the necessity of having a formal, full-time program here at New Life — what we call Life-Safety," said Jeff Kowell, the church's director of life safety.

According to a 2016 study published by the University of Alabama, there were 292 mass shootings around the world from 1966 to 2012. Out of those, 90 occurred in the United States. That means 31 percent of the world’s mass shootings happened in this country.

The definition of "mass shooting" varies, but in 2013, President Obama redefined it as a shooting with three or more victims.

From 1982 to today, there have been 86 mass shootings in America’s airports, workplaces, military buildings, schools and churches.

Mother Jones magazine tracks mass shootings in an online open-database that updates every five minutes. Before 2013, the database reflected incidents with four or more victims, but it changed its requirements in 2013 to fit Obama’s definition of mass shootings.

According to the database, five mass shootings have occurred in Colorado since 1982, including three in the last five years.

Dylann Storm Roof committed the last mass shooting in an American church, killing nine people at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on June 17, 2015. Mother Jones reported three earlier mass shootings on U.S. religious property — one in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., in 2012, one in Brookfield, Wis., at a Living Church of God in 2005, and one in a Baptist church in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1999.

When the number of victims isn’t a factor, the number of shootings on church property spikes. From 1980 to 2005, there have been 137 shootings in churches, including three in Colorado, according to a church-shooting database published by the Center for Homicide Research.

A 1991 church shooting in Wheat Ridge was followed by one in 1992 at a Methodist church in Fort Collins. The third occurred at a Catholic church in Colorado Springs. The 2007 shootings in Aurora and Colorado Springs bring the total number of church shootings in Colorado to five.

The Potter’s House Church of Denver has a three-part security plan, Ferrell said. For each service, two to eight officers from the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Department and uniformed security guards stand guard, as do volunteers from the church’s Safety Team. The first priority for anyone on these teams is to watch over the flock, which can swell to as many as 2,000 people per service.

Ferrell said the officers first and foremost are there to secure the church’s offering and help direct traffic, but they’re also the first responders in case a threat occurs on the church’s 11-acre campus. The Potter’s House’s contract with the Sheriff’s Department only applies to church events, but during the week a uniformed security team protects the church’s staff and school. Ferrell said each team member is armed with a gun.

However, only a portion of the 15 to 20 volunteers that make up the Safety Team during an average service have guns. Three to five of these members have their concealed-carry permit and are armed during church events, Ferrell said. He chooses these members based on their history with firearms, their character and their ability to talk someone down before any weapons are drawn. Coincidentally, most of these members are retired military and law enforcement.

Ferrell decided that if there were a situation on church property, the number of armed Safety Team members needed to be low in order to reduce loss of life.

"You’re already dealing with chaos if you have to use your weapon," Ferrell said, "and then to think about what’s beyond your target in the event that you do not hit your mark are innocent people."

Ferrell said The Potter’s House always had security precautions in place, but the 2007 shootings on the campuses of Faith Bible Chapel and New Life Church spurred it to increase its security.

New Life Church increased its Life-Safety team as well. Kowell did not want to say how many members the team has, but confirmed that it's five times the size it was before the shooting.

"Back in 2006, the thought of churches having violence was pretty far-fetched," Ferrell said. "From that point to today, it seems like it’s almost every week in the news you hear about the church having some type of crime occurring."

After the 2007 shootings, the safety teams at New Life Church and Potter’s House started training with a new purpose.

In their quarterly trainings, Ferrell’s team members focus on how to respond when other non-Safety Team members produce a weapon, because sometimes people try to help stop the threat on their own. The group also learns how to lock down the church, how to deescalate a verbal or physical threat and how to guide the crowd in the event of an emergency — be it an active shooter or a fire.

Both Ferrell and Kowell require armed volunteers to pass two range qualifications per year in order to remain on the team.

"With the climate of society," Ferrell said, a domestic dispute "can erupt into something with weapons."

The goal of a safety team, Kowell said, is "to keep the peace."

" ‘Watchfulness’ is probably one of the keywords that make this program work," he said.

Megachurches aren’t the only houses of worship that could benefit from adopting security protocols and training their parishioners, Ferrell said. He believes that no matter the size of the congregation, at least one person should be trained to respond to an emergency. A small prayer meeting incited Roof to shoot nine people in the 2015 Charleston incident.

Kowell and other safety directors at religious organizations in Colorado Springs created the Faith-Based Security Coalition to better connect places of worship to each other and the Colorado Springs Police Department during a crisis.

The group of leaders from Christian churches, a mosque and a synagogue established the coalition so that no one would have to build up their security protocols alone.

"Why reinvent the wheel when someone else is doing something great," Kowell said.

Some religious institutions said keeping their security precautions private is the best defense against a possible threat.

At Temple Sinai in Denver, Jody — who did not want to divulge her last name for privacy reasons — chose not to comment on the security measures at the synagogue.

Jeff Galasso, facility manager at Faith Bible Chapel, chose not to comment on the details of the church’s security precautions, but said there are five police officers on the property during church events. These officers help with traffic and security.

Because Faith Bible Chapel had an active shooter on its campus in 2007, Galasso said he hopes the police presence will deter future tragedies.

"In February, we had some vandalism at the mosque. Someone threw a rock into one of our windows, and since then we’ve decided to take extra security precautions," said Iman Jodeh, a spokesperson for the Colorado Muslim Society. However, she, too, chose not to disclose the specifics.

She said the Department of Justice and private security firms reached out to other mosques in the area to help prepare parishioners for bomb threats, active shooters and vandalism.

"If a mosque, or any place of worship, is located in a place where there are threats at a much higher level, then yes, I think armed safety groups makes sense," Jodeh said. "But then again, I think every case is different, and that’s something each place of worship needs to measure for themselves before determining if that is the right protocol."

Lt. Jim Byrne, spokesman for Fort Collins Police Services, said "waiting for police officers to respond will not always be timely in a critical situation. I think it’s a wise thing for organizations to do, as long as there’s some balance" between paranoia and preparedness.

He also said it’s "a valuable tool" for a safety team, well-trained in emergency response, to already be on the scene of an active-threat. He noted that they need "mindset" and situational training.

If a safety teams knows how to respond to the arrival of law-enforcement, on top of being able to responsibly handle an emergency before FCPS arrives, he said, it’s easier for its officers to understand the situation and get it under control.

Regardless of the incident, Byrne said, a volunteer needs to handle a situation appropriately and know when to talk someone down and when to take physical action.

When church members disagree with the idea of an armed protection detail during services at Potter’s House, Ferrell "refers them to Christ." He retells the story of Jesus' arrest and emphasizes that Peter had a weapon and cut off the centurion’s ear.

"Peter was basically like a bodyguard," Ferrell said. "Peter was the armed security that rolled with these disciples."





get more stories like this via email

This Saturday is a National Day of Protest in response to the Trump administration's recently signed One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cuts funding for Medicaid, food assistance and other programs.

Hundreds of peaceful protests are planned across the country, including at least nine in Washington state.

Liz Moore, executive director of the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane, is organizing an event with local health care unions, highlighting how federal cuts will hurt health care access and rural hospitals.

"This bill robs hospitals and clinics of funding, including rural hospitals and makes our already tenuous health care system strain and probably break at the seams," Moore contended. "It steals health care coverage from 16 million adults and children."

Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, praised the act's $50 billion allocation for rural health care, though the act is expected to cut total rural health spending by $155 billion.

In Eastern Washington, more than half of children rely on Apple Health, the state's Medicaid system. Moore called the act a heist.

"It really bankrolls massive tax giveaways for the ultrarich and for greedy corporations at the same time that our communities are going to be hurt," Moore asserted. "We say 'no.'"

Many may be feeling overwhelmed in the face of mass deportations or cuts to food aid across the country, Moore added but people need to keep pushing against the policies.

"When we see that we're not alone, when there's somebody you know at the rally, you didn't know was going to be there, those feelings can keep us in motion," Moore emphasized.

Members of the League of Women Voters-Arkansas are collecting signatures to add a constitutional amendment to the November 2026 ballot.

The amendment would give voters a chance to approve or reject election laws passed by the legislature.

Bonnie Miller, president of the League of Women Voters-Arkansas and chair of the coalition Save AR Democracy, said lawmakers have been enacting restrictions since 2013, making it harder for the direct democracy process to work.

"We now have to read a ballot title out loud to somebody or watch them read the entire ballot title. We're not just talking about a sentence here. In some instances, this could be pages of text," Miller outlined. "We now have to see a photo ID, we have to tell them that petition fraud is a crime."

Arkansas lawmakers said the added measures would help prevent voter fraud. There have been five Arkansans convicted of election fraud over the past 20 years.

Earlier this year, the league filed a federal lawsuit attempting to strike down five bills passed by the legislature which it said are unconstitutional and restrict the work of canvassers. Miller pointed out if the amendment is passed in next year's election, any changes to voting laws must be approved by voters.

"It would keep them from being able to refer out amendments that would change the process," Miller explained. "It means that during (the) legislative session, if they pass any bills, that affects the process that those laws don't go into effect until they're on the ballot the following year. "

Volunteers with the "Ballot Measure for Ballot Measure" campaign must collect more than 90,000 signatures by July 3, 2026.

AARP Oregon has opened up nominations for its prestigious award for volunteerism.

For the Andrus Award for Community Service, the organization will select a person or couple, age 50 or older, performing services without pay in their communities.

Geneva Craig, a volunteer for AARP Oregon, won the award in 2019 for her work organizing educational sessions for her community around Medford in Southern Oregon. She said when she was a child, her mother taught her to volunteer by supporting their sick neighbors.

"There's no age group where you can say, 'Oh, I don't have a skill, I don't have a talent,'" Craig emphasized. "You have something to offer, if only to give some support and let somebody know you care."

Oregonians do a lot of volunteering. Data from 2023 show nearly 36% of Oregonians formally volunteered through organizations, about eight points higher than the national average.

Research shows volunteering helps counteract the effects of stress, anxiety and depression, while making people feel more connected and happier. Craig added it is important that volunteers inspire others.

"I'm happy because I'm seeing the rise in people who are stepping back out and offering to volunteer," Craig explained. "I tried to let them know, we're not going to work you to death, OK? This is teamwork."

The deadline for Andrus Award nominations is Sept. 1. The winner receives $1,000 to donate to a nonprofit of their choosing.